Thinking I had to steel myself for the changes looming for the first Sunday of Advent was God’s joke on me, because the priest who presided over the Saturday evening Mass I just attended for the feast of Christ the King decided to go with the new translation one week early.
Glossy brochures in the pews clued us in with the new prayers and responses. Or perhaps I should say old prayers and responses. Certain words gave me flashbacks to my childhood: my First Communion class was one of the last years to receive the Eucharist in Latin. “Corpus Christi,” the priest said as he planted the Host on our waiting tongues, which my children now think of as a city in Texas. For a few moments during Mass tonight, the language made me feel like I was back in the Sixties. I could almost feel the bit of lace on my head, almost sense my mother’s frown at my faintest fidget. Nostalgia tinged my dismay.
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