I wonder how many priests have hit MR3 fatigue by post-Communion. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but rarely is a priest referring to the Missal for the final formula of the Mass. Most seem to be on autopilot, and of Pope Benedict’s newly-crafted bits, I heard them from one priest on one weekend. No more.
Do you have a favorite of these new texts? My thought is that these are among the few bright spots in the innovations in the English MR3. The choices are:
- Go forth, the Mass is ended.
- Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.
- Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.
- Go in peace.
I’m still hearing, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord (and one another).” But that’s not even an option. What about your parish?
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Our deacon is pretty consistent with “Go forth, the Mass is ended;” our pastor uses “Go in peace.”
Personally, I like “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life,” which I heard at the parish we visited Christmas morning.
Go in peace.
Please.
For many years it’s been the custom in my parish, on the Sundays of the Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter seasons, to sing the blessing and dismissal from Michael Joncas’ “God of Light Be Praised.” The blessing contains seasonally appropriate material. It’s music that my parish hungers for when we’re in Ordinary Time and we’ve kept it.
All three of our deacons use the new formulas for dismissal. I like the the two middle ones; “Go in peace” always seems too curt and the assembly always hesitates on that one.
I like “Go forth and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” It does seem that fatigue has set in by time the mass has ended!
Even though I began introducing the congregations responses a couple of weeks before Advent, my mixed congregation, here in Nagoya, Japan, of ex-pats and speakers of English as a second language, still have more than enough trouble staying on the same page during the course of the Eucharist. Whether it is fatigue from all those latinate sentences with their multiple sub-clauses, by the time we arrive at the Dismissal, I need to pause, make an effort to open the right page of the Roman Missal, make a choice of which to use, proclaim it with as much conviction as possible and hope for a response. So unfamiliar are three of the four options available that silence or a few mumbling uncertainly, “Thanks be to God”, seems the best we can manage at the moment. This is going to be a looong process. Hopefully one and all stay the distance.
I’m into the “Go forth, the Mass is ended.” It seems like each priest and deacon has their own favorite, which doesn’t help with the people learning when to respond. IMHO the Concluding Rite is the section of the English Mass with the the worst translation of the people’s parts. They do not lend themselves to getting the people to respond.
In our parish every Sunday so far we’ve had:
Priest (Consulting the Big Book) Go forth the Mass is ended.
Some Parishioners (Consulting their pew cards) Thanks be to God.
Further to my previous comment, while reading Foley et alia(ed) A Commentary on the Order of Mass of the Roman Missal, (for all interested in matters liturgical a must for your reading list), I had reason to visit the website www,liturgia.it. There I also checked out the Dismissals in Italian; during a brief visit Rome last year I noted they all finished with “Andate in pace”, for example:
Glorificate il Signore con la vostra vita. Andate in pace.
or
Nel nome del Signore, andate in pace.
If Vox Clara/ICEL had followed the example of Italy where the ending is consistent the Dismissal might go a little more smoothly. The Italian also strikes me as more memorable.
We sing “Thanks be to G-d’ after “Go in Peace.” The Assembly has no problem responding in song.