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

Some years ago there was much chat about having St. Isidore of Seville (+636) proposed as the patron saint of the internet.  I was asked to write a prayer people could recite before using the internet.  It seemed to me that that was a good idea.  I wrote the prayer in Latin and submitted it, with a translation into English, to a bishop who gave it his approval.  GO TO THE PAGE

This prayer is all over the same internet now (both with and without attribution), which amazes me a little.  I was asked recently about a Polish version of the same, and I was able to point to one someone had already prepared.  The experience prompted me to revisit this “internet prayer”, seek some additional language translations, and post them all online in one place.  Here is the prayer.  These days most Latinists refer to the “internet” as interrete, n.

You will want to know why people proposed St. Isidore for this role.  I think it was probably because his most notable work, the Etymologiae, a massive encyclopedic work of 448 chapters in 20 volumes indexing just about everything people thought it was important to know at the time, was rather like a primitive database.    You can pray to any saint in this matter, of course, and nothing official about a patron for the internet has been handed down from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which is the competent dicastery of the Holy See in all issues having to do with patron saints.  People wanted a prayer for St. Isidore, and I wrote one, but you should feel free to change the name to whatever saint you prefer.  Others have proposed St. Maximilian Kolbe (+1941), St. Bernadine of Siena (+1444), St. Rita of Cascia (+1457), and the Archangel Gabriel (still around).

Over at one of my very favorite blogs, Laudator Temporis Acti, is a post that everyone should read and savor:

John Burroughs, The Still Small Voice:

We learn from 1 Kings 19 and the experience of Elijah that  we who are in God’s image and likeness, made to act as God acts, often are in our own turn called upon to make something of ourselves known through a small voice.

2 Feb: Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, once called the Purification of Mary.  Also called “Candlemas” and even YPOPANTI AD SANCTAM MARIAM

Today’s Collect was in the 1962 Missal and is based on one in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary amidst the prayers “in purificatione sanctae Mariae” on the date iiii Nonas Februarias (read 2 February).

In the Gelasian it goes like this:

Deus, qui in hodierna die unigenitus tuus in nostra carne quam adsumpist pro nobis in templo est praesentatus, praesta, ut quem redemptorem nostrum laeti suscipimus, uenientem quoque iudicem securi videamus: ...

When you go to your church for Candlemas, you might be privileged to here this:

COLLECT:
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
maiestatem tuam supplices exoramus,
ut, sicut unigenitus Filius tuus
hodierna die cum nostrae carnis substantia
in templo est praesentatus,
ita nos facias purificatis tibi mentibus praesentari.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Almighty and everlasting God,
we humbly beseech Thy majesty,
that, just as Thine only-begotten Son
was on this day in the substance of our flesh,
presented in the temple,
so too You may cause us, once our minds have been purified,
     to be presented unto you.

Here is a version I really enjoy, from the …

1559 Book of Common Prayer
(the first version ever brought to North American by the settlers at Jamestown):
Almyghtye and everlastyng God,
we humbly beseche thy Majestie,
that as thy onelye begotten sonne
was this day presented in the Temple
in the substaunce of our fleshe;
so graunte that we maie bee presented unto thee with pure and cleare myndes;