"One" word makes a huge difference

God, forever and ever.

What a difference a word can make.

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has been directed to remove one word of the Mass. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), with the urging and permission of the Vatican[1], are correcting one word. Just one. What difference can one word make? Quite a bit, it turns out.

The word in question occurs during the conclusion to the opening prayer that we pray at the beginning of every Mass – that prayer is called the Collect. I think you will be familiar with its conclusion.

 Here is the original conclusion that we have been using since 2011:[2]

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

 Now, here is the corrected conclusion that we will be using now and into the future:

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.

 Can you spot the change?

This is the change: where the original conclusion reads “one God” the new conclusion, at the direction of the Vatican and the USCCB, now reads “God”. The word “one” has been removed.

Why the change? Why is this important?

The most direct reason why it is being changed is that the word “one” is not in the Latin version of the Roman Missal from which the English version is translated. No other languages have included the word “one” in their translation.

The more theological reason is that the word “one” changes the meaning of the conclusion.

The best way to see the meaning of this conclusion is to examine the new corrected version:

It is directed to the Father, as can be seen because of the phrase “your Son”. Look at this litany of praise of Jesus that we find in this conclusion to the Collect, expressing both beautifully and succinctly, who Jesus is to us:

•      Jesus is the one through whom we make our prayer to the Father.

•     Jesus is the one through whom our prayer will be realized/answered      

• Jesus is our Lord

•     Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah

• Jesus is the Father’s Son

•     Jesus lives and reigns with God the Father

•     Jesus lives and reigns in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit

•      Jesus is God, forever and ever.

•      Since the prayer is addressed to the Father, it is a prayer of thanksgiving to the Father for all that Jesus is.

This is a stunning meditation on the nature and identity of Jesus.

 When the word “one” is added to “God”, the prayer is suddenly and jarringly changed. The word “God” no longer refers to Jesus but to the whole Trinity. We have inharmoniously shifted from our praising Jesus with love and faith to a statement of Creed and a declaration of our belief about the Trinity. While the statement about “one God” is absolutely true, it is misplaced.

 So, that is the difference that a word can make. The correction and removal of the word “one” in the conclusion to the Collect restores the conclusion to its original poetic and lofty expression of our love for Jesus.

[1] The Office of the Vatican in charge of the English translation of the Roman Missal that we use at Mass is the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. They were responsible for initially keeping this word in use, and now are responsible for directing us to remove it. Technically, the word in question was used in the previous English translation and so it has been used since the 1970’s.

[2] This is the conclusion used when the Collect is addressed to the Father, which is most of the time. There are sometimes in which Jesus is mentioned in the prayer and sometimes when the Collect is address directly to Jesus. In these cases, a variation of this conclusion is used in which the same change is to be made.