Father Thomas Welbers' Homily

One of the things I have decided to do during Lent is to try, as far as possible, to base my homilies, both on Sundays and on weekdays – you know, you might consider coming to Mass on weekdays too, not just as a Lenten practice – because Mass really isn’t a penance, but an opportunity for grace – but as a valuable part of your life throughout the year – but I digress; back to the point: During Lent I’m going to try to preach using the opening prayer of the Mass as the starting point. Did you happen to listen to the opening prayer? I fear that in actual practice, rather than setting the tone for our entire assembly’s prayer in the Mass, it just comes across as more “yada-yada.” Here is what we prayed: “God our Father, help us to hear your Son. Enlighten us with your word, that we may find the way to your glory.” Well, that’s nice enough, but it really doesn’t have much “grab-value,” does it? Quite frankly, it didn’t make me sit up and take notice.

The problem, though, is not really with the prayer itself, at least not in its original Latin. The problem is with the translation we’ve been using over the last 30 years. It’s the official English translation, and we’re not supposed to change it on our own. But it was also intended to be an interim, provisional translation – and sadly, because of bureaucratic sluggishness in the Church combined with many differences of opinion on the philosophy of translating and ways of expressing some doctrinal concepts, it hasn’t been upgraded in the past thirty years. Many people, myself included, have criticized our English translation of the Mass texts as clumsy, dull, and even sometimes inaccurate – certainly failing to capture the verve and grace of the original Latin, which of course can be appreciated only by those who know Latin. The answer is not returning to the Latin Mass – unless you all are fluent in Latin. The answer is, however, a better translation, which is in the process of being prepared. It may be ready any century now!

Meanwhile, I went back to the Latin text of this prayer. And here is what the English translation should be, if I were in charge of things. I think my rendition is a bit more faithful to the meaning of the original, and a little more engaging, I hope:

“O God, you have ordered us to listen to your beloved Son. So, help our spirits to be fed by your word in order that we may, with crystal-clear vision, rejoice in seeing your glory.”

On this second Sunday of Lent, every year we hear one of the accounts of the transfiguration of Jesus, and every year we hear that command of God the Father, “This is my beloved Son … listen to him.” Our Catholic tradition, building upon ancient Jewish tradition, has always seen a close connection between word and food. We can hunger for meaning, which can be conveyed only through words, just as much as we hunger for food. We can starve if our lives are devoid of meaning, just as much as we can starve without food. And we can suffer spiritual malnutrition if we fill ourselves with junk-words in exactly the same way that we can get fat and sick filling ourselves with junk food.

That is why attending to the life-giving words of Jesus, who not only speaks words of truth but is himself the Word-of-God-made-flesh, is so important. Catholics have often been accused of not being familiar with the Bible because the Catholic Church never encouraged reading the Bible. That’s partly true, but not totally. St. Jerome, way back in the fifth century, said that “Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ.” That was repeated many times down through the centuries, most significantly in the 1940’s by Pope Pius XII, and in the 1960’s by the Second Vatican Council. Even so, prior to the middle of the last century, the catechism rather than the Bible was often emphasized as the book for Catholics to know, and some of the grade-school teachers in my youth told their children not to read the Bible because they probably wouldn’t understand it, and misunderstanding it would be dangerous to their salvation.

The Second Vatican Council changed that, and even ordered that the treasures of Sacred Scripture be opened up in the Mass, so that any Catholic who came to Mass every Sunday would hear, in an orderly sequence, the most important parts of the Bible read over the course of three years. (Did you know that? We’ve been doing that since 1970 – about 35 years now. That means, if you have been coming Mass every Sunday since then, you’ve heard the major portion of the entire Bible at Mass more than eleven times!)

At the beginning of Lent we talk a lot about Lenten penance or Lenten practices to help us grow in our relationship with Christ. We know that this is a time for concentrating on prayer, fasting, and doing good works. One of the foundations for these practices has to be reading God’s word in the Bible, especially the New Testament. Prayer is never just a one-sided talking to God; prayer must always be a dialogue, in which God speaks first and we respond. How can we know what God is speaking to us unless we are attentive to his word where it is to be found – that’s right, in the Bible? Fasting is not just “doing without”; it’s more like cleaning house, creating a welcome for the presence of God to fill us. The word of God in Scripture is an important companion to our fasting – keeping us motivated and in touch with why we are doing it. And good works are always works of service done in union with the Christ who came “not to be served but to serve.” During Lent, get to know Christ more and more personally, and the only way to do that is let yourself be nourished by his word, day after day.

© 2005 Thomas Welbers