Retranslating the Lord’s Prayer: Supersubstantial

The straw man claims that the desire to offer a better translation of the Lord’s Prayer is an affliction of tinkeritis, and that we’ve been just fine with the translation of “daily bread” for a long time.

Father George: “But in the inspired Greek of the Sacred Scriptures…”

And that’s as far as I get. I’m interrupted with a barrage of straw man verbiage insisting that the Scriptures are imprecise and we don’t know what they mean and so we should just be content with “daily bread.”

But I continue: “In Greek it’s ἐπιούσιον, “supersubstantial”, or, in its contextualized morphology in Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate: supersubstantialem. It’s a unique word, so much so that Saint Jerome wanted this for his Latin Vulgate so as to provide precision.

The straw man crowd are then angry with Saint Jerome. The straw man says that Saint Jerome has no right to be faithful to the Holy Spirit’s provision of the inspired text, with the Holy Spirit wanting to point us to the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Most Holy Eucharist, Jesus, coming to us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Eucharist is not bread at all, not even daily bread, but, supersubstantially, the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus.

So why not say, fully:

• Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον
• Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie
• Give us today our Supersubstantial Bread

Just guessing here, but if that were to be what all the Catholic translations presented in whatever language right around the world, I’d say there would be massive conversions of non-Catholic Christians to the fullness of faith in the Catholic Church. I mean, all the non-Catholics would be asking Catholics about this, and it doesn’t matter what Catholics would say, the non-Catholics at this point would have studied up and they’ll say the truth of the Eucharist, and they’ll convert, and they will be the ones converting the dumbed down Catholics who didn’t know their faith all these decades.

What are the stats now, something like 70% or 80% or 90% of Catholics don’t believe in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We’re in a very bad state, very dark. Who talks about Jesus? Pretty much not even one.

I think we need to do something. Just my opinion, but this more precise translation, thanks to Saint Jerome, is something that would not at all disturb the piety of Christ’s faithful, but, on the contrary, would instantly have those of the Lord’s Little Flock rejoice, jumping for joy and crying out in thanksgiving: “Finally! Thanks be to God!” And who cares what the straw man says? The straw man will be busy in being evangelized in the Truth by all the new converts, who, in the ferocity of their new love for the fullness of the faith will have no tolerance for half-measures and ambiguous language.

We will have to tear down all the horrible-architecture “gathering spaces” and build huge churches as the whole world becomes Catholic.

The gates of hell shall not prevail. Christ Jesus, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception, has conquered.