What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 4th Sunday of Advent

Some feedback. MK of Lake View, NY writes concerning my claim in WDPTRS of 29 November last about the origin of the term “secret” which formerly identified the oratio super oblata (the so-called “prayer over the gifts”) in WDPTRS of 29 November last:

It is true that the in the traditional Mass the priest says the Secret quietly. However, the term Secret doesn’t refer to this. The word comes from the Latin secernere meaning to separate, set apart. It refers to the offerings which have been set apart for the celebration of the Mass.

I am always grateful to those who write with comments of any kind. Some folks have kindly written some excellent points and corrected my errors. This time, however, I beg to differ with MK. In Joseph A. Jungmann’s magisterial book The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, the history and nature of the so-called “Secret” prayer is explored in depth. Jungmann writes (p. 90):

The first point to clear up is the puzzling problem of how the oratio super oblata came to be said silently. The earliest evidence of the quiet recitation of this prayer appears in the middle of the eighth century in Frankish territory, in the tradition of John the Arch-chanter. We are thus led to the opinion that the name secreta appeared in the North and that it was here created to indicate that the pertinent oration was to be spoken softly.

Jungmann here supplies an expository footnote (n. 6):

This is the explanation given by Fortescue…. Other explanations of the name are pure hypotheses. Ever since Bossuet it has come to be generally accepted – without historical evidence – that secreta = oratio ad secretionem, that is, either at the “sorting out” of the sacrificial gifts (an action which as such had no religious signification beyond this, but only a purely practical one; thus the secret is equivalently oratio super secreta [a merely conjectural form]; or else at the “sorting out”, that is, the dismissal of the catechumens (there is nothing in the contents to show any connection with this act). – Batifol…proposed a derivation of secreta from secernere in the sense of benedicere, a meaning which is nowhere to be traced.

Given Jungmann’s comments, I thank MK but I must decline to agree.

The station church in Rome for today’s Mass is the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles. During this last week, in the older, traditional Roman calendar, the Ember Days were observed on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. From the 17th onward we hear the great “O Antiphons” before the singing of the Magnificat during Vespers. Normally this week is cut short by the celebration of Christmas, for which we have been preparing during Advent.

SUPER OBLATA - PRAYER OVER THE GIFTS:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum):
Altari tuo, Domine, superposita munera
Spiritus ille sanctificet,
qui beatae Mariae viscera sua virtute replevit.

Whereas for the last three weeks our super oblata was virtually identical to the secret of the older, traditional, form of Mass, now we seem to have a new prayer.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O Lord, may Spirit Himself,
who by His power made full the womb of blessed Mary,
sanctify the gifts placed upon thy altar.

This presents no real grammatical mysteries. The vocabulary is straightforward. We might examine briefly two words. Your trusty Lewis & Short Dictionary says that viscera means “the inner parts of the animal body, the internal organs, the inwards, viscera (the nobler parts, the heart, lungs, liver, as well as the ignobler, the stomach, entrails.” It also means even in classical usage “the fruit of the womb, offspring, child.” I think I will “womb” rather than “innards.” Repleo is “to fill again, refill; to fill up, replenish, complete” and thus also, “to fill up, make full, to fill.” The historian Justinus (fl. c. 150) uses this verb with virginem for “to get with child” (13, 7, 7). In our prayer today, when considering replevit I think we must say “filled up” or “made full” the viscera, womb of Mary. But if possible, when we hear the prayer we should try to hold in our minds also the “made complete.” We are not only referring to Mary’s miraculous conception of the “Word made flesh” by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also the very last days of her carrying the Lord and bringing Him to light. On this Sunday we hear the prayer just a few short days before Christmas. Mary was great with child, truly repleta...filled up… made complete.

ICEL:
Lord,
may the power of the Spirit,
which sanctified Mary the mother of your Son,
make holy the gifts we place upon this altar.

ICEL sterilizes the Latin prayer when rendering it into English. The Latin is earthier, more “real” in a sense. Here we have “sanctified Mary” rather than “filled the womb” or somewhat more crudely “innards” of “blessed Mary.” Furthermore, I am not sure why we (or God) need to be told that Mary is the mother of Jesus. We ought to know that. However, given the state of catechesis…. but I digress.

At this point in the Mass we behold the presentation and disposition by the sacred ministers of the gifts of bread and wine on the altar. According to what the rubrics say in Latin (maybe we should have a series of articles called “What Do The Rubrics Really Say?”) the priest turns around from the altar to face the congregation and says (in Latin) “Pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours may be made acceptable in the sight of God, the Almighty Father.” A distinction is made between the sacrifice the priest offers and the sacrifice offered by the people present at the Mass. The Church calls all, however, to active participation in the Mass.

True active participation is to be understood first and foremost as interiorly active participation rather than the shallower understanding of the phrase as exterior or physically active participation (i.e., carrying things, singing, clapping, etc.). While it is true that interior active participation must at times find outward and physical expression, our primary understanding of active participation as Catholics is an interiorly active receptivity. During any liturgy a person can sing, jump around and carry stuff all over the church. That is nothing if there is no interior receptivity. It is possible to be doing all sorts of things and have your mind a thousand miles away. For example, we can be singing something (maybe even in church) and suddenly realize that all the while we have been thinking about what groceries we need or having forgotten to feed the dog. We are outwardly and physically getting all the words and notes right. Interiorly we are not participating in the sacred action of the liturgy.

Human beings are distinguished from brute beasts by an intellect and a free will. We can make a distinction between human actions and acts of humans. The later are things we do without thinking, such as digestion, breathing, and (to a certain extent) other automatic or habitual activities. Human actions, on the other hand, are distinguished from actions of humans by what sets us apart from critters that also do things automatically, by instinct, habit or simple bodily operation. Human actions are shaped more by knowledge and choice. The more we engage our intellect and will in doing something, the more that action is characterized as a human act rather than just the act of a human, hardly to be distinguished from something critters do.

At Mass we must be involved and actively participative as humans – knowing, willing and loving. It is far more challenging to be actively receptive by listening to the Gospel with intense attention than by reading it (aloud or silently via the missalette). If you query many people after Mass about what the Gospel or sermon was about, not very many will be able to tell you with certainty. We need to learn engage our full attention and really participate. It is harder to fix attention, listen, and actively participate in prayer sung by a good choir than it is to sing the hymn with the congregation. Of course there are moments when we are called to both interior and exterior active participation. The congregation has specific responses to make. They should be made with intense focus. That does not mean intense volume, necessarily. It also does not mean the sort of embarrassed mumbling we hear in most parish churches when only a few bother to open their mouths and do something other than stare at the priest like deer looking at the headlights of an oncoming semi. Responses need not be loud but they must be made with at least some desire, intensity and confidence. The “silent spectator” brought on the abuse of the concept of active participation in the first place.

During most of the Mass the faithful are called and challenged to participate actively through willed and active receptivity. We receive the Gospel proclaimed rather than reading it aloud ourselves. We receive forgiveness for venial sins in the penitential rite. We receive Holy Communion and should new take it ourselves. At this point in the Mass, the offertory, we participate actively by giving, by uniting our sacrifices to those of the priest at the altar, alter Christus. We pour forth our sacrifices so that we, like our model Mary, can be “refilled, made complete” by what they are transformed into…the Body and Blood of the living and true God.

I wish you and yours a Blessed and Merry Christmas.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Holy Family – Sunday in the Octave of Christmas

Originally our Feast today was celebrated on the first Sunday after Epiphany but after the post-Conciliar reform of the calendar it was moved forward, probably so that it could be situated nearer to the feasts of the Nativity and of Mary, Mother of God. This day’s prayer is also said on the Sunday during the Octave of Christmas. Since the implementation of the so-called Novus Ordo, we now have only two octaves: Christmas and Easter. An “octave” is a period of eight days following a feast day, including the feast itself, as well as the eighth day after a feast. Liturgically speaking, time is suspended during an octave and the feast continues uninterrupted. This imitates the creation and (one day) the final summation of the universe. God created the world in six days and on the seventh He rested. The eighth day is then a day beyond the cycle of seven. It is beyond time. It is a glimpse of the perfect eternal sabbath day of heaven. The great feasts we observe in the Church’s year of grace are far too deep to be fathomed completely, yet alone even shallowly if we allot them one day alone. The celebration of an octave allows us to consider a great feast different angles by means of our sacred liturgy. Today we focus on the Holy Family within the context of the feast of Christmas, the our God in His divinity came to light as our brother in our humanity. He came to save us from our sins and reveal us more fully to ourselves (cf. Gaudium et spes 22). When He came in His first coming, He came to be a part of a human family. In the infant Christ, with Mary and Joseph humbly and protectively bent over Him, we see who we really are more fully than ever we could before His birth. The presence of Christ in the midst of His Holy Family is an icon of how He should be present in the midst of every family. That is how important a family is. That is also why the powers of hell will attack the very concept of the family at its roots. Christ must be extracted from the family and its members cut off from Him for hell to work its gruesome purpose in society. When we see the fruits of hell in society, we can surmise that the family is on its heals. Today’s prayer, in the context of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that puts Satan and the fallen hordes to flight, grounds the family in Christ’s self-oblation on the Cross.

SUPER OBLATA:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum):
Hostiam tibi placationis offerimus, Domine,
suppliciter deprecantes,
ut, Deiparae virginis beatique Ioseph interveniente suffragio,
familias nostras in tua gratia firmiter et pace constituas.

This super oblata is essentially the same as the secret of the Mass of the Holy Family found in the older form of the Missale Romanum still happily in use in some places where the local bishops have opened their hearts to those who have the legitimate aspiration to make good spiritual use of it. Notice that the word order has been changed a bit since 1962: Placationis hostiam offerimus tibi, Dominie, suppliciter deprecantes: ut, per intercessionem Deiparae Virginis cum beato Ioseph, familias nostras in pace et gratia tua firmiter constituas. The variations are slight: interveniens suffragium in place of intercessio, Joseph in the genitive case along with Mary rather than with the cum of accompaniment in the previous form. One might at this point ask, “Why change it around like that?” Two reason comes to mind. First and foremost, the newer version has more of a “classical” ring to it. It is a bit more “elegant” and less “linear.” Also, bringing St. Joseph into the same case as Mary (genitive) may suggest a greater role for the earthly father of Jesus. This is not to say that in the older form of the prayer he was an after thought. As WDTPRS has mentioned before, the way the words fit together in Latin in a large part depends on their endings. The word order is not always critical. This allows great flexibility in the way the words are arranged and therefore the rhythms and sounds of sentences and paragraphs. This can subtly affect the emphasis that one concept might receive also.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We offer Thee this sacrifice of appeasement, O Lord,
humbly bent down in earnest prayer,
so that, by the intervening recommendation of the virgin Mother of God and of blessed Joseph,
you may establish our families powerfully in grace and peace.

The fine Lewis & Short Dictionary lets us know that placatio means “a pacifying, appeasing, propitiating” especially of the immortal gods. In our prayer today we might choose a word like “atonement” or even “reconciliation.” I think I will use “appeasement.” I take a cue from the description of way the priest is praying on behalf of the people – suppliciter the adverb of supplex from a conflation of sup- or sup-plico (plico = to fold), and is thus “bending the knees, kneeling down.” Hence, it means “humbly begging or entreating, beseeching.” It is very submissive. Deprecor is another clue. It is not just “to pray”, but “to pray earnestly.” Interventio replaced the older intercessio. They mean pretty much the same thing, interventio being post-classical and intercessio having a legal/political overtone. They both have the dimension of coming between two parties in an act of giving security or surety for one of them. The marvelous word suffragium we worked with on the 2nd Sunday of Advent’s WDPTRS. Firmiter is the adverb of firmus and can be “firmly, steadily, lastingly, powerfully.” Because of the beseeching tone of the prayer and the concept of intervention, I will use the word “powerfully.” When you, gentle reader, go through this vocabulary you might try substituting some of the alternative meanings to see how that will affect the prayer. You will see why translating the liturgy is not an easy task and why we must pray for all involved.

ICEL:
Lord, accept this sacrifice
and through the prayers of Mary, the virgin Mother of God,
and of her husband, Joseph,
unite our families in peace and love.

I suspect that the differences in the tone of the ICEL version and the Latin original are clear enough that they need not be spelled out.

We hear this prayer spoken by the priest, the our mediator with God and alter Christus, at the time when our offerings (spiritual and material) have been placed on the altar in anticipation of the divine act of transubstantiation during the consecration. All that we are and our hopes and desires should be united with the frail hosts and still wine. What we receive in return, particularly through our good Holy Communions, allows us to fulfil our vocations in the world and transform it around us. Thus it is fitting that we should use the language and even the physical posture of bowing down, folding ourselves face down before God and begging Him to form and shape our families. As the family in general goes, so goes society. But what do we find across this threshold of the 21st century? Legal abortion, growing legalization of euthanasia, same-sex marriages, high divorce rates, young women disposing of newborn infants in garbage cans, scientific experimentation on living human beings, the dreadful prospect of cloning. The concept of the family is breaking to pieces. It is good to pray that God might be appeased.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2203 In creating man and woman, god instituted the human family and endowed it with its fundamental constitution. Its members are personas equal in dignity. For the common good of its members and of society, the family necessarily has manifold responsibilities, rights, and duties. ...

2207 The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society.

2208 The family should live in such a way that its members learn to care and take responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, and the poor. There are many families who are at times incapable of providing this help. It devolves then on other persons, other families, and, in a subsidiary way, society to provide for their needs: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” ....

2210 The importance of the family for the life and well being of society entails a particular responsibility for society to support and strengthen marriage and the family. Civil authority should consider it a grave duty “to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity.” ....

2212 The fourth commandment illuminates other relationships in society. In our brothers and sisters we see the children of our parents; in our cousins, the descendants of our ancestors; in our fellow citizens, the children of our country; in the baptized, the children of our mother the Church; in every human person, a son or daughter of the One who wants to be called “our Father.” In this way our relationships with our neighbors are recognized as personal in character. The neighbor is not a “unit” in the human collective; he is “someone” who by his known origins deserves particular attention and respect.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Epiphany

The cycle of Christmas was traditionally a magnificent drama in three acts. These different stages of the cycle reveal different aspects of the Incarnation of the Word. During Advent we are taught by Holy Mother Church about the prophecies of the one who was to come. During Christmastide, we see the Word made flesh finally come to light in His birth at Bethlehem. During the time following Epiphany, which before the post-Conciliar changes to the Church’s calendar was its own liturgical season, we were given affirmations of the divinity of Christ. We would move from prophecies and stars and magi to the person of the Lord Himself, revealing who He was in all that He said and did. The Gospels for the Sundays after Epiphany always recounted the miracles that the Lord worked. At Cana, for example, Jesus worked His first public miracle by changing water into wine as those using the older Roman Missal hear in the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. The Gospel uses the word ephanerosen “manifest” to describe this in John 2:11. The antiphon for second vespers, as a matter of fact, recalled three manifestations of Christ’s divinity as occurring on this day: “Tribus miraculis ornatum diem sanctum colimus: hodie stella magos duxit ad praesepium; hodie vinum ex aqua factum est ad nuptias; hodie in Iordane a Ioanne Christus baptizari voluit, ut salvaret nos, alleluia....We solemnly observe this day ornamented with three miracles: today the star led the magi to the manger; today wine was changed to water at the wedding; today Christ desired to be baptized by John in the river Jordan so that He might save us, alleluia.” This is why the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated in such close proximity to Epiphany.

Epiphany, with its attendant octave, was once very important in the Church’s liturgical calendar. On the Sunday during the octave the Feast of the Holy Family was celebrated. In many places Epiphany was a Holy Day of Obligation. There was a season of Epiphany, following the Christmas Season, and the Sundays with their green vestments were reckoned “after Epiphany.” Epiphany technically falls on the twelfth day after Christmas and thus it is called also “Twelfth Night.” It can now be transferred in most places to a Sunday. As a result, the ancient and mysterious Epiphany feast is receives more attention than it did during the time when it was observed more strictly on the sixth day of January. The octave is no longer observed now since the reform of the calendar. It departed by another road. In some ways the importance of the feast is greatly reduced as a result, in my opinion.

This feast was extremely important in the ancient Church, far more so than the relative late-comer Christmas. The word “Epiphany” comes from the Greek for “manifestation.” Traditionally the Church marked by this day the different times when the divinity of Christ was revealed. Also, if at Christmas Christ was revealed to the Jews especially in the persons of the shepherds who received the angels message, at Epiphany He is revealed to the Gentiles who are personified by the magi. One recalls Isaiah 60: 1-6 which gave a prophecy that the kings of the earth would adore God and all the nations would serve Him. “O Jerusalem…the strength of the Gentiles shall come to Thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Madian and Epha: all they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense and showing forth praise to the Lord.”

Many customs are associated with this solemn feast. In the Greek Church there was a special blessing of holy water which involved a procession to a lake or stream. In the older form of the Roman Ritual there is a blessing for gold, frankincense and myrrh. If you happen to have some myrrh around the house, you could take them to the parish and ask your priest to bless it. There is also a special blessing for chalk to be used on Epiphany. Homes were blessed and the lintels of the doors were inscribed with the year and initial letters of the traditional names of the three magi in the format: 20 + C + M + B + 02 In many places gifts are exchanged on Epiphany rahter than Christmas. Among the different foods for this holy day is the well-known King Cake and Lamb’s Wool from roasted apples and cider. The magi themselves are rather obscure figures. We are accustomed now to think of them as three in number bearing the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. Custom even has the relics of the Three Kings situated in the cathedral of Cologne which might raise the questioning eyebrow even of the most pious. There is a magnificent shrine to them in that cathedral, repleat with inlaid silver and champleve enamel panels by Nicholas of Verdun (1190-1205) In the ancient Church there was no agreement on the number of the magi and some sources posit there were as many as twenty-four.

Now for our…

SUPER OBLATA:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum):
Ecclesiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine, dona propitius intuere,
quibus non iam aurum, thus et myrrha profertur,
sed quod eisdem muneribus declaratur, immolatur et sumitur,
Iesus Christus.

This prayer happily remained the same as the secret for Epiphany as found in the 1962 editio typica of the Roman Missal. Notice all the passive forms (-tur). They provide an excellent internal cohesion as well as an effective climax at the end when we hear the Holy Name.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Graciously gaze down, we beseech Thee, O Lord, upon the gifts of Thy Church,
in which gold, frankincense, and myrrh are no longer laid before Thee,
but rather that which is revealed, sacrificed and received by means of those same gifts,
Jesus Christ.

You will right away notice that we have two different Latin words for “gift” herein: donum and munus. The fine Lewis & Short Dictionary lets us know that donum is associated in classical Latin literature with gifts of incense in a passage from the Aeneid of Virgil: dona turea (6, 225). The verb sumo is basically “to take, take up, lay hold of, assume.” In some contexts it can be “consume” and a raft of other meanings as well. Intueor is a deponent verb, meaning “to look upon” as well as “to give attention to.” Given the humble tone of the prayer and the gestures of offering gifts upward to God, I choose to render intueor here as “gaze down upon.” The essential meaning of declaro is “to make clear, plain, evident (by disclosing, uncovering), to show, manifest, declare.” I think “reveal” is appropriate.

ICEL:
Lord,
accept the offerings of your Church,
not gold, frankincense and myrrh,
but the sacrifice and food they symbolize:
Jesus Christ, who is Lord for ever and ever.

In our prayer today we find the deepest meaning of the gifts we offer at the Lord’s altar, which is Calvary in our midst. The tokens brought by the magi, representing all the hopes of the nations of the earth, were merely types, foreshadowing the one who was to offer Himself on the Cross. What we give is far more precious than gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yet those symbols still can give us an orientation when we see the priest, alter Christus, raising our offerings to God in preparation for their consecration and transubstantiation. Gold, may symbolize for us at this Mass of the Epiphany the kingship of God, which must be mirrored in the purity our hearts, so precious to Christ, where He and He alone must have His throne as King. Frankincense, symbolizes His divinity. Only God should receive sacrifices of the sweet-smelling and precious burnt offering, reminds us of the utter immolation He submitted Himself to on our behalf. Its destruction produces smoke, which rises like our prayers upward to God. Myrrh, the balm used to prepare the bodies of the dead for the tomb, reminds us of Christ’s perfect humanity which endured suffering and the grave for our salvation. The offertory time of the Mass, with its super oblata, helps the attentive Christian dispose himself properly for the sacred action to follow. The offerings on the altar become Christ, truly present. But they are also ourselves. We are to identify ourselves with Christ’s sacrifice. What we give him should be at least as valuable as the gold, frankincense and myrrh spoken of in the prayer.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 4th Sunday of Advent – Station: Twelve Apostles

Once in a while I get some feedback that makes my day, nay rather, my year. EM writes via e-mail: “I want to thank you for your weekly column in The Wanderer. I’ve read it faithfully for these two years and you are one of the reasons I keep renewing my subscription (it tends to be a bit depressing). You are also one of the reasons I finally decided to fish or cut bait and leave almost 20 years of evangelicalism for the Catholic Church. Thank you!! Not only that, but you directly inspired me to begin teaching our 6th grader Latin (so I could learn it too) and to LISTEN during the Mass prayers. No one has brought this up yet, but the way the priest says the prayers (emphasis) makes a big difference. We are mightily blessed with a wonderful priest who really does his best to make sometimes banal prayers meaningful simply by emphasizing words (like “sacrifice”, etc.). Yet he is very “by the book”. He tells people who want more innovation, the Lord wants a priest after HIS own heart, not the priest’s own heart (or anyone elses)…. Keep up the good work!” This, dear readers, is precisely why these weekly columns are being offered. Thank The Wanderer too for printing them. And share the wealth. Maybe others you know are just waiting to find what you are already enjoying.

As a follow up to last week’s rant on blue vestments, JC in Singapore via the internet Forum I moderate asked the question, “Just exactly what is the colour blue supposed to symbolize?” One wag, BC in the USA suggested, “Disobedience?” Enough said.

Some news about liturgical matters. The ubiquitous correspondent of the less than conservative National Catholic Reporter, Mr. John L. Allen, Jr., opines (6 December 2002 – The Word From Rome) about the new Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship: “In the liturgical world, people have been trying to discern the impact of the Oct. 2 appointment of Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze…. The last man to hold that job, Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, strongly asserted the “uniformity of the Roman Rite” over flexibility for local adaptations and flavorings. Would Arinze, observers have been wanting to know, bring change? The short answer, reflected in a late October letter from Arinze regarding the statutes for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), appears to be “no.”” His Eminence Cardinal Arinze has lately strongly asserted the necessity that the norms governing ICEL actually reflect what Liturgiam authenticam really says and what the Holy See has been indicating for some time. Among the things that Card. Arinze insists on is that ICEL recognize that Rome has the ability to veto and approve ICEL personnel, that ICEL staff have term limits, and that the Holy See erects ICEL, not the conferences of bishops. Mr. Allen goes on to say, “I spoke to several people on both sides of the ICEL debate. Both concur that the fight is largely over…. Among liturgical progressives, the analysis seems to be that continuing to fight the battle at the level of structures is pointless. Instead, the goals in coming months will be to protect existing practice as best they can, so that individual dioceses or parishes can preserve models of a renewed liturgy, and to keep doing the scholarly reflection that will build the record for a time when the debate can be reopened.” (emphasis added by me). In other words, the “progressives” probably will keep violating the rubrics in a holding action until they can find another place to breakout through the recent envelopment of the laws and get them changed through disobedience. Also, I take it from the phrase “the coming months” is that they are waiting for a new (hopefully progressive) Pope who might roll back the repressive norms imposed by the rigid conservative retrogrades. As the Poles say, stolat… may he live, God willing, one hundred years!

Speaking of ICEL, JS of WI brought to my attention an article in the publication Catholic Family News (December, vol. 9, no. 12 – where else but here can you find quotes from both the NCR and CFN?) by Fr. Stephen Somerville, a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, who was once a member of the Advisory Board of ICEL from 1964. He regrets his involvement with ICEL and the damage the committee did over time. “There are certainly THOUSANDS OF MISTRANSLATIONS in the accumulated work of I.C.E.L. As the work progressed I became more and more an articulate critic. My term of office on the Advisory Board ended voluntarily in 1973, and I was named Member Emeritus and Consultant. As of this writing I renounce any lingering reality of this status. … I renounce my I.C.E.L. …for the corrosion of Catholic faith and reverence to which I.C.E.L.’s work has contributed. And for this corrosion, however slight my personal part in it, I humbly and sincerely apologize to God and to Holy Church.” I am sure that he, like we, are optimistic about the appointments of Card. Arinze at the CDW and of Fr. Harbert at ICEL. We have some good things to look forward to. Clearly there is going to be a real war along the way, however. So, ready yourselves.

POST COMMUNIONEM
LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Sumpto pignore redemptionis aeternae,
quaesumus, omnipotens Deus,
ut quanto magis dies salutiferae festivitatis accedit,
tanto devotius proficiamus
ad Filii tui digne nativitatis mysterium celebrandum.

As you might have guessed, this rather chatty Post communionem is of more recent composition. It has ancient precedent in old collections such as the Gelasian Sacramentary, but it appears for the first time in the 1970 Missale Romanum and its subsequent editions. We have a nice paring of festivitatis and nativitatis. The quanto magis… tanto devotius is a standard construction which rings well. We have verbs of contrasting but related basic meanings: accedo and proficio. We even have an ad… nd construction. We lack the kitchen sink here, but that is about all. This prayer smacks of being very consciously worked over as a set piece. It is trying to be elegant.

What can the unparalleled Lewis & Short Dictionary tell us about the vocabulary of this prayer? Leading off is an ablative absolute construction including the noun pignus, “a pledge, gage, pawn, security, mortgage (of persons as well as things).” The root of this word is pac-, as in the verb pango, panxi, panctum, and pegi or pepigi, pactum “to fasten, make fast, fix; to drive in, sink in” and thus “to fix, settle, determine, agree upon, agree, covenant, conclude, stipulate, contract” and also paciscor, pactus,”make a bargain, contract, or agreement with any one; to covenant, agree, stipulate, bargain, contract respecting any thing” whence comes the English word “pact”. Under pignus in the L&S we find reference to such things as “tokens” or “rings” given as a sign of a pledge or commitment. The adjective salutifer is from salus + fero (“salvation/heath + to bring”). Also, please take note of that quanto…tanto construction. This is the ablative. Thus, it means something like… “by however so much… by that same measure.” In this case we have comparative adverbs magis… devotius. Accedo is “to go or come to or near, to approach”. Proficio is, of course, “to go forward, advance, gain ground, make progress.”

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Now that the pledge of eternal redemption has been consumed,
we beg, almighty God,
that by however so much more the day of the saving festivity is approaching,
by that same degree we may more devoutly make progress
toward celebrating worthily the mystery of the nativity of your Son.

Yes, I know this is awkward. But I am not trying to produce smooth translations for use in church here (though we could, and have for a long time, done worse, methinks). We could be tempted to smooth that quanto magis…tanto devotius into “the nearer the saving feast day approaches, the more devoutly we may make progress….” I want to resist the temptation to do that for the reason that there is a proportional relationship indicated in the Latin which gets lost in that simpler but smoother phrase. Think about this. We are asking to make progress in an increasing degree each day as Christmas draws closer. If today we are making progress by a factor of 1, then tomorrow, which is closer to Christmas, we want to make progress by an additional fact of 2 on top of the 1, then an additional factor of 3 over the 1+2, and then 4 above the 1+2+3 and so on. Think of this acceleration in terms of compounded interest. Built into the language of the prayer is a powerful concept of acceleration.

You will recall that in the other prayers of Advent Masses we had language and imagery of rushing and eager hurrying toward the Lord who Himself is coming. In our prayer today we spy a pair of verbs that show this acceleration in both directions accedo (“approach”) and proficio (“make progress towards”). Imagine two trains heading toward each other. They are each moving at 30 km/hour and are closing the gap between them at a relative speed of 60 km/hr. In our Post communionem we are rushing faster and faster toward each other: the vast mass of the People of God, the whole Church, yearning and eager for the Lord, and the Lord Himself, eager and yearning for His People. Unlike the aforementioned trains, whose speed does not vary, we want to go faster and faster with every passing moment. We want to make ever and ever more progress in the right direction, toward being devout (in the sense of devotio – the virtue whereby we live our vocations with single-hearted focus). We are begging God the Father to make us able to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Christ ever more “worthily”, which means increasing in grace as we deepen our commitment to live as we ought.

For the sake of our salvation, made possible by the First Coming, we have a vested interest in growing each and every day in grace. We might even say we have a “compounded” interest. And Advent is about more than just the First Coming. It is also about the Second Coming of Christ as Judge. It is no less about how He comes in other ways, including in the person of your neighbor, in the Words of Scripture, and especially in every Holy Communion at Mass. This prayer is said directly after the Lord has come in Communion.

The First Coming, Christmas, and the Second Coming, are both fast approaching. There is a Latin adage of unknown provenance which means that things go faster the closer they get to the end: in finem citius. Are you ready?

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
in this sacrament
we receive the promise of salvation;
as Christmas draws near
make us grow in faith and love
to celebrate the coming of Christ our Savior.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Christmas Day – Roman Station: 1st and 3rd Masses – Basilica of St. Mary Major, 2nd Mass – St. Anastasia

We have a new Secretary for the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments: Sri Lanka born Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don. His Excellency is a scholar of Sacred Scripture, and was well known to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. As Nuncio in Indonesia he had to defend the Church and her message in the very difficult religious landscape of Asia where even some Catholic theologians indulge in syncretism. Some think this appointment will help the return of the Society of St. Pius X to fuller communion with Rome. Archbishop Ranjith (say: RAN-jit) is admired by many traditionalists. In April 2004 he authored one of the first commentaries published in L’Osservatore Romano on the CDWDS Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum. He said that in some cases the Conciliar reforms didn’t produce the hoped for results and he denounced the many irregularities in celebration of Mass. NB: His Holiness chose another English speaker for a key position.

The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, Christmas, has a Vigil and Masses on the day itself: in nocte or"during night" (the legendary"Midnight Mass"), in aurora or"during daybreak, and in die or"during daylight. WDTPRS examined already the Christmas Day prayers for the"Midnight Mass but never have we looked at Mass"during the day. Ad ramos!

COLLECT"in die" (2002MR)
Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem
et mirabiliter condidisti, et mirabilius reformasti,
da, quaesumus, nobis eius divinitatis esse consortes,
qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.

Our prayer was in the Veronese and Gelasian, ancient sacramentaries both, and the pre-Conciliar Missale Romanum. That source of precious Latin knowledge, the Lewis & Short Dictionary, reveals that reformo is"to shape again, remould, transform, metamorphose, change. The theological baggage borne by substantia is complex far beyond the scope of this column, but the helpful dictionary of liturgical Latin by Blaise cuts to the chase with"nature, which works for me. The adjective consors , sortis, is"sharing property with one (as brother, sister, relative), living in community of goods, partaking of in common, or a noun meaning"a sharer, partner. The Latin word is formed from con and sors ("fate). When you are a consors you have a common fate or destiny. The word dignitas,"dignity, adds to the prayer a strong moral content.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
O God, who in a wondrous way created the dignity of human nature,
and yet more wondrously shaped it anew,
grant us, we beg, to be partakers of the Godhead of Him
who deigned to become a participant of our humanity.

St. Pope Leo I"the Great (+441) said in his Christmas sermon of 440:

   "O Christian, recognize your dignity (dignitatem), and made a partaker (consors) of the divine nature, do not dare by degenerate conduct to return to former baseness. Remember of whose Head and whose body you are a member. Call to mind that you were snatched from the power of the shadows and borne over into the light and kingdom of God. By means of the sacrament of baptism you were made a temple of the Holy Spirit: do not by evil actions drive away from you such a great indweller and to subject yourself once again to the devil’s thralldom: for the blood of Christ is your ransom because he will judge you in truth who has redeemed you in mercy, Christ our Lord."(s. 1 in Nativitate, 3 my trans.).

We were made for God and for His glory. In creating us God intended to share with us something of His transforming glory. Our Collect makes a reference to the"divinization of man by God. There is a twofold way we can see this. First, from the point of view of Christ, is the mystery of the Second Person’s self-emptying: He stooped infinitely below Himself to take up flesh and human soul and become a man, like us in all ways but sin. Next, from our point of view, our human nature created in God’s image, which had a dignity we wounded, is now by the indestructible bond with Christ’s divinity, by the"wondrous exchange, elevated to an even greater dignity. In Christ our humanity has been taken up already to the right hand of the Father. The Eucharist is our"pledge of future glory.

The mystery of the Incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas points to the kenosis or self-emptying of the Second Person. We embrace now the humble servitude of Jesus, and look to the magnificent destiny that awaits us won by the wood of Crib and Cross. In every Mass this mystery of the Incarnation must be held closely to our hearts and minds. The Christmas Collect was adapted for the preparation of the chalice by the priest during every Mass. Before the priest raises the chalice upwards in offering, he mingles with the wine a very small quantity of water, just drops. The mingling of water and wine underscores three things. First, it reveals how the Divine Son humbly accepted human nature. Second, it shows how we will be transformed by Him in the life to come. Indeed, we who are baptized into Christ and who receive the Eucharist are alreadybeing transformed, like drops of water in His wine. In the mingling of the water and wine, the water loses itself, becoming what the wine is (though in God’s transforming embrace we do not"lose” ourselves, but rather find ourselves more perfectly!)."O admirabile commercium! O marvelous exchange!, as the Church sings at Vespers and Lauds on Christmas Octave. As Fathers of the Church expressed it the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we might become the sons of God. This"holy exchange is the heart of Holy Mass. Bread and wine are given to us by God and we, in turn, collect them, work them, give them back to God who transforms them through the power of the Holy Spirit into the Real Presence of Christ (Body, Blood, soul and divinity). In turn the species of the Eucharist transform us, making us also into acceptable offerings to God. In this marvelous exchange earthly and temporal things mysteriously, sacramentally, become vehicles of the eternal. Third, the mixing of those few (human) drops into the (divine) wine in the chalice (an image of sacrifice and oblation) reveals how lay people must unite their prayers and sacrifices to what the priest offers at the altar:"Pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours be acceptable to God the almighty Father. There is a distinction made regarding the way in which the priest and the people offer their sacrifices. The people offer good and acceptable sacrifice to God from their"baptismal priesthood, as members of Christ, who is High Priest. But the priest makes a very different kind of sacrifice, as alter Christus… another Christ. So, the people at Mass must unite their good offerings to those of the priest. The mingling of the water and wine is a good moment to make a conscious effort to do precisely that.

We all have difficulties and sufferings. Like you I have burdens, for myself and for others. If Christ can transform our human nature through a touch of His divinity, He can transform our sorrows and cares. In the confessional I often suggest to people that when the chalice is being prepared, they should pour their troubles into that chalice with the little bit of water which will be taken in by the wine and then be transformed with the wine in the consecration. Give it all back to God through the Sacrifice of the Cross, through Holy Mass.

The core of today’s Collect prayer leads us seamlessly into the

SUPER OBLATA"in die- (2002MR)
Oblatio tibi sit, Domine, hodiernae sollemnitatis accepta,
qua et nostrae reconciliationis processit perfecta placatio,
et divini cultus nobis est indita plenitudo.

Remember that in these "Prayers over the gifts of bread and wine God will transubstantiate through the priest are couched in the language of propitiation: we must placate the God against whom we have so grievously sinned in both the Original Sin of our first parents and in our own actual sins.

That qua is really an adverb meaning, "on which side, at or in which place, in what direction, where, by what way. Both Blaise and Souter are without comment about indo but dependable L&S says it is, "to put, set, or place into or upon and also"to impart or give to, apply to, impose on, attach to. Cultus(from colo) refers to the worship and honor due to divinity. My sense of perfecta, from perficio, is "having been brought to completion, rather than simply "perfect. This super elegant prayer, filled with rhetorical flourishes, was in both the Veronese and Gelasian Sacramentary among the Christmas texts, but absent from the Missale Romanum until the Novus Ordo.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
O Lord, let the sacrificial offering of today’s solemnity be acceptable to You,
from whence issued forth the completed appeasing of our reconciliation,
and also was imparted to us the fullness of divine worship.

This prayer is quoted in the Council’s document Sacrosanctum Concilium 5, in the section examining "The Nature of the Sacred Liturgy and Its Importance in the Church’s Life. Read this aloud and hear how Christmassy it is:

   "5. God who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2:4), who in many and various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets’ (Heb. 1:1), when the fullness of time had come sent His Son, the Word made flesh, anointed by the Holy Spirit, to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to be a bodily and spiritual medicine’, the Mediator between God and man. For His humanity, united with the person of the Word, was the instrument of our salvation. Therefore in Christ the perfect achievement of our reconciliation came forth, and the fullness of divine worship was given to us’.

Our "Prayer after Communion, from the Gelasian and Veronese, was in the pre-Conciliar Missale Romanum. As is the case of the Collect and Super oblata, there is a deep stylistic elegance which delights the ear.

POST COMMUNION" in die – (2002MR)
Praesta, misericors Deus, ut natus hodie Salvator mundi,
sicut divinae nobis generationis est auctor,
ita et immortalitatis sit ipse largitor.

The first prayer of the Mass set the stage for our active participation in Communion. Though expressed in exalted language, it conveyed an attitude of humility before the creation of man in God’s image, the Eternal Word’s self-emptying in the Incarnation, and the possibility of our transformation both in the Eucharist to be received in the course of the sacred mysteries this day and in the happiness of heaven to come. In the second prayer, before the Eucharistic Prayer and consecration, we recognized how we sinners have need to appease God and how the God made Man, Jesus Christ was the source both of reconciliation and also of the very Mass we are participating in, the perfect form of worship renewing our completed reconciliation. In this final prayer we put book ends around our grasp of today’s meaning. We were able to partake of Communion and actively participate in Mass first and foremost because of our divine regeneration in baptism, deepened in a good reception of the Blessed Sacrament in Mass. At the same time, we see how our rebirth in the life of the Trinity in baptism aims ultimately at eternal life and our ongoing transformation in heaven. The "just so too" structure of the prayer shows us how the "Savior of the world born today is the fulcrum both of all the ages of the world, born as He was in the"fullness of time, but also of our own lives as individuals. All of the prayers today are connected by the theme of the transformation of man’s human nature from his sinful state to a state of glory in the transforming assumption of our human nature by Second Person of the Trinity who, once born, is Jesus Christ" our brother in our humanity while remaining our God in His divinity.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Grant, O merciful God, that just as the Savior of the world born today
is for us the author of divine generation,
so too may He be the bestower of immortality.

With Leo the Great, I extend to you and yours for a Merry and Holy Christmas: "Peace was the first thing proclaimed by the angelic choir and the Lord’s Nativity. It is peace which gives birth to children of God. Peace nurses love, engenders unity, gives repose to the blessed, and provides a home to eternity. (s. 26.3)

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 4th Sunday of Advent

Some feedback. MK of Lake View, NY writes concerning my claim in WDPTRS of 29 November last about the origin of the term “secret” which formerly identified the oratio super oblata (the so-called “prayer over the gifts”) in WDPTRS of 29 November last:

It is true that the in the traditional Mass the priest says the Secret quietly. However, the term Secret doesn’t refer to this. The word comes from the Latin secernere meaning to separate, set apart. It refers to the offerings which have been set apart for the celebration of the Mass.

I am always grateful to those who write with comments of any kind. Some folks have kindly written some excellent points and corrected my errors. This time, however, I beg to differ with MK. In Joseph A. Jungmann’s magisterial book The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, the history and nature of the so-called “Secret” prayer is explored in depth. Jungmann writes (p. 90… emphasis added):

The first point to clear up is the puzzling problem of how the oratio super oblata came to be said silently. The earliest evidence of the quiet recitation of this prayer appears in the middle of the eighth century in Frankish territory, in the tradition of John the Arch-chanter. We are thus led to the opinion that the name secreta appeared in the North and that it was here created to indicate that the pertinent oration was to be spoken softly.

Jungmann here supplies an expository footnote (n. 6… emphasis added):

This is the explanation given by Fortescue…. Other explanations of the name are pure hypotheses. Ever since Bossuet it has come to be generally accepted – without historical evidence - that secreta = oratio ad secretionem, that is, either at the “sorting out” of the sacrificial gifts (an action which as such had no religious signification beyond this, but only a purely practical one; thus the secret is equivalently oratio super secreta [a merely conjectural form]; or else at the “sorting out”, that is, the dismissal of the catechumens (there is nothing in the contents to show any connection with this act). – Batifol…proposed a derivation of secreta from secernere in the sense of benedicere, a meaning which is nowhere to be traced.

Given Jungmann’s comments, I thank MK but I must decline to agree.

The station church in Rome for today’s Mass is the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles. During this last week, in the older, traditional Roman calendar, the Ember Days were observed on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. From the 17th onward we hear the great “O Antiphons” before the singing of the Magnificat during Vespers. Normally this week is cut short by the celebration of Christmas, for which we have been preparing during Advent.

SUPER OBLATA - PRAYER OVER THE GIFTS:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum):
Altari tuo, Domine, superposita munera
Spiritus ille sanctificet,
qui beatae Mariae viscera sua virtute replevit.

Whereas for the last three weeks our super oblata was virtually identical to the secret of the older, traditional, form of Mass, now we seem to have a new prayer.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O Lord, may Spirit Himself,
who by His power made full the womb of blessed Mary,
sanctify the gifts placed upon thy altar.

This presents no real grammatical mysteries. The vocabulary is straightforward. We might examine briefly two words. Your trusty Lewis & Short Dictionary says that viscera means “the inner parts of the animal body, the internal organs, the inwards, viscera (the nobler parts, the heart, lungs, liver, as well as the ignobler, the stomach, entrails.” It also means even in classical usage “the fruit of the womb, offspring, child.” I think I will “womb” rather than “innards.” Repleo is “to fill again, refill; to fill up, replenish, complete” and thus also, “to fill up, make full, to fill.” The historian Justinus (fl. c. 150) uses this verb with virginem for “to get with child” (13, 7, 7). In our prayer today, when considering replevit I think we must say “filled up” or “made full” the viscera, womb of Mary. But if possible, when we hear the prayer we should try to hold in our minds also the “made complete.” We are not only referring to Mary’s miraculous conception of the “Word made flesh” by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also the very last days of her carrying the Lord and bringing Him to light. On this Sunday we hear the prayer just a few short days before Christmas. Mary was great with child, truly repleta...filled up… made complete.

ICEL:
Lord,
may the power of the Spirit,
which sanctified Mary the mother of your Son,
make holy the gifts we place upon this altar.

ICEL sterilizes the Latin prayer when rendering it into English. The Latin is earthier, more “real” in a sense. Here we have “sanctified Mary” rather than “filled the womb” or somewhat more crudely “innards” of “blessed Mary.” Furthermore, I am not sure why we (or God) need to be told that Mary is the mother of Jesus. We ought to know that. However, given the state of catechesis…. but I digress.

At this point in the Mass we behold the presentation and disposition by the sacred ministers of the gifts of bread and wine on the altar. According to what the rubrics say in Latin (maybe we should have a series of articles called “What Do The Rubrics Really Say?”) the priest turns around from the altar to face the congregation and says (in Latin) â€Å