As a church organist I was looking at a setting of the Lord’s Prayer when I came across music titled “Embolism.”

I swore my LPN mother had used that word before in a distinctly medical context!

Sure enough, an embolism (from the Greek “em” meaning into and “ballein,” to throw or to put) is the death of cells that can’t be nourished by blocked blood; the blockage itself, normally a blood clot but also possibly air, fat, or even amniotic fluid, is an “embolus.”

The Embolism is the prayer that separates the Lord’s Prayer proper from the “Doxology” which non-Catholic Christians add directly to it.

Liturgical historian Father Paul Turner mentions that early Christians likely added the Doxology “to give the Our Father a resounding conclusion.”

Some early manuscripts of St. Matthew’s Gospel and the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) also include it.

Part of the Embolism appears in liturgical texts from the sixth or seventh century. Like most of the current Order of Mass (2011), the current text is a retranslation of the sweeping 1970 Order of Mass authorized by Pope Saint Paul VI.

Increasingly few of us remember the Mass prior to 1970, including a five-year interim version with both substantial use of Latin and congregational responses.

My translation of the Embolism found in the 1962 Missal: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from all evils, past, present, and future: and by the intercession of the blessed and glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and Andrew, and of all the Saints, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of Your mercy, we may be always free from sin, and safe from all distress, through the same Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Lord.”

Catholics recognize the current text, excluding everything from “past, present, and future” to “of all the Saints.”

The latter and more already appear by name in the first Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon, so their omission in the Embolism are understandable to me.

Had I been alive and on the translation team, I would have advocated for “past, present, and future.” Something about the explicit mention of the dimensions of time reminds me that I have not always intended God’s Will in the past, and I won’t likely intend it in every future moment.

While God certainly does not favor sinful choices, He allows even these for His glory and for human good, above all the opportunity to repent.

While the present becomes the future at the same rate for us all, outside of our more impatient moments, retrospect renders swift the passage of time.

A regular reminder of God’s power at work in that passage is consoling. It is good to seek that power to persevere as our time unfolds.

For everything omitted from the pre-1970 Embolism, there was one insertion: Titus 2:13, which locates our “joyful hope” in Jesus’ second coming. The New Testament reading for Christmas Midnight Mass appropriately includes that very passage.

The first coming in Bethlehem and the second coming at the end of time sandwich the manifold “third” coming where Jesus meets us in Scriptures, Sacraments, and Society. From none of these ought we flee.

The very structure of the Embolism, to me, appears to form a “chiasm” with the Our Father. Derived from the Greek letter chi (X), this term means a reversal of the preceding material to form a kind of mirror image.

Think about it: the Embolism begins with the priest picking up the tag line of the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil.”

It cites the peace, mercy, freedom, and safety that come with deliverance from temptation, forgiveness of sins, and God’s daily provision (“bread”). It finally points us to the God whose name, kingdom, and will we aim to proclaim, here and hereafter.

All of it rouses Christian hearts to the word of praise (Doxology) that we offer in our worship.