MERGED: No more tropes for Agnus Dei

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fnr said:
The liturgy is the center of our faith life and at the center of the liturgy is the Eucharist.

This change to the Agnes Dei is not about correcting doctrinal error or faith malformation through liturgical error. It’s simply about one thing: obedience.
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The first of these is the reason for the change.

When is the Agnus Dei? Right before we receive the Eucharist.

What it the Eucharist? Christ as He gave himself in sacrifice.

The words of the Agnus Dei bring us into the moment of Mass as a sacrifice.

The replacement words often heard in those tropes: Prince of Peace, Root of Jesse’s tree, Light of the World, etc. are all doctrinal truths but inconsistent with the reality of that moment in the Liturgy. So, they **are **malforming the faith by blurring the message of the Liturgy and de-emphasizing the sacrifical nature of the Mass.

Yes, this latest directive is a call to obedience. But it shouldn’t have been necessary. Our chief liturgists (the Bishops) should have known this all along and cut off those who tried to play with the liturgy and confuse the faithful (ie OCP and their kin).
 
Corki said:
The first of these is the reason for the change.

When is the Agnus Dei? Right before we receive the Eucharist.

What it the Eucharist? Christ as He gave himself in sacrifice.

The words of the Agnus Dei bring us into the moment of Mass as a sacrifice.

The replacement words often heard in those tropes: Prince of Peace, Root of Jesse’s tree, Light of the World, etc. are all doctrinal truths but inconsistent with the reality of that moment in the Liturgy. So, they **are **malforming the faith by blurring the message of the Liturgy and de-emphasizing the sacrifical nature of the Mass.

Yes, this latest directive is a call to obedience. But it shouldn’t have been necessary. Our chief liturgists (the Bishops) should have known this all along and cut off those who tried to play with the liturgy and confuse the faithful (ie OCP and their kin).
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OK, now I’ll argue from reasoning, though my “passion” for a truly “organic” celebration (as set forth in Sacrosanctum Concilium) of the Eucharist and the liturgy is the primary basis for my critique.

Yes, the Mass is a sacrifice, though the new “Lamb of God”-only mandate focuses exclusively on the Passover (Paschal) interpretation of the Eucharist. Biblically, that shows up as the “new covenant” language in 1 Corinthians 11:25, Mark 14:24, Matthew 26:26-28, and Luke 22:19-20. Yet John 6:31-35, which we just heard in the Sunday readings of the Gospel a few weeks back, emphasizes the Exodus linkages of the Eucharist. So to say that the Eucharist is exclusively Paschal is to constrain our interpretation of Christ’s giving of his body and blood more narrowly than the range we have in scripture. The Johannine Eucharistic language (“bread of life,” “living bread,” ") is distinct from the Pauline and Synoptic language.

As a trope, “Prince of Peace” might be outside the Biblical basis of the Eucharist (though I might generously suggest that its use in Isaiah 9:6 as the foretelling of Christ might also be relevant as it is Christ’s sacrifice that is the center of the Eucharist). Others such as “light of peace” or “word of God” might also be outside the Biblical basis for the Eucharist. However, the notion that we need to keep Christological concepts outside the Agnus Dei is odd to me. Personally, I find “light of peace” a little too far removed from the sacrifice theme, however. “Word of God” is not just a reference to scripture but to Christ himself (in the Johannine tradition). That was suggested in the second reading from this Sunday (from Hebrews), and its use in the Agnus Dei would have been a nice follow-up to the reading that the Word of God is sharper than a sword, penetrating between soul and spirit, bone and marrow. Now if THAT didn’t set hearts on fire for the Eucharist…

In summary, the notion that we should focus exclusively on the Paschal nature of the Eucharist, when the Johannine Biblical texts do not themselves mention it, is to take a reductionist (or fundamentalist) view of the Eucharist that doesn’t square with the diversity of Biblical texts. The Johannine langugage simply doesn’t tell us to focus on the Paschal nature of the Eucharist, unlike the Synoptic and Pauline Eucharistic verses.

So the way I see it, we now have a mandate that causes us to omit from the Agnus Dei at least one legitimate and Biblically-based way of describing the Eucharist.
 
fnr said:
So the way I see it, we now have a mandate that causes us to omit from the Agnus Dei at least one legitimate and Biblically-based way of describing the Eucharist.
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For pete’s sake, it’s not a mandate causing us to omit anything. They are simply telling us to do what was in the books all along. They never should have been added in the first place.
 
fnr said:
OK, now I’ll argue from reasoning, though my “passion” for a truly “organic” celebration (as set forth in Sacrosanctum Concilium) of the Eucharist and the liturgy is the primary basis for my critique.

Yes, the Mass is a sacrifice, though the new “Lamb of God”-only mandate focuses exclusively on the Passover (Paschal) interpretation of the Eucharist. Biblically, that shows up as the “new covenant” language in 1 Corinthians 11:25, Mark 14:24, Matthew 26:26-28, and Luke 22:19-20. Yet John 6:31-35, which we just heard in the Sunday readings of the Gospel a few weeks back, emphasizes the Exodus linkages of the Eucharist. So to say that the Eucharist is exclusively Paschal is to constrain our interpretation of Christ’s giving of his body and blood more narrowly than the range we have in scripture. The Johannine Eucharistic language (“bread of life,” “living bread,” ") is distinct from the Pauline and Synoptic language.

As a trope, “Prince of Peace” might be outside the Biblical basis of the Eucharist (though I might generously suggest that its use in Isaiah 9:6 as the foretelling of Christ might also be relevant as it is Christ’s sacrifice that is the center of the Eucharist). Others such as “light of peace” or “word of God” might also be outside the Biblical basis for the Eucharist. However, the notion that we need to keep Christological concepts outside the Agnus Dei is odd to me. Personally, I find “light of peace” a little too far removed from the sacrifice theme, however. “Word of God” is not just a reference to scripture but to Christ himself (in the Johannine tradition). That was suggested in the second reading from this Sunday (from Hebrews), and its use in the Agnus Dei would have been a nice follow-up to the reading that the Word of God is sharper than a sword, penetrating between soul and spirit, bone and marrow. Now if THAT didn’t set hearts on fire for the Eucharist…

In summary, the notion that we should focus exclusively on the Paschal nature of the Eucharist, when the Johannine Biblical texts do not themselves mention it, is to take a reductionist (or fundamentalist) view of the Eucharist that doesn’t square with the diversity of Biblical texts. The Johannine langugage simply doesn’t tell us to focus on the Paschal nature of the Eucharist, unlike the Synoptic and Pauline Eucharistic verses.

So the way I see it, we now have a mandate that causes us to omit from the Agnus Dei at least one legitimate and Biblically-based way of describing the Eucharist.
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The problem with your reasoning is that the Agnus Dei is the ONLY prayer in the Liturgy of the Eucharist that focuses primarily on the Eucharist as a Sacrifice. You can’t look at that prayer alone but at it’s place in the entirety of the Mass. The Lord’s prayer, which precedes it by minutes, focuses on the food of life aspect and the sign of peace focuses on our community of believers. To eliminate the sacrificial tone of the Agnus Dei prayer is to put the whole Mass out of balance. Eliminating that is reductionist. Keeping it is to keep the fullness of the message.
 
YoungTradCath said:
praytellblog.com/index.php/2012/10/04/no-more-agnus-dei-tropes/

“In response to a request from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the USCCB Administrative Committee adopted a change on September 12, 2012 to the U.S. Bishops’ 2007 guidelines on liturgical music, Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship. Number 188 of the document has been altered to remove any further permission for the use of Christological tropes or other adaptations to the text of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).”
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Thank you
 
rfournier103 said:
So… are we on our way back to the Latin Mass?
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No, the Bishops, in no way, mandated that the text used be the Latin one.

Rather, they are informing the pastors that the texts used for the Mass must be the one promulgated and approved by Rome.

Nothing wrong with that in the least.
 
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