The new Roman Missal

From what I've read about this new missal, it appears that the Roman Church has decided to modify the aggiornamento decreed by Pope John XXIII, bringing translations back to faithful equivalents of the ancient texts. I think this is good. But people being what they are, myself included, we get used to whatever the Church has set up for us, and we don't like changes.

In my local Greek parish, in the short term of only about three or four years we have 'evolved' away from a standard English text of the liturgy and prayers which we had used for about twenty years, but not by means of a single change, but paced out over several. We're now on yet another version of the Symbol of Nicaea in English, which matches the Roman one ('consubstantial' now replacing 'of one essence with'), after having used a special translation that came on laminated cards, that was different from the one I learned by heart two decades before. Personally, this is too much for me, and I rarely participate in English anymore, but sing and pray in the unchanging Greek, since I understand it. 'Pistevo eis ena Theon...' Yep, that's me.

It is interesting, in conclusion, to see that the Roman Church is beginning to get its anchors restored, but I will miss hearing some of those Vatican II innovations, ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,’ which came over into the Episcopal Church's revised liturgies. They were, after all, mostly biblical, and they seemed to follow the spirit of the New Testament.

Where we are heading by these 'restorations' is, I hope, not back into a formalised religious spirit, but one where people begin to understand that worship is meant to be divine, man meeting God on His terms, not on ours.

And will the Roman Church at last reorient itself back to the Source, to the East, with priests facing the same direction as the people? After all, the Church is a Ship, not a landing party, and we're on our way Home, we're not there yet.