Dear All,
You will recognise the words in the subject of this email:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom 8:26-27)Just as we looked at Jesus in terms of translation some weeks back, now that we are on the eve of Pentecost it is appropriate to turn to the Holy Spirit in this vein too. But where to start? Maybe from the above reference to the Holy Spirit as the ‘translator’ before the Father of what is often inexpressible by us? Or by thinking of the Holy Spirit as the power of the triune God ministering in our hearts through translation? Or maybe, let’s just work with a few prepositions to begin with: it is interesting that there are relatively few prayers in the Christian-Catholic tradition TO the Holy Spirit (of course there is the Veni Creator, and the Adsumus used before major ecclesial meetings), because we usually pray THROUGH the Holy Spirit, as is very much implied in Rom 8:26-27.
But I would like to bring this down to something practical by suggesting you look at three individuals who, in recent times, have been described as “Translators OF the Holy Spirit”.
https://setonshrine.org/translators-of-the-holy-spirit-st-elizabeth-ann-seton-and-les-murray/
The first two are St Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American (U.S.A.) Saint, canonised by St Paul VI in 1975, and Les Murray, an Australian poet unofficially recognised as Australia's Poet Laureate, widely recognised as one of the finest poets of the English language. He died in 2019. Read the article that the link above takes you to. You will find it most interesting. I had the good fortune to share a ‘literary’ meal with Les Murray and another friend some years ago and was impressed. His cause for canonisation may or may not be introduced, who knows... the Holy Spirit I guess! Both Seton and Murray were translators - she was fluent in French and Latin and translated the works of St Francis de Sales, among others. He worked as a foreign language translator (he read more than 20 languages) at the Australian National University before becoming a full-time poet. Both were converts to Catholicism: Seton from the Episcopalians, Murray from Presbyterianism. And, as the above article says, “In poetry and prose, they strove to communicate God’s intimacy with humankind.”
Lessons for us?
1. Here is one from St Elizabeth Ann Seton: She says that she translated the lives of the Saints because they compelled her to live for Christ. Hopefully our work as Salesian translators does that too (I am thinking immediately of the effect that translating the eleven biographies of outstanding early Salesians for Salesian Sources 2 had on me, but also translating the life of Nino Baglieri - see further on).
2. Here is one from Les Murray: he dedicated all his books (he even wrote novels in verse form!) ‘To the glory of God’. And hopefully that is what our work is about too. “You have to pray with a whole heart, says my inner man to me” a character in his verse-novel ‘Fredy Neptune’ says. As Salesian translators, then, two important points: what we do is for the glory of God. Our work is prayer. Question: I wonder if the Salesian Family also prays FOR its translators?
3. Here is one from both of them: they were drawn to Catholicism by the Eucharist. While searching for faith, after her husband's death, Elizabeth Seton visited Rome. She was attracted by the faith of the ordinary people and marvelled at the Blessed Sacrament present in Catholic churches. Les Murray, too, was drawn by this thought of ‘presence’ and his major collection of poems, ‘Translations from the natural world’ has been described as almost sacramental in his attempt to give voice to places and animals of mute nature as they revealed God’s incarnational presence. He calls the Eucharist ‘food that solves the world’. “I was fascinated by the idea of the Eucharist. It absolutely wowed me. Anybody who’s interested in imagery has to be interested in that type of fusion, metaphor taken all the way to identity.” Les Murray’s sense of the power of the Eucharist was physical and immediate. So - Eucharist as translation? Translation as a Eucharistic act? Translation as a form of remembrance in the Spirit? Can we see it in those ways?
4. And perhaps the most obvious lesson of all is the simple question: are we, too, translators of the Spirit? Let me give you a Salesian example. The words are not mine. They come from a recent email exchange with Fr Pascual Chávez on his return from the ceremonies accompanying the closure of the diocesan inquiry for the cause of Servant of God Nino Baglieri in Modica, Sicily: ...Ma quando lo Spirito Santo discese su di lui, mentre un gruppo del rinnovamento nello Spirito, pregava su di lui, restò completamente trasformato fino a diventare un mistico di grande altezza spirituale. La lettura del suo testamento spirituale mi lasciò profondamente commosso. Scrisse con la bocca più di 10,000 lettere e tre libri, non avendo fatto più della quinta elementare. Solo lo Spirito Santo può fare queste trasformazioni! (But when the Holy Spirit came down upon him while a Renewal in the Spirit group was praying over him, he was completely transformed to the point where he became a mystic of the highest spiritual degree. Reading his spiritual testament left me deeply moved. With his mouth he wrote 10,000 letters and three books, despite not having gone beyond Grade 5 elementary. Only the Holy Spirit can achieve these transformations!)
So Nino is the third individual who can inspire translators. Not that he spoke any other ‘human languages’ than his native Italian and local dialect, but language itself,under the influence of the Holy Spirit, became a channel of divine communication, not just an instance of human communication.
https://www.bosco.link/side_right/84463
And the Best Practice, naturally, is some prayers to the Holy Spirit that might suit a translator.
Also attached... the RM's message for the next edition of the Bollettino Salesiano.
And have you noted the most recent publication of the YM Sector called Hidden Diamonds? Very interesting approach they have taken: 100 Dreams of young people in any of four languages (Italian, English, Spanish, French), no attempt to translate them; they appear in the language the young person provided them in.