IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK TO RE-RITUALIZE THE MODERN MASS WITH THE SAME SIGN LANGUAGE AS THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS HAS?

The video above shows a woman signing the Eucharistic Prayer (#3) as the priest prays it. I am not sure this is an actual Mass or not, or a simulation for “signing” purposes. Please note the consecration of the bread. The bread isn’t shown. But please note the ritualization of language through the person who is signing. I would have preferred the priest doing this rather than someone to his side. 

None the less, this video reminds me how much more “ritualized” the TLM is compared to the Modern Mass. It had/has its own sign language. And it recalled for me how I felt as a young person as changes gradually unfolded in the liturgy between 1965 and 1969. 

What struck me as a more deritualized form of the Mass unfolded, is how blah the Mass became visually with a barrage of words hurled at us and no real ritualization of those words by the use of the Church’s “sign language.” 

The Introductory Rite is a poster child for this “blahness.” The prayers at the foot of the altar, either quietly overlaid with the Introit in a Sung Mass or spoken aloud in a Low Mass, had movement which was sign language, beginning at the foot of the altar, with profound bows, strikes of the breast, signs of the Cross and then upwards to the altar for the Introit, Kyrie and collect and the use of the altar’s center and Epistle side. It was/is like a dance.

In the Modern Mass, the priest goes to the Chair, blabs on in a secular way about the theme of the Mass or those who are at Mass and then uses various options for the Penitential Act, with no movement or sign language and then after the Collect, we all sit. Constant words, no sign language, no ritualizing of the ritual. 

I will use one more example, although there are many more that can be used, the Eucharistic Prayer.

What I recall most vividly was the first Sunday our pastor faced the congregation for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It was still the Tridentine Mass and the ritualized Roman Canon was still in Latin and low voice, but because he was facing us, we could hear a lot of the canon in his low voice Latin. 

But what really struck this 12 year old was all the ritual and sign language of the TLM’s Roman Canon’s ritualized praying of the Canon. The multiple signs of the cross, multiple genuflections, the bowing, the making of the Sign of the Cross with both the Host and the Chalice prior to the priest’s Communion. The holding the paten sideways prior to the fraction rite, the kissing of it, the multiple signs of the Cross with the Host over the purificator and Chalice at the Per Ipsum. I could see all of that and it kept that 12 year old’s attention.

But by 1968, all that ritualization of the Canon, now called one of the Eucharistic Prayers was canceled and all you got were words from the priest facing you, no rich array of ritualizing those words. 

It was boring and I lost attention quite quickly by 1968-70, age 15 to 17.

SAD—BRING BACK THE RITUALIZED MASS’S RITUAL!