Eucharistic Meditations - Missal

The Sacramentary or Missal used at Eucharist is unfamiliar to most Christians. Originally, all prayers at the Eucharist and elsewhere were made spontaneously straight from the heart: direct, personal, fervent and truly expressive of one's faith. In fact, all true prayer reflects what a person deeply believes. The spread of erroneous teachings and practices led to the use of correctly pre-fabricated prayers at Eucharist, with no deviation permitted. Carefully and expertly crafted, these effectively eliminated doctrinal errors, but also stifled the spirit of spontaneity and made the Liturgy stilted and impersonal.

The Church has always had the onerous task of delicately balancing doctrinal correctness with spontaneity and inner freedom. In choosing to emphasize correct doctrine, the Church has paid a huge price in terms of personal participation in the Liturgy. Besides, language plays a decisive role in correct expression. We know what enormous difficulties we encounter when translating thought patterns from one language to another. And certainly there is no language that can outdo Latin in its precision and conciseness of expression.

While set formulae are very helpful, they also impose severe restrictions on a human praying community. The dynamics of the liturgy require that the assembly first listen to God's Word revealing his outstanding qualities. Now since God's ways are not our ways, when a person truly understands something of God's unbelievable love, he cannot but exclaim: 'Wow! I never imagined Lord, that you are so gracious in your love for us sinners!' Thus moved, the prayer that wells up would naturally be spontaneous and ebullient. Carried away by his emotions, his expressions could at times be theologically exaggerated or imprecise. While there is the ever-present danger that this would lead to faulty expression, pre-set crisp, theologically nuanced phrases generally stifle the spirit of childlike conversation with our Father!

Emotional language is always somewhat poetic and needs to be understood with a certain amount of empathy and love. How would God our loving Father understand these expressions even when they are somewhat exaggerated and imprecise? Would he not read our hearts - and even if we were wrong, would he not bring us to the right path in due time? Official prayer in common must necessarily be short and restrained; it cannot meet the needs of every person in the assembly. But it should lead and inspire each one to develop the key points in his own personal prayer made silently during the Liturgy or outside.

The practice of using the Missal rigidly has brought about the loss of all spontaneity in official prayer among Roman Catholics. While guidance and orthodoxy are important, we could encourage spontaneity with moderation and due caution - at least in unofficial prayer. Once people are accustomed to expressing themselves correctly in unofficial situations, they would find it a lot easier to venture into more personal prayers which build on what is stipulated, without casting them aside totally. This would help people to learn how to pray in a more correct, theological and yet personal manner.