Odd day-um kwee lay-ti-fee-cot you-ven-too-tem may-ahm.
When – as a ten year old – I was training to become an altar boy, those sounds were the phonetic translation of the Latin response altar boys had to make to the opening prayer of the priest – beginning the Latin Mass as it was celebrated in 1938. The actual Latin was Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. In like manner all the Latin responses we had to learn were phonetically spelled out under the Latin words so that even though we didn’t understand what we were saying we could pronounce it correctly.
That opening verse was from Psalm 42 of the Hebrew Bible. At my age my main concern was not to comprehend what I was saying but to recite its Latin correctly so as not to aggravate the celebrant that early in the Mass (and that early in the morning) and become unnerved enough to do something else stupid like drop the big Mass Book while transferring it in a wobbly way from one side of the altar to the other or pouring from the wine cruet when the priest ritually presented his fingers to be washed, or – catastrophe of catastrophes – to allow a host at communion time to fall to the floor instead of catching it on the communion plate . . . sirens and alarm bells going off within the halls of the Vatican to say nothing of Heaven itself!
But maybe it was just as well that I didn’t understand the verses the priest and I were alternately reciting, which in part and in English went: Vindicate me, O God, take my part against pitiless men; save me from a cruel and cunning foe. / You, O God, are my strength: why have you forsaken me? / Why do I have to go on in sorrow, with enemies harassing me / . . . Why has my courage failed and my spirit become disconsolate? After all, I was only ten years old! The only verse that made sense to me was the one that fit my actual situation as Mass began: And I will go up to God’s altar, to God who has gladdened the days of my youth.
There’s a parable to be found in that childhood experience. How much of my grounding in my religion, in the Gospel, in the Hebrew Testament, in St. Paul’s Letters (for instance) was – metaphorically speaking – merely phonetic – getting the sounds right, answering the catechism questions as printed on the page, maintaining observances correctly and therefore (possibly) impersonally – like getting to Mass on Sunday. In other words, how much of my faith had been thoughtless, a matter of reflexes – like that of the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel? She was a devout Samaritan, drawing routinely from the stagnant surface of her tradition, symbolized by the water in Jacob’s Well, correct enough to resist the invitation of a thirsty and alien Jesus to offer him a drink. Jesus then quietly reminded her of how shallow her faith was, how such rote religion even by the bucketful remained minimal, indeed wearisome to retain. He challenged her to get to know the depths of his Gospel which could bring out the depths of her own mind and heart, turning her into a wellspring of living, fresh, spontaneously flowing water – of wisdom, faith, hope, love, and peace.
Since I was ten years old I’ve been met by this same Jesus by way of one experience after another, not the least being Vatican II – and not the least being that boyhood phonetic introduction to the language and drama of the Mass that launched me sooner or later into a progressively deeper appreciation of my life, of the Church and the meaning of the whole of history itself. Indeed, right now! while recalling these things, I feel like a ten year old again and find I can’t resist responding once more to the distant echo of my 1938 pastor’s opening verse I will go up to the altar of God with my own Odd day-um kwee lay-ti-fee-cot you-ven-too-tem may-ahm.