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

The great Francis Card. Arinze, who is the titular Cardinal Bishop of the Suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni, recently (the diocese of the author) gave a speech recently in London, for the efforts of the ordinary their to engage in a liturgical renewal of the Diocese of Westminster. You can find a description of the event here, togeter with a link to a nicely formatted PDA document of the speech Card. Arinze delivered.

Here are a couple excerpts from his 1 April 2006 speech:

I thought this was good as well:

5. Observance of Liturgical Norms

In the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the observance of liturgical norms is one of the ways in which we show our Eucharistic faith. To a person who asks why there should be liturgical norms at all, we answer that the Church has the right and duty to promote and protect the Eucharistic celebration with appropriate norms. Christ gave the Church the essentials of the Eucharistic celebration. As the centuries rolled by, the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, developed details on how the mysteries of Christ are to be  celebrated. Being an hierarchical society, the Church also manifests her nature and structure in the celebration of the Holy Mass. The Mass is the most solemn action of the sacred liturgy, which is itself the public worship of the Church. “Liturgy”, says Pope John Paul II, “is never anyone’s private property, be it of the celebrant or of the community in which the mysteries are celebrated… Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church” (Eccl. de Euch., 52). At the direction of Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in collaboration with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum in March 2004 “precisely to bring out more clearly this deeper meaning of liturgical norms” (Eccl. de Euch., 52). It follows that individuals, whether they be priests or lay faithful, are not free to add or subtract any details in the approved rites of the celebration of the Holy Eucharist (cf Sacrosanctum Concilium, 22). A do-it-yourself mentality, an attitude of nobody-will-tell-me-what-to-do, or a defiant sting of if-you-do-not-like-my-Mass-you-can-go-to-another-parish, is not only against sound theology and ecclesiology, but also offends against common sense. Unfortunately, sometimes common sense is not very common, when we see a priest ignoring liturgical rules and installing creativity – in his case personal idiosyncracy – as the guide to the celebration of Holy Mass. Our faith guides us and our love of Jesus and of his Church safeguards us from taking such unwholesome liberties. Aware that we are only ministers, not masters of the mysteries of Christ (cf I Cor 4:1), we follow the approved liturgical books so that the people of God are respected and their faith nourished, and so that God is honoured and the Church is gradually being built up.

Oh yes, His Eminence is also the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in addition to his prestigious title of Velletri-Segni. 

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion – Station:  St. John Lateran

ORIGINALLY IN PRINTED The Wanderer in 2006

Many of you belong to parishes where priests still won’t hear confessions on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.   Some priests, liturgical experts and even diocesan liturgy offices claim the rubrics of the Missal or “Sacramentary” forbid the sacrament of Penance.  However, this claim is absolutely incorrect.  Here is what the texts really say.  The previous 1970 and 1975 editions of the Missale Romanum (the Novus Ordo) said of Good Friday and Holy Saturday: “Hac et sequenti die, Ecclesia, ex antiquissima traditione, sacramenta penitus non celebrat… On this and the following day, the Church, from a most ancient tradition, does not at all celebrate the sacraments”.   However, since this is in the Missal (the book for MASS), sacramenta refers only to Holy Mass and not the other sacraments.  The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS) clarified this in its official publication Notitiae (#137 (Dec 1977) p. 602).  In the 2002 edition of the Missale Romanum at paragraph 1 for Good Friday all doubt is removed.  The above cited text has been amended to say (the change with my emphasis): “Hac et sequenti die, Ecclesia, ex antiquissima traditione, sacramenta, praeter Paenitentiae et Infirmorum Unctionis, penitus non celebrat… On this and the following day, the Church, from a most ancient tradition, does not at all celebrate the sacraments, except for (the sacraments of) Penance and Anointing of the Sick”.   Priests can and should hear confessions during on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday.   Who can forget the image of the late Pope hearing confession in St. Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday?

Here is a bonus tip, speaking of confessions.  Some liturgists simply freak out at this idea.  It is both permitted and recommended in some circumstances for confessions to be heard during Holy Mass on other days of the year!  Want proof?  Try the CDWDS document Redemptionis Sacramentum 76 and also the Congregation’s Response to a Dubium in Notitiae 37 (2001) pp. 259-260. 

Many of you were enthusiastic about the liturgical initiatives of Bishop Slattery of Tulsa which we reported a few weeks ago.  Now hear this.  The CDWDS document Liturgiam authenticam 108 required that, within five years bishops’ conferences would publish a “white list” of sung texts and songs suitable for Catholic worship.  In the USA a subcommittee of the USCCB has been given this charge and their Powerpoint presentation is out there on the internet now.  They have been busy bees.  I tip my biretta to the internet blog Argent by the Tiber for this.  The subcommittee’s two main concerns are a) Individual songs should be consonant with Catholic teaching and free from theological error, and b) the repertoire of liturgical songs in any given setting should not manifest a collective bias against Catholic theological elements.  Some other points included (excerpts): Is there a reluctance to use “Father” for the first person of the Blessed Trinity? ... Is Jesus the Savior often overshadowed by Jesus the teacher, model, friend, and brother? ... At times, can we detect a negative undertone in speaking of the divine nature of Christ, as if divinity is equated with being “distant and unreal?”  Run your mind through lyrics of songs you often hear in your parish!  The sub-committee got specific.  For example, when looking at the 20 most popular liturgical songs, they found that there was “a full range of biblical titles” though “Father” was used on 10% of the time.  No song referred to a Trinity of Divine Persons in God.  Only 35% of songs referred to Christ.   Surely we will hear more about this!

And so today Holy Week beginneth.  It endeth with the Sacred Triduum (from tres dies – “three day period”).   The Triduum were days of obligation once upon a time, but in the 17^th century the obligation was removed under the influence of changing social and religious conditions.  As a result, the faithful lost sight of the significant and beautiful Triduum liturgies. Only priests and religious in monasteries knew them.  In 1951 Servant of God Pope Pius XII began to restore the Triduum liturgies to prominence by mandating that the Easter Vigil be celebrated in the evening.  In 1953 Mass was permitted in the evening on certain days.  Pope Pius issued a reformed rite for Holy Week which took effect on 25 March 1956.   That is when the Sunday of Holy Week came to be called “The Second Sunday in Passiontide, or Palm Sunday”.  Matins and Lauds or Tenebrae (“shadows”) were to be sung in the morning. Holy Thursday Mass was not to begin before 5 p.m. and no later than 8 p.m.  The idea was to make it easier for people to participate in these all important liturgies.

As you know, Palm Sunday Mass includes the blessing of palm branches or fronds.  In Rome we use olive branches.  There is normally a procession around and/or into the church.  In the present Missale Romanum an interesting rubric about the procession harks to ancient times: “At a suitable hour the “collect” is made (fit collecta) in a lesser church or in another appropriate place outside the church toward which the procession marches.”  Here is our word “collect” used to describe a gathering of people.  Historically, this is where the name of the “opening prayer” comes from.

The rubrics also have something helpful for our good understanding of what “active participation” really means:  “Then as is customary the priest greets the people; and then there is given a brief admonition, by which the faithful are invited to participate actively and consciously (actuose et conscie participandam) in this day’s celebration.”  Those words actuose et conscie are very important.  The Second Vatican Council, when using the term actuosa participatio or “active participation”, meant interior participation, the engaging of the mind, heart and will.  The Council Fathers did not primarily mean exterior participation.  Of course, exterior participation is the natural result of interior participation: we express outwardly what we experience within.  There is a logical priority to interior participation, which is by far the more important of the two.  Many people working in the area of liturgy today (happily fewer and fewer) think active participation means everyone has to be doing something physical, like carrying things and singing everything.  Active participation (made possible by baptism) is primarily active receptivity, listening and watching carefully, fully engaged with mind, heart and will.  For outward participation to be authentic, it must begin interiorly.  Let us strive always to be actively receptive to what God gives us at Mass and express out interior attitude by the proper outward signs.

For our fruitful participation at Mass remember that God makes us truly present to the sacred mysteries we celebrate and them to us.  By our baptism we can be real participants in these mysteries.  Sacramental realities are in no way “less real” than the real things we can know by our senses.  During Holy Week the mysteries of the Lord are yours to witness and take part in.

Now we turn to the so-called Prayer over the gifts for this Mass of Palm Sunday.  An ancestor of this prayer was in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary from the month of July, with the reference to the Passion added.   It was not in the 1962MR. 

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):

Per Unigeniti tui passionem
placatio tua nobis, Domine, sit propinqua,
quam, etsi nostris operibus non meremur,
interveniente sacrificio singulari,
tua percipiamus miseratione praeventi.

Space prevents me from delving into vocabulary this week.  Consult your ever-available Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary and thereby slake your thirst for more.  This is a tricky prayer to translate both by reasons of the rich meanings of the vocabulary available to us and also the disjunction of Latin and English syntax.  We have, for example, the problem of rendering the ablative absolute, which English doesn’t allow us to translate literally and smoothly at the same time.  It is tempting to break Latin prayers into sentences as the previous incarnation of ICEL did in cobbling up the version we must still endure at Mass.  However, the CDWDS document with the translation norms LA 20 says:

20. … While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer, the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet.

How important it is for you to pray every day for the bishops and those in charge of preparing translations.  While some of the prayers nearly jump into English by themselves, most do not.  By making different but defensible choices, you can make the Latin into dramatically different prayers.  What I provide here in these articles is little more than a literal rendition.  I try not to ignore issues of smoothness or beauty, but I opt for accuracy rather than elegance.  A future English edition of the Roman Missal requires both accuracy and beauty so that the prayers will be memorable and effective in our lives.   There is nothing easy about this, but it not as hard some would have you think.  They are purposely delaying and placing obstacles.  But let’s move along.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Through the Passion of Your Only-begotten,
let Your act of appeasing be near to us, O Lord,
which we, having been outdone by Your compassion, may grasp
as the once-for-all Sacrifice is now taking place
even though we are not worthy by our works.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
may the suffering and death of Jesus, your only Son,
make us pleasing to you.
Alone we can do nothing,
but may this perfect sacrifice
win us your mercy and love.

During Lent we are also looking at the “Prayer over the people” said by the priest after the Post Communion and before the blessing.  This is an ancient custom revived in the 2002MR. 

ORATIO SUPER POPULUM (2002MR):
Respice, quaesumus, Domine, super hanc familiam tuam,
pro qua Dominus noster Iesus Christus
non dubitavit manibus tradi nocentium,
et crucis subire tormentum.

In the 1962MR this is the Oratio super populum for Wednesday in Holy Week as it was also in the more ancient Gregorian Sacramentary in the Hadrianum manuscript.  This prayer is familiar to anyone who has participated in Tenebrae.  As the chanting of each psalm of Matins and Lauds concludes the candles burning on the large hearse, a triangular shaped candelabrum, are snuffed out one by one.  Finally, only one is burning.  As the choir kneels and chants in a low tone the Miserere the last candle is removed from the top of the hearse and hidden behind the altar.  The celebrant chants the prayer above.  When it is concluded, the members of the choir pound the choir stalls with their books, as a symbol of the earthquake when Christ died, until the candle is returned to the top of the hearse.   Beautiful customs.

Respicio here means “to look at with solicitude, i. e. to have a care for, regard, be mindful of, consider, respect”.   Dubito is “to vibrate from one side to the other, to and fro, in one’s opinions or in coming to a conclusion” and thus means, “to waver in opinion or judgment, …” or “to be irresolute; to hesitate, delay”.   Subeo is literally is to “under-go”.  It meaning primarily “come or go under any thing; to come or go up to,…” and thence “to subject ones self to, take upon one’s self an evil; to undergo, submit to, sustain, endure, suffer it”.  Trado means “to give up, hand over, deliver, transmit, surrender, consign”.  This is where the word “tradition” comes from, for things are “handed on” from one generation to the next, hopefully intact.  There is an Italian saying, “traduttore traditore….a translator is a traitor”.  Every time you translate a thing, you have to sacrifice some nuances of meaning in order to stress others.  You always lose something in translating.   We must keep this in mind even when a new English translation is given to us, at long last.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Look with solicitude, O God, upon this thy family, we beg,
for which our Lord Jesus Christ
did not hesitate to be betrayed into the hands of those inflicting harm,
and to endure the torment of the Cross.

May God bless you for the remainder of a spiritually fruitful Lent.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Palm Sunday – Station: St. John Lateran

As I write, the Vox Clara Committee is meeting in Rome to discuss translation issues.  Can you conjure the bullet points of their agenda?  “When will we have the new draft from ICEL?” Or perhaps somewhat more cynically, “Have they gotten past learning the first declension yet or are they just stalling?”  Folks, translation is not always easy, but it is also not astrophysics.  Hey, ICEL!!  I got past the first declension!  Need any help?

The always entertaining and edifying Francis Card. Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (and regular reader of WDTPRS), was interviewed on Vatican Radio recently.  I love this guy. Be sure to drop him a nice note of support.  His Eminence spoke about ongoing liturgical formation of lay people and preparation for participation at Holy Mass saying, “It would be lovely if, before going to Mass on Sunday, the texts could be read at home, especially the readings and prayers and then, once back home, be reviewed. In this way we would really advance in the faith.”  What a great idea!  I must ask, however, does Your Eminence believe people will benefit more from an accurate and beautiful translation according to the norms of Liturgiam authenticam or from a dumbed down, gender inclusive, sensitively horizontal version?  This is a trick question, of course: WDTPRS thinks people should study and pray what the prayers really say!    Be brave and firm, Your Eminence.  We know there are many who want to scuttle the norms of Liturgiam authenticam and your good work.   The readers of this column and I are behind you and Vox Clara!  I am sure you would like to have the new draft from ICEL yesterday, if not sooner.  For Pete’s sake!  Quousque tandem, ICEL, abutere patientia nostra?

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week.  The Sacred Triduum (triduum from tres dies – “three day space”) were once days of obligation when people were freed from servile work so that they could attend the liturgies, once celebrated in the morning.  In the 17^th century, however, the obligation was removed under the influence of changing social and religious conditions.  As a result, the faithful lost sight of these beautiful liturgies and in general only priests and religious in monasteries knew them.  In 1951 Pope Pius XII began to restore the Triduum liturgies to prominence by mandating that the Easter Vigil be celebrated in the evening.  In 1953 Mass was permitted in the evening on certain days.  A reformed Ordo for Holy Week was issued in 1955 and took effect on 25 March 1956.   That is when the Sunday of Holy Week came to be called “The Second Sunday in Passiontide, or Palm Sunday”.  Matins and Lauds (Tenebrae, “shadows”) was to be sung in the morning.  Holy Thursday Mass was not to begin before 5 p.m. and no later than 8 p.m.  The idea was to make it easier for people to attend these all important liturgies.

The principal ceremonies of the Palm Sunday Mass include the blessing of palm branches (or olive branches in some parts of the world, such as Rome) and a procession around and into the church.  In the present Missale Romanum an interesting rubric about the procession harkens to ancient times: “At a suitable hour the “collect” is made (fit collecta)in a lesser church or in another appropriate place outside the church toward which the procession marches.”  Here is our word “collect” used to describe a gathering of people.  Ultimately, the prayer of this first gathering place is the origin of the name of the prayers of Mass we are examining again this year.

Also in the rubrics there is something helpful for our understanding of “active participation”:  “Then as is customary the priest greets the people; and then there is given a brief admonition, by which the faithful are invited to participate actively and consciously (actuose et conscie participandam) in this day’s celebration.”  Those words actuose et conscie are very important.  The Second Vatican Council, when using the term actuosa participatio or “active participation”, meant interior participation, the engaging of the mind, heart and will.  The Council Fathers did not mean primarily exterior participation.  Of course, exterior participation is the natural result of interior participation: we seek to express outwardly what we are experiencing within.  However, there is a logical priority to interior participation, which is by far the more important of the two.  Most people working in the area of liturgy today think that active participation means that everyone has to be doing something physically active, like carrying things and singing everything.  But active participation (made possible by baptism) is primarily active receptivity, listening and watching carefully, fully engaged with mind, heart and will.  This is where true active participation begins.  For participation to be authentic, it must begin interiorly.

At the end of the procession, when everyone is gathered in the church, the priest says the…

COLLECT - LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
qui humano generi, ad imitandum humilitatis exemplum,
Salvatorem nostrum carnem sumere
et crucem subire fecisti,
concede propitius,
ut et patientiae ipsius habere documenta
et resurrectionis consortia mereamur.

The vocabulary of today’s Collect is incredibly complex. We can only scratch at a fraction of what is there.  Our prayer was in older editions of the Missale Romanum and, before them, in the Gelasian Sacramentary.  In the Gelasian there is an extra helpful et: Salvatorem nostrum et carnem sumere, et crucem subire.  Wonderfully alliterative!  The editor of the Gelasian excludes a comma, which makes sense to me: qui humano generi_ ad imitandum…. There may be a touch of St. Augustine’s (+430) influence in the prayer.  In Augustine humilitatis appears with exemplum on close conjunction with documentum (ep. 194.3) and with documentum and patientiae in proximity to exemplum (en. ps. 29 en. 2.7).  In the context of the Passion Augustine says: “Therefore, the Lord Himself, judge of the living and the dead, stands before a human judge (Pilate), offering us a decisive lesson of humility and patience (humilitatis et patientiae documentum), not defeated, but giving the soldier an example of how one wages war (pugnandi exemplum): …”

There are two words for “example” here: exemplum…documenta. These words appear together in numerous classical and patristic texts. Our startlingly useful Lewis & Short Dictionary informs us that our old friend exemplum means, “a sample for imitation, instruction, proof, a pattern, model, original, example....”  Exemplum is a term in ancient rhetoric, an inseparable part of the warp and weft of the development of Christian doctrine during the first millennium.  For the Fathers of the Church, all well-trained in rhetoric, exemplum identified a range of things including man as God’s image, Christ as a Teacher, and the content of prophecy.   In Greek and Roman rhetoric and philosophy, an exemplum could have auctoritas, “authority”, the persuasive force of an argument.  When we hear today’s prayer with ancient ears, exemplum is not merely an “example” to be followed: it indicates a past event with such authoritative force that it transforms him who imitates it.  Today we hear humilitatis exemplum, the authoritative model of humility who is Christ – Christ in action, or rather Christ in Passion, undergoing His sufferings for our sake.  This becomes the foundational and authoritative pattern of the Christian experience: self-emptying in the Incarnation and Passion leading to resurrection.   Exemplum is augmented later in the prayer by documenta.  Documentum is also a “pattern for imitation” like exemplum but also in some contexts having the meaning of “a proof”, that is, a concrete demonstration that what is asserted is true: evidence.   In this case it is a paradigm after which we are to pattern and shape our own lives.  But this pattern or model itself actually has power to shape us.  Christ transforms us the baptized who are made in his image and likeness, after his perfect exemplum, and who imitate His exempla and documenta, His words and deeds. 

Consortium (from con-sors... having the same lot/fate/destiny with something or someone) classically is a “community of goods” and “fellowship, participation, society.”  Habere has a vast entry in the L&S.  The common meaning is “have”, but it also indicates concepts like “hold, account, esteem, consider, regard” as well as “have as a habit, peculiarity, or characteristic.”  Habere is doing double-duty with two objects, documenta and consortia.  This is why I use both “grasp” for the first application of habere and “have” for the second.  The meanings of the two different objects draw our two different senses of habere.   Patientia is from patior, “to bear, support, undergo, suffer, endure”, and it carries all its connotations as well as the meaning “patience”.  This is where the word “Passion” comes from.  We could say here, “examples of His long-suffering” or “exemplary patterns of His patient forbearance.”  Finally, note that nostrum goes with Salvatorem and not with carnem: caro, carnis is feminine and the form would have to have been nostram carnem.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Almighty eternal God,
who, for the human race,
made our Savior both assume flesh and undergo the Cross
for an example of humility to be imitated,
graciously grant,
that we may be worthy to grasp both the lessons of His forbearance
and also have shares in the resurrection.

More can be said about that phrase patientiae ipsius.  Ipse, a demonstrative pronoun, is emphatic and means “himself, herself, itself”.  Could we personify patientia to mean, “grasp the lessons of Patience itself” or even “of Patience Himself”?   That would be poetically sublime. 

In the fullness of time the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, the eternal Word through whom all things visible and invisible were made, by the will of the Father emptied Himself of His glory and took our human nature up into an indestructible bond with His own divinity.  He came to us sinners to save us from our sins and teach us who we are (cf. Gaudium et spes 22).  This saving mission began with