This morning, I attended church at Saint James Episcopal for the first time in quite some time. My absence on previous Sabbaths had not been out of sloth, but for various unavoidable causes; it seemed wise, nonetheless, during the life changes, that I assure the congregation that my absence in the next few months did not imply any lack of devotion to the institution.
I was listening to the service, I reached a revelation about something that has irked me for a long time, and irked me more than the sudden onset of scratchy throat this morning right before the first hymn began. The church at which I grew up, Saint Mary the Virgin Episcopal, which is neither Catholic nor attached to its neighboring building, Saint Vincent de Paul, used the following text during Eucharist: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again". My current church, on the other hand (in addition to many other modifications of the liturgy), uses this: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ is with us all". I have been meaning for years to ask one of the clergy about this change, but I always forget; now, however, I think that I understand.
It seems to me that the change in the third phrase stems from the ignorance of the masses of grammatical distinction that are subtle yet useful and an attendant miscomprehension of the intended theology of this part of the liturgy. The first phrase is indisputable among Christians (unless you happen to be some sort of neo-Docetist
- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm ),
but the difficulty arises (pun intended) in the English speakers' comprehension of the second phrase: "Christ is risen". Modern English congregants doubtless consider this a simple past, even if the phrase uses the dreaded passive. A speaker of Romance tongue, however, might analyze this phrase differently by distinguishing between "Christ has risen" and "Christ is risen". The former is the description of a past action without any necessary inference about the present, but the latter is the description of a present state dependent on a past action. The distinction between these two concepts largely determines the choice of "avoir" ("to have") or "etre" ("to be") as the complementary verb with a composite perfect in French; even in Latin, where the form of the two concepts is identical, a careful writer who wishes to make the distinction would use distinct "primary sequence" or "secondary sequence" for the verbal forms which follow in the subordinate clause.
Since "Christ is risen" is a description of a present state dependent on a past action, the tripartite temporal symmetry of the statement remains, and past, present, and future each recieve a sentence which they can call their own. "Christ is risen" is a statement about the present, not the past; the risen Christ has present power. The elimination within the English language of the distinction between the "avoir" and "etre" forms has prevented the less grammatically aware congregants from understanding this distinction, and the text comes to lack a Christological statement about the present. I cannot fault anybody for finding this lack unsatisfactory, especially on this day of Pentecost, because the essence of the Christian faith, as I see it, is the not the hope of future salvation, but the presence of Christ in this world right now through the members of his body. The replacement of "Christ is risen" with "Christ is with us all" places the weight of two-thirds of the tripartite division of time (present and future) upon one-third of the weakened tricolon; that one-third, moreover, deprives the statement of its element of future hope, and introduces a participatory element that the first two sentences, as well as the original third, lack. The orignal statement was explicitly and solely Christ-centered, and the results of the statement for believers implicit.
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