There were reports last November that some conferences of bishops, including that of England and Wales, had requested that the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei review the Good Friday petition for Jews which Benedict XVI composed and inserted into the 1962 Missale Romanum. It seems that this request was originally an initiative of the German bishops. Some wonder if the new prayer is in harmony with Vatican II’s document Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions. A Pontifical Commission, by the way, cannot change what a Pope does. Here is the 1962 Missale Romanum prayer, before Benedict XVI’s changes (my translation): “Let us also pray for the Jews: that our Lord and God take away the veil from their hearts; that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty eternal God, who also does not reject the Jews from Your mercy: graciously hear the prayers which we offer on behalf of the blindness of that people; so that once the light of Your Truth has been recognised, which is Christ, they may be rescued from their darkness.” Here is Benedict’s new prayer: “Let us also pray for the Jews: that our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all men. Almighty and eternal God, who wants that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Your Church, all Israel may be saved.” In older prayer, we prayed that the darkness, in the image of a veil, be taken from the hearts of the Jews, presumably to let in the light of Christ, light being a metaphor for the Truth. Christ is the Truth. In the newer prayer, we pray that God may illuminate, give light (again, Truth) to the hearts of the Jews. We Christians pray for illumination of our own darkness all the time! We regularly pray that we will be rescued from darkness, which is a metaphor for error, sin, the risk of the loss of salvation. All men are created by God to be saved and to be happy with Him in heaven. Anyone who is saved, by whatever path they walk, is saved solely, exclusively, only through the merits of Christ. Not all accept salvation. Many do. We pray that all will come to saving Truth.