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

Today is the feast of St. Vincent of Lérins (5th c.). 

He is the fellow who gave us a famous rule for distinguishing true Catholic teaching from heresy.  In a work called the Commonitorium, written ostensibly to help us remember the ideas, he underscored the importance of Holy Scripture as a rule of faith.  The first thing we do is submit our questions or doubts to Scripture.  However, since people disagree about what Scripture means, we must take into consideration the interpretation of Scripture which has been held since antiquity, by the whole Church (universality) and most agreed upon by those who have the authority to interpret. 

You might have heard this put in Latin as Magnopere curandum est ut id teneatur quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.

I am sure all of you, and especially fellow patristicist Mike Aquilina watch the blog Laudator Temporis Acti.  But if you didn’t get it today, do check out his messgae on frogs which the author called after the famous line from the play by Aristophanes.

In the meantime, I wish you all a good day with a hearty chorus of Brekekekex koax koax.

I fixed a link to an audio clip of His Holiness speaking in Latin to a group of students during his Regina Caeli address a couple weeks back.  Sorry about that.  I hope it works for you now.

There are interesting things to be found in today’s

COLLECT:
Semper exsultet populus tuus, Deus,
renovata animae iuventute,
ut, qui nunc laetatur in adoptionis se gloriam restitututm,
resurrectionis diem spe certae gratulationis exspectet.

This was not in any previous edition of the Roman Missal. There are ancestors of this prayer in the ancient Gelasian as well as the Veronese.  A couple phrases were taken from the Gelasian and scrambled up with a phrase from the prayer in the Veronese and, viola!, a new prayer!   This reminds me of a story about a fellow who visited the Benedictine Monastery of Solesmes after the Council.  On his tour of the place by the Abbot, he sees a monk sitting at a table surrounded by little pieces of paper and a pot of glue diligently snipping and cutting and pasting.  “Father Abbot,” he queried, “what is that monk doing.”  The Abbot responded, “He’s composing Gregorian chants for the Novus Ordo.”

I don’t think the vocabulary here is too hard.  Gratulatio means “a manifestation of joy; a wishing joy, congratulation; a rejoicing, joy”.  Another interesting meaning is “a religious festival of joy and thanksgiving, a public thanksgiving” when it is in a category of words like  obsecratio and supplication.  I was quite surprised to find gratulatio missing from Blaise/Dumas.  Blaise/Chirat however has a nice and useful entry indicating not only that gratulatio means expressions of joy, but also of greeting and of, more importantly, thanksgiving.  For example, the great curmudgeon Tertullian (Vx, 2,8) says gratulatio trepida, which this dictionary renders as “”salutation qu’on fait en tremblant”!  We find also that graulatio is used by Tertullian, Rufinus, and Augustine for expressions of thanksgiving for the favors of God.  I think this captures the force of today’s usage, don’t you?

Grammatically, as you are working this out the thing you might want to remember is that there is an esse missing which goes with that se…resititutum.   Don’t forget the tense of restitutum or that the pronoun se refers back to the subject of the verb laetetur.   

Also, the ut + esxpectet is more than like indicating a result.  Very often when we put Latin subjunctives into English we ought to be getting something that sounds indicative or future.  Don’t automatically think that just because it is subjunctive you must use a word like “may, might, should” etc.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Their youthfulness of soul having been renewed,
let Your people always rejoice, O God,
with the result that he who now rejoices that he was reestablished in the glory of adoption.
will long for the day of resurrection with the hope of grateful joy.

Notice all the re words: renovata, restitutum, resurrectionis.  Notice the “joy” words: exsultet, laetatur, gratulationis.   

Every once in a while when I need a break, I hop the train and zip up to Orvieto, famous for its white wine and glorious cathedral decorated on the outside with carvings by Maitani.  (There is also a really good restaurant I like there.)  In the cathedral there is a chapel with frescos painted by Signorelli.  One of them depicts the resurrection.  Perfect 33 year olds are literally crawling, pushing, drawing themselves up from out of a totally blank, flat, white surface.  The white plain represents how matter, even prime matter, is “zeroed out” until it receives its characteristics and properties by a form, which in the case of human beings is the soul.  You can see that at first they are skeletal and sort of transparent. Their bones take form and then flesh is added.  They seem also to be nearly asleep at first and then they wake up and look around, amazed.  One fellow is helping another drawing by pulling him out by his arms.  Perhaps they had been friends.  There are some rather courtly skeletons elegantly processing in from the right who are yet to be enfleshed.  Their ilium blades are slightly cocked in that stylish renaissance angle so typical of the era.  What I think is happening with some skeletons coming out of the prime matter and some sauntering in is that some of us will need an "extreme makeover", since our mortal remains will have been entirely consumed into other substances.  Some, however, will still have their bones and the makeover won’t be quite so complete.  Above, mighty angels blow trumpets, now in this direction, now in that direction.  The newly risen acknowledge them with upraised arms, listening to their call.  To our modern eye the expressions on their faces might seem at first to look like boredom.  We must remember the convention in painting of the era that the expression represents serene detachment and control of the appetites, peace of soul undisturbed by the impulses of our lower nature due to the wounds in our souls from original sin and bad habits.  In the resurrection, these will all be healed. 

In baptism, we “put off the old man” and put on the new.  St. Paul wrote: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”  What happens to us in our souls at baptism anticipates in a profound way what is yet to come.  As Christians we are living always in a state of “already, but not yet”.  We simultaneously long for what is to come, knowing that it has already happened.

I wonder where Il Poeta would have put spammers in the Inferno.

I recently put some spam catching plugins into the software running this blog and they are saving me a great deal of work.  However, I do have my drawbridge up and the boiling oil ready.  If you post a comment and it doesn’t appear right away it might need my approval.  Once one of your comments is approved, you shouldn’t have to wait any more.

Thanks for your patience if you have posted and wondered what was going on!

While I am pondering the subject, here is a super informal poll:

How do you pronounce “coadjutor”?

Do you say A) “coádjutor” or B) "coadjútor"?

I say B) "coadjútor".

You?