top of page

Acerca de

The New Translation & Choosing Your Missal

Father Edmund

27th October 2024

What is the New Lectionary?
The new translation of the sacred Scriptures that we hear read at Mass becomes effective from the first Sunday of Advent, that is, Sunday 1 December. From that time, the translation will be different to the one we have been familiar with for the last fi ve decades and so our hand Missals containing the readings and also our Lectionaries have to be replaced.

Sunday Weekly Mass Reading Sheets
The Lectionaries have already arrived, as I have shared elsewhere in the Parish Newsletter, but what is important now to consider is the replacement of your own Missals and the weekly Sunday Mass reading sheets that we have made available previously. The company that produced the Sunday Mass reading sheets for us has not, as yet, provided an update and there may be copyright issues over the reproduction of the Sunday Mass reading texts.

An Opportunity
This transition from one translation to the new translation might present an opportunity for you to consider purchasing your own Missal for your own reference and prayer at Mass. It would contain not only the Mass readings but also the texts of the Order of Mass as well as the particular prayers and the text of the Eucharistic Prayer, that you could then follow with the priest as he prays it in our behalf.

People’s Edition of the Sunday Missal
There are versions of the Sunday Missal that you may wish to purchase yourselves. The Catholic Truth Society produces the CTS New Sunday Missal People’s Edition priced at £19.95. Pauline Books offer a Sunday Missal at £18.99 and one at £24.99, the difference in cost being the choice of hardback, leather, or hard paper binding.

An Alternative
An alternative Missal - or a Missal ad experimentum before you might want to invest in your own Sunday Missal is the CTS Sunday Missal Paperback for £9.95 which contains all the readings but for just one year cycle only from the beginning of Advent, 2024 to the feast of Christ the King, 2025. I wonder whether it might be prudent, at this stage, with the new readings, for me to consider purchasing - in the absence of Mass sheets being available - say 200 of these Missals for use in Church at Mass, given that we will all be together in one Church for the months of Winter, and then, depending on how these are helpful, we might consider a bulk order of the complete Sunday Missals - perhaps one of the publishers might give the parish even a small discount for a larger order? It would seem uneconomical to buy a temporary Missal for £9.95 when a full version would be c.£18-20.

Feedback
If you have any thoughts on this, let me know. I think it would be good for as many parishioners as possible to have access to and use of their own Missal, even if it is the 12 month version. Perhaps we might see this new translation as a chance to invest in a worthy prayer book for ourselves: to have in our hands at Sunday Mass the Word of God and the prayers of the Mass.

bottom of page