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There are many Prefaces; this example is the Preface usually associated with Eucharistic Prayer II.
| Former: |
New: |
| Father, it is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ. He is the Word through whom you made the universe, the Saviour you sent to redeem us. By the power of the Holy Spirit he took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary |
It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, your Word through whom you made all things whom you sent as our Saviour and Redeemer, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. |
As previously mentioned, the new words ‘It is truly right and just’ echo the immediately preceding congregation’s response. The single word ‘Father’ has been replaced by the phrase ‘Father most holy’ – in keeping with the Latin. When this Preface was first translated, the translators avoided using ‘holy Father’ to address God, to prevent confusion with the Pope. As work on the Missal progressed, this seemed less important. Consequently addressing God as ‘holy Father’ has been added here, and remains, too, in other parts of the Missal.
The next change is to ‘you made all things’. The ‘all things’ sounds more clearly inclusive-of-everything than the rather general ‘the universe’. It also reflects the plural in the Latin and in the underlying Greek, and echoes John 1:3: ‘All things were made through him’ or ‘Through him all things came to be.’
The old version of this Preface puts Christ’s titles ‘Word’ and ‘Saviour’ on the same level, thus obscuring the difference between the eternal, transcendent generation of the Word and Christ’s mission as Saviour in time and space. The noun ‘Redeemer’, which comes from a Latin title for Jesus, is stronger than the infinitive ‘to redeem’.
| For our sake he opened his arms on the cross; he put an end to death and revealed the resurrection. In this he fulfilled your will and won for you a holy people. |
Fulfilling your will and gaining for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the Resurrection. |
There are a number of changes here. The old version, which ends ‘won for you a holy people’, gave the impression that the winning, or gaining, of God’s people was completed at the time of the Crucifixion, whereas the new word, ‘gaining’ – like the Latin – represents it as a process still continuing. The underlying text here is 1 Peter 2:9.
Next we come to ‘he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion’. The change from ‘arms’ to ‘hands’ comes from the Latin: extendit manus. The old version made no mention of Christ’s suffering on the Cross; again the new version depends on the Latin: cum pateretur. Then ‘so as to break the bonds of death’ replaces ‘put an end to death’ with a far more powerful image. Lastly, the translators have avoided repeating the word ‘reveal’ by replacing ‘revealed’ with ‘manifested’ |