THE
P RTAL
January 2012
Page 16
F a t h e r P e t e r ’s P a ge
What’s in a word?
Last month,
I wrote about my enthusiasm for the new translation of the
Roman Missal and the Unity and increased Spirituality which I believe it will
create throughout the English speaking world. But there are a few people who
claim it is too ‘technical’ and/or uses ‘obscure’ words. Such criticisms remind
me of an event I experienced over 45 years ago. I recount a rather prurient story.
As a young student I was hitch-hiking to Scotland
and obtained a lift in a lorry. Once ensconced in
his cab, perhaps because he knew he had a captive
audience, the driver started to recount his sexual
prowess and intimate details of his conquests. It was
more a monologue, than a dialogue, which went on
interminably for over four hours!
He certainly put me back in my box!
He clearly showed by his enthusiasm and his
commitment to the Gospel that ‘technical’ words – far
from being a barrier – were the very language that is
necessary to convey fundamental theological truths in
their fullness.
The Word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,
I listened aghast as he described in flamboyant
Yet in the flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains.
language all the personal details of this aspect of
He is that he was and for ever shall be,
his life. But what amazed me most were the highly
But becomes that he was not for your and for me.
technical and detailed anatomical words he quoted:
By the obscure Latin and Greek words he freely used
The words of this Carol remind us that it is the
you would have thought that he had just completed Incarnation that is the very basis for the Catholic
a degree in Classics! By the time I got out of his cab Faith. It is this fundamental truth which differentiates
in Newcastle I was glad to breathe clean air again; but Catholicism from Protestantism.
I could not but recollect that his vocabulary reflected
his enthusiasm for his subject.
It is possible that you are reading this in the octave
of Christmas: the great feast of the Incarnation; or it
There are some people, sadly usually tired, burnt-out might be in the Octave of the Epiphany: (Now, there
products of the 60’s, who assert – in a rather superior is another ‘technical’ word to conjure with!). Never
and paternal way – that the faithful could never handle underestimate the power of the ‘right’ word when
the new translation of the Missal since it contains one’s heart is on fire with the gospel.
technical words like consubstantial or incarnate.
Father Peter
Last week, I celebrated with my
students their end-of-term Christmas
Dinner & Party. Late into the night – or
more accurately, early in the morning
since it was 2.30am! – I was sitting at the
small bar of my Chaplaincy and naively
asked a student what his plans were for
Christmas.
Unassumingly, he recounted that he
was returning to the Cameroons where,
without any of the luxuries of Western
worship, he would go to Midnight Mass
in the open air under the stars and,
with his family, “celebrate the Coming
of the Christ Child; since it is in the
Incarnation, Father, that we come across
the very essence of Catholicism”. Wow!