{"id":638,"date":"2011-12-09T17:26:39","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T22:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2011-12-09T17:26:39","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T22:26:39","slug":"learning-a-new-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/learning-a-new-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning a New Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I\u00a0said Mass for our school children for the holy day, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.\u00a0 As I always do, and especially with the new translations, I looked over the prayers before Mass.\u00a0 Or at least I thought I looked them over but later discoverded\u00a0I missed a word.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the Mass, we came to the Prayer over the Offerings and came upon a word I hadn’t noticed before Mass.\u00a0 I don’t know if I had ever seen the word before and I didn’t know how to pronounce it.\u00a0 To add to the mix, I spent seven years in speech therapy in elementary school.\u00a0 Generally I am ok but new words are a challenge for me.<\/p>\n

So I stumbled through the word as “pre-pre-ven-ve-ant.”\u00a0 That’s not how the word is really spelled but rather the way I stumbled through it.\u00a0 The word is prevenient<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After Mass, I made a point to go look the word up in the dictionary.\u00a0 I had another Mass to say later in the day and wanted to know how to pronounce the word.\u00a0 I also wondered what the correct meaning of the word is.<\/p>\n

Let me share the entirety of the prayer with you<\/p>\n

Graciously accept the saving sacrifice
\nwhich we offer you, O Lord,
\non the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
\nof the Blessed Virgin Mary,
\nand grant that, as we profess her,
\non account of your prevenient<\/strong> grace,
\nto be untouched by any stain of sin,
\nso, through her intercession,
\nwe may be delivered from all our faults.
\nThrough Christ Our Lord.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, let us take a look at the definition<\/a> of the word as found on www.infoplease.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1. coming before, antecedent
\n2. anticipatory<\/p>\n

While this solemnity is about the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the gospel we read <\/a>is the story of the Annunciation where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her she had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus.\u00a0 Mary says yes to the will of God.\u00a0 Because God transcends time, God already knew Mary would say yes, so in her own conception in her mother’s womb, Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin so that she would be worthy to carry Jesus in her womb.<\/p>\n

This is prevenient grace<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0In anticipation of Mary saying yes, God gave her the grace of being immaculately conceived before<\/em> she said yes.<\/p>\n

I believe a positive effect of the new translations is to make us think about the words we pray.\u00a0 This prayer certainly caused me to think about the word prevenient<\/em>.\u00a0 I took the initiative to look the word up in the dictionary.\u00a0 Learning that definition then led me to think about how Mary was immaculately conceived before<\/em> she said yes.\u00a0 God has a plan.\u00a0 God knows us better than we know ourselves.\u00a0 Let us always place our trust in God.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I\u00a0said Mass for our school children for the holy day, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.\u00a0 As I always do, and especially with the new translations, I looked over the prayers before Mass.\u00a0 Or at least I thought I looked them over but later discoverded\u00a0I missed a word.\u00a0 During …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Learning a New Word’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[57],"tags":[91,81,37],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}