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Andrea Madrigal's avatar

The most saddening part of reading this article is trying to read the old form of the Libera Nos prayer while unwillingly having the one you memorized at the Novus Ordo running loudly through your head. The unnecessary, mechanical wordiness of the New Rite is enough to make one cry. Oh, for the heavenly silence of the TLM!

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Peter Kwasniewski's avatar

For me, the solution has been to memorize the TLM prayers in Latin. It's true that it takes more work, but then there's no mixing up between the old and new.

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Andrea Madrigal's avatar

Hm... I don't think I had ever thought of that. Still, I'm afraid that if I did memorize the prayers, they would start running through my head just as the ones at the N.O. do, and it would all turn into just... words. The advantage here would be that these prayers are utterly gorgeous and would still be something of a mystery to me (not knowing Latin). I think I'm just a bit traumatized at this point.

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Peter Kwasniewski's avatar

I find that nothing heals trauma like ancient Latin prayers said slowly, with faith. The problem you're talking about doesn't happen with the traditional prayers.

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Andrea Madrigal's avatar

That’s a relief to hear. I’ll always wonder why English can seem so monotonous so easily, but Latin is always beautiful, especially when said with a reverent, balanced pace.

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