LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”

Last night when I read today’s gospel I thought of the part of the Our Father where we pray  about temptations.

Jesus warns us about avoiding the sand traps in the game of life.

Jesus doesn’t give the message of a golf game, but he does say watch about from being trapped by drowsiness, carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life.

So we pray in the Our Father, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”

CHANGING THE TRANSLATION

In the last century or so - I’m not sure of the numbers - there has been a move on to change that translation.

They could have made that move, but they didn’t.

The Our Father would be one of the first things that would be translated into a language of folks becoming Christian - so we have in the Our Father ancient words like “art”  instead of are - as in “are in  heaven.’

So too the ancient words of “Hallowed”,  “Thy” and “Trespassers”.

But there is another movement to change the words “Lead us not into temptation” - into something different.

TOMORROW

So in Rome, Italy, tomorrow there is a new translation of that part of the Our Father. It will go like this in Italian, “Do not abandon us into temptation.”

Tomorrow in French Canada the new translation for  will be, "Do not let us enter into temptation."

Pope Francis lead the way by saying that, “Lead us not into temptation” implies that God does that.  Pope Francis said that is flawed. God is not the source of temptation.

We are. Others are. Not God.

That translation goes back to St. Jerome who translated the Our Father from the Greek into Latin with these words “ne nos inducas in tentationem”

Alain Gignac, director of the University of Montreal's Institute of Religious Studies, explained that the phrase, found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, can be translated literally by "let us not go in the direction of temptation."

Looking at today’s first reading - the call would be to walk where there is life giving water - where we can pick and eat good fruit - instead of walking into temptations.

CONCLUSION

At the Bishops Meeting in Baltimore two weeks back they were supposed to address a major redoing of the translation of the whole Mass. I don’t know if they did that - with the great interruption of the problems with sexual abuse cases and situations.

I’m glad - that this is still pending - because many priests and liturgists - were dissatisfied with the present translation which was made to be as close to the Latin as possible - especially at the urging of John Paul II.