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

One of the things that keeps me a) in touch with the USA and b) sane is listening to streams of various radio and TV shows in my native land. One I particularly like is William Bennett’s Morning in America, which has a subscription services also broadcasts on various radio stations throughout the USA. I am a fairly regular e-mailer and caller to their show. This morning I was on with them for about 10 minutes talking about the Holy Father’s new encylical letter. I post this mainly because I think it is great that a national talk radio show is talking in a serious way about an encyclical of a Pope! Listen to Bennett sometime. His show is great. There is a clip of my interview available on the show’s web site. I don’t know how long it will be available, however.

In all the flurry of activity in the wake of the new encyclical of Pope Benedict, let us not forget to pray for the (now) youngest bishop in the USA, His Excellency Alexander K. Sample who was consecrated yesterday, 25 January 2006, as the new Bishop of Marquette in Michigan. Bishop Sample is a friend from years past. I have every confidence that he will be a good bishop. Do keep him in your prayers.

Ad multos annos!

Pope Benedict tackles in his encyclical the degrading results that come from an ideologized approach to improving man’s lot. If Deus caritas est is offered in part a lens through which we might consider other documents he has promulgated, consider this.

In his Message for the World Day of Peace on 1 January, last, His Holiness spoke of atheistic, materialistic regimes which harm man’s dignity through imposing false "truths". In Deus caritas est he says,

Part of Marxist strategy is the theory of impoverishment: in a situation of unjust power, it is claimed, anyone who engages in charitable initiatives is actually serving that unjust system, making it appear at least to some extent tolerable. This in turn slows down a potential revolution and thus blocks the struggle for a better world. Seen in this way, charity is rejected and attacked as a means of preserving the status quo. What we have here, though, is really an inhuman philosophy. People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future, a future whose effective realization is at best doubtful. One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now. We contribute to a better world only by personally doing good now, with full commitment and wherever we have the opportunity, independently of partisan strategies and programmes. The Christian’s programme ”the programme of the Good Samaritan, the programme of Jesus is a heart which sees.

Two things strike me in this paragraph. First, the image of Moloch the hideous pagan god upon whose red hot fire-heated brass statues living babies were sacrificed while its priests banged on drums to drown out their screams, lest the people be moved to pity. This could also be a description of the way that the horrors of abortion are treated in some circles today. Secondly, you can hear a touch of the theological background of His Holiness who is steeped in the writings of St. Augustine together with St. Bonaventure. In the citation from Deus caritas est above, I hear an echo of Richard of St. Victor who said: "Love is the eye and to love is to see." Richard of St. Victor deeply influenced St. Bonaventure.

So much of what Pope Benedict XVI wrote in the first part of Deus caritas est is quite familiar to me – and subsequently I hope also to readers of WDTPRS.

For example, I just placed online my previous work on the prayers for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time. In glancing at the first time I wrote about the Collect of that Mass, in the first year of this series back in 2000, I cite several of the sources in which Benedict is quite well versed.

This is to be explained quite simply. First, I have read closely and extensively the writings of Joseph Ratzinger. Secondly, I have some of the same background since I was able long ago to avail myself of still solid Thomistic/Aristotelean philosophical formation at the then College of St. Thomas in St. Paul (MN – USA) in the ‘80s, before the department (and school), morphed into something less Catholic and less systematic. Lastly, when I worked in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, which house the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was audacious enough to stop His Eminence in the when I ran into him (fairly often as it turned out) and ask him questions. As a matter of fact, then Cardinal Ratzinger actually suggested to me my thesis topic for my STL in Patristics.

Oh yes, that is the other point of connection: my field is Patristic Theology with a focus on St. Augustine of Hippo. Joseph Ratzinger also began in Patristics, with Augustine, and his love of the Fathers has never left him. Ergo, there are bound to be many points of contact between the the one who forms and the one who is formed. To echo Robert Sanderson (Bishop of Lincoln +1663) “Am not I a child of the same Adam … a chip of the same block, with him?”.

Let’s look at some points of contact in one of my WDTPRS articles and the Pope’s new encyclical. These points of contact not perfect anticipations, but they reveal a forma mentis. I am doing this in no way to seem self-serving. Rather, I want to show that similar foundations and attentive study can, over time, guide and direct though along the same paths as those trod by another. I am sure that others can do this comparison with their own writings. At least I hope they can!

From WDTPRS in 2000:

Commonly used, “love” today usually refers not to the kind of love which is really Christian “charity”, that sacrificial love which in seeking always the good of the other resembles the sacrificial love of Christ, the theological virtue that permits us to love as images of God. Bob can “love” his Ferrari, Susie can “love” her kitty, and without doubt we all “love” baseball and spaghetti. We can talk about the different tenors of love, such as the love of benevolence, or of complacence, of enemies, concupiscence. But we are called to a special sort of love in this prayer… true charity: the infused virtue which makes it possible for us to love God for His own sake and love all those who are made in His image. This is more than benevolence or tolerance, more than appetitive desire. Love is not merely a response to some appetite, like seeing a beautiful member of the opposite sex, a well-turned double-play, or a plate of spaghetti all’amatriciana. It isn’t the sloppy gazing of passion drunk sweethearts or what we see on TV primetime. I call that luv. Real love is the adhesion of the will to an object which is grasped by the intellect to be good. Real love, the sort of love invoked in our prayer, is an act of will. This love delights in the other and is informed by a longing for the good of the other. It makes two resound with one spirit. Love, in the sense this prayer offers, is an act of will based on the work of a discerning intellect that is reshaped and informed by grace.

From DCE in 2005:

2. God’s love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises important questions about who God is and who we are. In considering this, we immediately find ourselves hampered by a problem of language. Today, the term “love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings. Even though this Encyclical will deal primarily with the understanding and practice of love in sacred Scripture and in the Church’s Tradition, we cannot simply prescind from the meaning of the word in the different cultures and in present-day usage.

Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word “love”: we speak of love of country, love of one’s profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbour and love of God. Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness. This would seem to be the very epitome of love; all other kinds of love immediately seem to fade in comparison. So we need to ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?

From WDTPRS in 2000:

We come back to the connection of knowledge and love, mentioned above. It seems to me that these two are so closely related that they cannot be easily distinguished at times. I am willing to bet that all of us have had the experience of getting to know something or someone and then, “falling in love.” Billy might be fascinated by bugs. From this love for bugs he simply must come to know everything there is to know about them, thus setting the stage for a brilliant career in entomology. On the other hand, we get to know a person or a city and, the more we learn about this complex object of our intellectual effort, we slowly come to appreciate their beauty and come even to a genuine love. Simply put, when we love someone, we want to know everything about him or her and the more we learn the more we love. This is how we must be with God: constantly seeking to understand Him more and more so as to love Him more and more, and by that very love coming to understand things about God that, without love, would not be possible for us to learn. The desire for both love and knowledge are built into who we are and we have a relationship with the objects of both love and knowledge.

From DCE in 2005:

17…. In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man’s potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God’s love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself.

From WDTPRS in 2000:

The great 13th century saint and doctor of the Church Bonaventure described “ecstatic knowledge.” This kind of knowledge is merely the product of abstract investigation. Rather, it starts first from standing back and contemplating. By contemplation, the knower becomes engaged with the object, becomes fascinated by it and wants to know it more deeply. This longing draws the knower into the object. Consider: we can study about God and our faith. But really the object of study is a living Person, not a set of abstractions. We need the sort of knowledge of God that draws us into Him. This is a “knowledge” which reaches into us, seizes us, pulls us into itself and transforms us. To experience God’s love is to have certain knowledge, more certain than any knowledge which can be arrived at by means of merely rational examination (but not in opposition to it).

From DCE in 2005:

5. … . Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in January 2005

Feedback from readers – MB opines via e-mail about my special column on the use and necessity of Latin: “I have to tell you how much I enjoyed this column in The Wanderer. Of course, I enjoy all of your WDTPRS columns too. … Disappointment with the translation of the prayers of the Mass is right up there with disappointment with any translation I have come across of the Divine Office. Amateur that I am, even I know enough Latin to recognize a ‘creative’ interpretation. How do they get away with this? Thanks again for all your work, and that you can do it with such kindness and yet a sense of humor should show some people I know that those who love the Mass and the Latin are not necessarily curmudgeons.” Thanks, MB, for the kind thoughts.

Today’s prayer was not in the post-Tridentine editions of the Missale Romanum but it does have its origin in the Leonine Sacramentary or, as it is better titled by its editor, the scholarly L. Cunibert Mohlberg, the Veronese Sacramentary. The three most important ancient sacramentaries are the Leonine/Veronese, Gelasian and Gregorian. The Sacramentarium Veronense (SV hereafter), so called because it exists in a single manuscript in Verona, is dated by famed paleographer E.A. Lowe to the first quarter of the 7th c. The material of the SV is a collection of Roman Mass books perhaps made by Maximianus, archbishop of Ravenna from 546-557 and, according to Joseph Lucchesi, its calendar follows that of Ravenna of the time. The prayers in the SV are attributable to Popes Leo I (+461), Gelasius (+496) and Vigilius (+557). Were you to hear this prayer intoned in Latin, or at least in an accurate translation, you would be thereby transported back 1500 years to our most Roman of Catholic roots.

COLLECT - LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Concede nobis, Domine Deus noster,
ut te tota mente veneremur,
et omnes homines rationabili diligamus affectu.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord our God,
help us to love you with all our hearts
and to love all men as you love them.

Is this what the Latin really says? Lewis & Short, that Dictionary of inestimable value, says the deponent verb veneror means, “to reverence with religious awe, to worship, adore, revere, venerate… to do homage.” We sing in the well-known hymn to the Blessed Sacrament Tantum Ergo by St. Thomas Aquinas, “veneremur cernui…we adore / venerate with religious awe, our heads bowed to the ground.” The noun affectus, -us signifies, “A state of body, and especially of mind produced in one by some influence (cf. affectio), a state or disposition of mind, affection, mood”. In post-Augustan Latin it comes to mean “affection” in the sense of “love, desire, fondness, good-will, compassion, sympathy”. Diligo, dilexi, dilectum is composed from from lego, legi, lectum. “to bring together, to gather, collect” (not from lego, legavi, legatum, “to send with a commission; choose”). The punctilious etymological dictionary of Latin by Ernout & Meillet shows that diligo aims conceptually at distinguishing one thing by selecting it from others. Thus diligo comes to mean, “to value or esteem highly, to love” although Cicero used diligo in a somewhat less strong sense than amo, amare. Diligo can also suggest “thrifty, frugal” and “careful or attentive with regard to things”. English “diligence” and its antonym “negligence” correspond to this. Rationabilis is a post-Augustan word for the more classical rationalis and means “reasonable, rational”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Grant us, O Lord our God,
that we may venerate you with our whole mind,
and may love all men with rational good-will.

“Affection” just doesn’t cut it for affectus and something more pointed than “love” is needed too. I came up with “rational good-will”. We mustn’t reduce all these complicated Latin words to “love”. Why not? Note in the prayer the contrast of the themes “reason” and “mood”, the rational with the affective dimension (concerning emotions) of man; in short, the head and the heart. The fact is, a properly functioning person conducts his life according to both head and heart, feelings under the control of reason and the will. The terrible wound to our human nature from original sin causes the difficulty we have in governing feelings and appetites by reason and will.

Today’s prayer aims at the totality of a human person: our wholeness is defined by our relationship with God. We seek to know God so that we may the better love Him and His love drives us all the more to know Him. Furthermore, possible theological and Scriptural underpinnings of this prayer are Deuteronomy 6 and Jesus’ two-fold command to love God and neighbor: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (cf. Matthew 22:36-38; Mark 12:2-31; Luke 10:26-28). In Deut 6:5-6 we have the great injunction called the Shema from the first Hebrew word, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might….” Jesus teaches the meaning and expands the concrete application of this command in Deuteronomy 6. There is no space here for the subtle relationships between the Latin words St. Jerome chose in his translations and the Greek or Hebrew originals of these verses. Suffice it to say that in the Bible the language about mind, heart, and soul is terrifically complex. However, these words aim at the totality of the person precisely in that dimension which is characteristic of man as “image of God”. Heart, mind and will distinguish us from brute animals. We are made to act as God acts: to know, will and love. Thus, “mind” and “heart” in man are closely related faculties and cannot be separated from each other. Mind and heart are revealed in and expressed through our bodies and thus they point at the “real us”. Love is at the heart of who we are and it the key to our prayer today.

We are commanded by God the Father and God Incarnate Jesus Christ to love both God and our fellow man and God the indwelling Holy Spirit makes this possible. But the word and therefore concept of “love” is understood in many ways and today, especially, it is misunderstood. “Love” frequently refers to people or stuff we like or enjoy using. Bob can “love” his new SUV. Besty “loves” her new kitten. We all certainly “love” baseball and spaghetti. But “love” can refer to the emotional and affections people have when they are “in love” or, as I sometimes call it, “in luv”. Luv is usually an ooey-gooey feeling, a romantic “love” sometimes growing out of lust. This gooey romantic “love” now dominates Western culture, alas. The result is that when “feelings” change or the object of “luv” is no longer enjoyable or useable, someone gets dumped, often for a newer, richer, or prettier model.

There some other flavors of “love” you can come up with, I’m sure. But Christians, indeed every image of God in all times everywhere, are called to a higher love, the love in today’s prayer, which is charity: the grace-completed virtue enabling us to love God for His own sake and love all who are made in His image. This is more than benevolence or tolerance or desire or enjoyment of use. True love is not merely a response to an appetite, as when we might see a beautiful member of the opposite sex, a well-turned double-play, or a plate of spaghetti all’amatriciana. True love, charity, isn’t the sloppy gazing of passion drunk sweethearts or the rubbish we see on TV and in movies (luv). Charity is the grace filled adhesion of our will to an object (really a person) which has been grasped by our intellect to be good. The love invoked in our prayer is an act of will based on reason. It is a choice – not a feeling. Charity delights in and longs for the good of the other more than one’s own. The theological virtue charity involves grace. It enables sacrifices, any kind of sacrifice for the authentic good of another discerned with reason (not a false good and not “use” of the other). We can choose even to love an enemy. This love resembles the sacrificial love of Christ on His Cross who offered Himself up for the good of His spouse, the Church. Rationabilis affectus reflects what it is to be truly human, made in God’s image and likeness, with faculties of willing and knowing and, therefore, loving.

Knowledge and love are interconnected. The more you get to know a person, the more reason you have to love him (remember… love seeks the other person’s good in charity even if a person is unlikable). Reciprocally, the more you love someone or (in the generic sense of love) something, the more you want to know about him and spend time getting to know him. For example, Billy is fascinated by bugs. From this “love” for bugs Billy wants to know everything there is to know about them. He works hard to learn and thus launches a brilliant career in entomology. Given Our Creator’s priority in all things, how much more ought we seek to know and love God first and foremost of all and then, in proper order, know and love God’s images, our neighbors? He is far more important that the bugs He created. Even spouses must love God more than they love each other. Only then can they love each other properly according to God’s plan.

We also have a relationship with the objects of both love and knowledge. What sort of relationship? With bugs or spaghetti it is one thing, but with God and neighbor it is entirely another. In seeking to understand and love God more and more we come to understand things about God and ourselves as his images that, without love, we could never learn by simple study. The relationship with God through love and knowledge changes us. St. Bonaventure (+1274) the “Seraphic” doctor wrote about “ecstatic knowledge”. This kind of knowledge is not merely the product of abstract investigation or analytical study (like Billy with his bugs). Rather, it comes first from learning and then contemplating. According to Bonaventure, by contemplation the knower becomes engaged with the object. Fascinated by it, he seeks to know it with a longing that draws him into the object. Consider: we can study about God and our faith, but really the object of study is not just things to learn or formulas to memorize: the object of our study and faith is a divine Person in whose image and likeness we ourselves are made. To be who we are by our nature we personally need the sort of knowledge of God that draws us into Him. Knowledge of God (not just things learned about God) reaches into us, seizes us, transforms us. To experience God’s love is to have certain knowledge of God, more certain than any knowledge which can be arrived at by means of mere rational examination.

Bring this all with you back to the last line of our prayer and the command to love our neighbor, all of them made in God’s image and all individually intriguing – fascinating, in a way that resembles the way we love God and ourselves. This we are to do with our minds, hearts, and all our strength.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 4th Sunday in of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in January 2003

As you know by now, I always welcome feedback, delivered either electronically or by post, and I let you in on some of it. This week is no exception. JW writes via e-mail: “I just wanted to thank you for the great work you’ve done proving us by providing us with accurate translations of the prayers from the Sacramentary. I eagerly wait for your column in The Wanderer each week. Being fluent in Spanish, I also attend Mass in that language. I have come to note that the prayers in the Spanish language Sacramentary were “literally” translated from the Latin. I came to this conclusion by comparing them to your translations, as I am not fluent in Latin. Do you find this true for translations into other languages?”

Thanks for the kind words, JW! All in all, from what I have seen the Latin liturgy fares better in other European languages than in English. Those other translations are, however, not without flaws. As a matter of fact, now that the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) has focused for no little time on ICEL and English, it is turning its sharp-eyed glance to other languages. They, too, must be brought into line with the norms laid down in Liturgiam authenticam (LA), the CDW’s document establishing new norms for vernacular liturgical translations. Sometimes we English speakers fall into the mistake of thinking that everything the Holy See does is really about us (and it probably is, when you consider it for a while….). So, my impression has usually been, when I have used them, that the Italian is pretty good, though it could be improved. I would say the same for Spanish. German and French are less accurate, though not corrupted to the point that the 1973 ICEL version was. I don’t have any experience with other language than those, though I hope to get my Mandarin Chinese into good enough shape so that I can say Mass. In the meantime, struggling with how the translators for ICEL came up with their choices way back when is good preparation for Chinese studies.

LH writes by e-mail: “I am writing in regards to one of your more recent columns in The Wanderer. My mom pointed it out to me (I’m 14 yrs. old). When you said that you guessed that the famous British author J.R.R. Tolkien might have gotten the name for his main character, Frodo, from the French monk Frodobertus, you were incorrect. But it was a good guess. Mr. Tolkien was fascinated with languages, especially that of Norse cultures, and he also knew a lot about their legends. One story in particular tells of the Viking named Frodo, and his adventures;…. Anyway, I just thought you might like to know. I hope that you continue to do well in writing your column.”

Thanks much, LH, but I must point out that I do not, in fact, guess any such thing. What I wrote about in the column for the Baptism of the Lord was that a reader wrote asking about St. Frodobertus and I was guessing that the reader had made a connection between the sounds of the saint’s name and the character in Prof. Tolkien’s great work. I appreciate, LH, that you took the time to write and I am impressed that you have looked into the origins of this name. Perhaps someday you will be translating Latin prayers yourself. And a special thanks also to your parents, who are clearly doing something right in your regard. Start ‘em while their young!

In Mr. John L. Allen, Jr.’s informative weekly feature “The Word From Rome” (17 January 2003) published in website of the National Catholic Reporter and, alas, not somewhere else, we find a very interesting liturgical/sacramental decree from the CDW. “... The decree, signed on Sept. 14, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, specifies that if a priest wishes to administer any blessing whatsoever, even if the appropriate ritual book does not specifically require it, he must trace the Sign of the Cross using his right hand. The decree has worldwide validity, and hence overrides any local practice to the contrary. The decree was published in the November 2002 edition of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official compendium of Vatican documents, and is signed by the former prefect of the congregation, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, and the secretary, Francesco Pio Tamburrino. Though the decree does not supply a reason, Vatican sources say the concern was to preserve the specifically Christian character of a blessing by a Catholic priest, especially in cultures with other ritual forms that some priests may be tempted to substitute under the guise of “inculturation.” One source told NCR that the congregation got the idea for issuing the decree after an ad limina visit of bishops from Brazil, where indigenous and syncretistic folk religions have a large popular following.” This issue of inculturation is getting to be a problem and will become more and more troublesome over time, I predict, until greater attention is paid to a true and authentic inculturation.

Insightful readers of WDTPRS remember that at the basis of the CDW’s document LA is a sound understanding of inculturation. Without a doubt there is a dynamic exchange constantly going on between the Church and the world. So long as what the Church has to give is logically prior in this exchange to what the world gives back to her, then we are in good shape. The Church must form and shape the world first. This formation is not a chronologically staggered process of formation and reception, naturally. It is ongoing, taking place simultaneously. However, what the Church does must always have a logical, if not chronological, priority. Once it is formed by the proper spiritual values, then the world through its various cultures has many and wonderful human achievements to contribute and integrate back into the life of the Church. However, when the logical priority is reversed, and the Church allows the world to shape her without first having put in place the proper formation in the faith and in morals, then we get into all sorts of problems. As St. Paul wrote in the beginning of the moral section of his letter to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2 RSV).

It is enough to consider some of the goofy liturgical things done in the name of “inculturation” to see that the Church is not always being given logical priority in many places. Some people might consider what His Eminence Cardinal Medina Estévez did in that decree sited above as being overly picky, but I would demure. What he did is important because it refocuses us on the gift Christ gives and which the Church mediates: the blessing of a thing so that it becomes a sacramental, separation from the material realm of the prince of this world and set apart for God. In other words, the thing being blessed isn’t just “special” from a sentimental point of view. It isn’t merely an aesthetically pleasing object or possession. It is a spiritual help from which the devils of hell reel back in dismay. Christ and the Church’s agent in this is the priest, himself separated from the world through Holy Orders, conformed to Christ, exercising His power and authority. By the power of the Cross, invoked in the sign of the Cross the priest makes with the proper intention, He strips away any presence of and authority of the Enemy and cast it away when he intends to confer a constitutive blessing on a thing. We who are not angels, and who learn by our senses, need to see and experience outward signs of invisible realities. Requiring the sign of the Cross when blessing is a return, in a way, to the Church’s having a logical priority in the dynamic exchange between the Church and the good things the world has to offer.

POST COMMUNIONEM
LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Redemptionis nostrae munere vegetati, quaesumus, Domine,
ut hoc perpetuae salutis auxilio
fides semper vera proficiat.

This was the Postcommunio for “Sabbato in albis”, the Saturday during the Octave of Easter, having antecedents in the Gelasian Sacramentary.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
you invigorate us with this help to our salvation.
By this eucharist give the true faith continued growth
throughout the world.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We who have been quickened by the gift of our redemption, O Lord,
beseech you, that true faith may always gain ground
by means of this aid for eternal salvation.

The mighty Lewis & Short Dictionary tells us that the late Latin verb vegeto means “to arouse, enliven, quicken, animate, invigorate.” There are three kinds of living beings with material bodies, i.e., vegetative, animal and human (angels are living beings too, but without bodies). Proficio has a range of meanings. Basically, it is “to go forward, advance, gain ground, make progress”. In different contexts is can mean this and also, “to grow, increase” and “to be useful, serviceable, advantageous, etc., to effect, accomplish; to help, tend, contribute, conduce”. Think of what it means in English to be “proficient”. So, we might make the choice here to say “that the true faith may always grow”, which would be in keeping with the imagery invoked in vegetati (“quickened, enlivened”) or perhaps we might say “that the true faith may always advance” which would hark to how we are pilgrims in this world. Perhaps “gain ground” captures both? I am reminded of how my (vegetative) oregano and thyme plants tend to “gain ground” over their neighbors, as they creep and spread and take more and more surface as they grow.

By our baptism we are made capable of receiving the benefits of the “gift of our redemption”. By the spiritual (and physical) nourishment offered us in the Eucharist, we simultaneously progress toward our ultimate goal of heaven and we are strengthened for our work here. Chronologically heaven comes later. At the same time, if we desire to be spiritually healthy and later attain that heaven, we must adhere closely to the here and now. Nevertheless, our goal of heaven must always have a logical priority over what we are doing here. The “now” is important because the “later” is more important. We cannot let the present, or the world, blind us to the priority that lies in the future bliss of heaven and the spiritual realm. Our liturgy (music, art, vestments, architecture, gestures, etc.), being a foretaste of the heavenly banquet must give priority to the spiritual and not the worldly, while at the same time it embraces and transforms the world. The Eucharist is the food which changes us into what It is, rather than the other way around.

Baptism makes us all priests in this ineffable dynamic exchange. Some are priests by baptism, others are priests by baptism and by Holy Orders. These are two very different kinds of priests, of course, but they still must embrace both elements of Christ’s priesthood: He is the one who offers sacrifice at the same time as He is the Sacrifice who is offered. Perhaps we can take a clue from the writings of a Father of the Church and reflect on how we can both “gain ground” and also keep in balance the proper relationship of the Church and the world, inculturation:

“If I renounce everything I possess, if I carry the cross and follow Christ, I have offered a holocaust on the altar of God. Or if I burn up my body in the fire of charity…, I have offered a holocaust on the altar of God; … if I mortify my body and abstain from all concupiscence, if the world is crucified to me and not me unto the world, then I have offered a holocaust on the altar of God and I am becoming a priest of my own sacrifice.” (Origen (c. 185-254), In Leviticum homiliae., 9, 9).

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE WANDERER in January of 2002

Before we begin, I have a some proof that there are indeed readers of WDTPRS west of the mighty Mississippi. JFW of UT writes by snail-mail: “Your column is really a shot in the arm, but it indirectly reinforces my opinion that the ICEL should have been fired years ago.” To be fair, JFW, we may not like what ICEL produced, but we are looking at this now with hindsight. When ICEL was working on translations, there were many new ideas and much confusion. We must have a critical eye and ear when examining what ICEL gave us, to be sure. Still, let us learn from the mistakes that were made (more than likely not maliciously) and, fortified by the CDW’s gift of Liturgiam authenticam, look forward to something better.

SUPER OBLATA:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum):
Altaribus tuis, Domine, munera nostrae servitutis inferimus,
quae, placatus assumens,
sacramentum nostrae redemptionis efficias.

Right away you will be struck by the alliterative ‘s’ sounds.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We are bringing in to place upon your altars, O Lord, the gifts of our service,
which, having been appeased and as you take them up,
you make into the sacrament of our redemption.

Flipping swiftly through the dense pages of the Lewis & Short Dictionary we find that servitus is (despite its usually masculine –us ending) a feminine noun meaning “the condition of a servus; slavery, serfdom, service, servitude.” Infero is “to carry, bring, put, or throw into or to a place” and it is constructed with the prepositions in and accusative, ad, or the dative case, which later we find in our prayer today in altaribus. This verb also can mean “to conclude, infer, draw an inference.”

Part of the problem of translating from Latin into English is the way the Latin “moods” are supposed to sound. Most of you who studied Latin remember that this most noble language has the subjunctive mood. In Latin, the subjunctive mood represents the predicate as an idea, as something merely conceived in the mind, something abstracted from reality. Often it is translated into English with the auxiliary verbs “may, can, must, might, could, should, would.” So, the subjunctive is often used for expressing views and wishes. However, the subjunctive can also be applied to things that are in fact very concrete but in the sentence are somewhat logically remote from the subject and verb of the main sentence and are thus logically abstract. This is the case in many relative sentences. In these relative sentences the thing being treated can be very concrete and real but, because it is in a relative sentence, the subjunctive is used. It is very tempting for many who have had some Latin always to use those auxiliary verbs listed above whenever they see a subjunctive. However, in many cases it is really more accurate to make some Latin subjunctive sound indicative when putting them into English. This is what I do today with our prayer. That efficias is clearly a subjunctive. The temptation is to say something like “which you may make into the sacrament of our redemption.” But in this case it is more accurate to give that efficias an indicative sound.

ICEL:
Lord,
be pleased with the gifts we bring to your altar,
and make them the sacrament of our salvation.

Let us look for a moment at what the ICEL translator did to the Latin prayer. The most obvious change how the Latin altaribus, which is clearly plural, is made a singular English “altar.” This bears some examination and, I will admit, some speculation.

When I put these WDTPRS articles together I do my very best to give the ICEL version the benefit of the doubt: when I see something that clearly strays from the Latin original I strive to make sense of it if at all possible. Still, I have learned over the last year of writing these offerings to be a bit suspicious. I suspect the translators had underlying reasons for their choices. To put it bluntly, it is too incredible to believe that the bishops purposely employed translators so fantastically incompetent that they utterly botched the prayers out lack of skill. They must have picked people with at least a minimum competency in Latin. The translators therefore must have seen that, in today’s prayer, the Latin had a plural. Therefore, they wanted to change the Latin into something else.

Let us make this concrete. Why might they have wanted to change Latin “altars” into “altar” in their final version? It occurs to me that, dum aliquid sciam…. for all I know, that there could be a theological reason for making the change. This is a big assumption, of course. But let’s run with it for a while and see what happens.

First, consider that Catholics (which word in its roots means “universal”) have never been about making things or people smaller, in the sense of unreasonable restriction. Our Church is not really into placing unreasonable limits. As a matter of fact, it is a guiding principle of interpretation of law that the advantages people have should be amplified while the things that place restrictions on them are interpreted as strictly or narrowly as possible so as to favor the rights of the individual. That said, consider also that as members of a Church we belong to something not only spread through the world but that also transcends the passage of death. Yet, when I read the ICEL prayer, I get the feeling that the translator neglects the fact that people all over the world are presenting their gifts on myriads of altars (altaribus), grand and small, simple and ornate, fixed to a wall and also free-standing, marble with gilt reredos as well as on the camouflaged hood of a jeep. Countless altars and people of many cultures may be involved, but still the one and same Sacrifice of the Mass is being raised to God the Father for the sake of the living and the dead of every age and place. It is a good thing to help a congregation to recognize its particular identity as it is gathered to its particular altar. I do not think that should be done at the expense of the universality of the Church. Altars are, after all, a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ, who cannot be limited to one place and time alone.

Second, it occurs to me that the change to singular might have something to do with the whole business of requiring that Mass be said facing the congregation. This might be a jump, but consider the fact that a long tradition of the Roman Church’s architecture, churches were built with more than one altar. There was clearly a main altar, a principle altar, which was the focus of the whole building. That was the main place of celebration of the sacred mysteries at those special times when the people were gathered there for Mass. Other altars in the church might be used at different times, particularly when the church was entrusted to a religious order and many priests (yes, O younger reader, there was a time when many priests might staff a parish) needed to say Mass each day. This was certainly the case at a monastery or seminary. This was also during the time before “concelebration”.

However, there has been a movement for a long while amongst so-called “liturgical experts” to emphasize, even in an exaggerated way, the importance of one sole altar in the sacred space of the church. Understand: this principle of the unicity of the altar is not to be trifled with. It is very important and a legitimate theological concern. Much serious ink has been spilled over this issue. However, as with anything good and worthy, the otherwise good principle can be applied with so heavy a hand that damage is done. Thus, for decades there has been nearly a maniacal effort to tear “extra” altars out of churches, even historic churches. When this was coupled with the goofy idea that the priest must face the people over a table-like altar, the result was that the main altars of churches, often placed in the back of the apse contiguous to the wall, were liturgically reformed with crowbars and jackhammers. At best they were turned into shelves for potted plants. Now, as it turns out, the whole cobbled-together historical foundation for mass facing the people has been debunked with real scholarship. Still, the damage has been done in countless older churches. The “experts” have got their one altar in most places. The high altars or main altars of our churches are gone in favor of a table-style structure, sometimes not even in the center of the eye’s focus. In some places the altar is absurdly juxtaposed to and counterbalancing the ambo where the Scriptures are read. My comments here are more than a mere laus temporis acti… a praise of times gone by. Anyone who reads good liturgical theology today knows that the orientation of an altar is truly significant and that perhaps by turning altars around we have lost as a Church far more than we imagine we have gained.

About the main or “high” altar, where it has remained intact…. In some places, as in cathedrals or historically important and beautiful churches, where the high altars remain (perhaps those in charge were simply too afraid of the laity’s reaction to eliminate… thank God for the laity…) a table altar is nevertheless erected. I don’t know about you, but when I go into some large church and see a huge and magnificent high altar and then see that some other altar has been set up in front of it, I simply shake my head in incredulous disbelief. It is so sad how so many people have been so duped into thinking that it is so important to say Mass facing the people that they can so callously and so pointlessly set up in front of the church’s main altar something that looks like an ironing board or a picnic table compared to what stands behind it. The same people who so such a thing also will harp on “diversity” to the point where virtually any liturgical abuse is tolerated. However, they will also clamp down in draconian ferocity on anyone who might suggest that it really is okay to have Mass also… get this… also oriented so that the priest and congregation are together facing the liturgically symbolic East, the direction from whence the Church traditionally believed the Lord would return. So much for openness and flexibility.

The discussion above is not irrelevant to the issue of liturgical translations, which is what WDTPRS is about. The document of the Conference of Bishops in the USA called “Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture, and Worship“, when treating the position of altars, uses an incorrect translation of the new GIRM’s paragraph 299. This paragraph and its meaning and mistranslations by others had been specifically explained and clarified by the Congregation for Divine Worship long before the American bishops promulgated their own document.

Please, dear reader, include our bishops in your prayers and ask their angel guardians to guide them when they are called upon to fulfill their duty in overseeing the development of new liturgical translations. We must approach this as positively as we can.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE WANDERER in January 2001

This prayer comes in a time when we see in the newsworthy activities being covered by the media that love of God and neighbor should be prayed for with great and intense fervor. The season of the liturgical year called “Ordinary Time” is particularly helpful in guiding us into a proper Christian approach to the nitty-gritty details of the routine of daily living through the year. It might not be an exaggeration to suggest that the two-fold great command of Jesus is to be found at the foundation of daily life.

COLLECT:

LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum)
Concede nobis, Domine Deus noster,
ut te tota mente veneremur,
et omnes homines rationabili diligamus affectu.

A probably not very significant detail: the phrase Domine Deus noster is used in only three collects of Ordinary Time, this week, the 5th and 33rd.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Grant us, O Lord our God,
that we may venerate you with our whole mind,
and may love all men with rational good-will.

We are asking God to permit us, to allow us as a great gift and favor granted, to “venerate” God with our whole mind. This veneror, as the great Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary provides, has a deeply religious connotation and means, “to reverence with religious awe, to worship, adore, revere, venerate… to do homage.” Think of its use in the well-known Tantum Ergo, which describes us as cernui, “heads bowed to the ground.” To “venerate” as we should, it will be necessary to seek to know Him for we are to do this with our “whole mind.” But there is a close link between knowing and loving. More on this below.

What we are hearing in this Collect is clearly an echo of the two-fold command of Jesus, teaching and expanding the repeated command in Deuteronomy (cf. especially 6:5, the Shema – “Hear, O Israel…”), to love God and neighbor (cf. Matthew 22:36-38; Mark 12:2-31; Luke 10:26-28 – which has omni mente rather than tota). In the three Synoptic Gospels where a version of the two-fold command appears we have the Greek word dianoia for “mind.” Jerome in the Vulgate used mens to translate the Greek dianoia. Dianoia is used in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint (usually abbreviated LXX). But looking at the Deuteronomy passage, we find in English translations “heart.” Dianoia translates the Hebrew lebab: heart…. and a lot more besides. Furthermore, in the Latin Vulgate for the Deuteronomy, we find for dianoia the word cor – “heart”. Like the English “heart”, Hebrew lebab can mean very many things, including “inner man, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding, mind, knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory, inclination, resolution, determination (of will), conscience. “Heart” can mean the seat of moral character or courage. Biblical anthropology and the relationship of “mind, heart, soul” is a complicated study, and we do not have time and space for it here. By looking into that mens of our prayer we are digging for a road map to avoid the pitfalls and traps that the word “love” carries around today like so much baggage. “Mind” and “heart” are closely related faculties in man and cannot be separated from each other.

We are commanded by the Savior to love. Mother Church remembers this in this week’s prayer. But “love” can mean so many things today. Many of you reading this will remember C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves. Commonly used, “love” today usually refers not to the kind of love which is really Christian “charity”, that sacrificial love which in seeking always the good of the other resembles the sacrificial love of Christ, the theological virtue that permits us to love as images of God. Bob can “love” his Ferrari, Susie can “love” her kitty, and without doubt we all ââ‚&