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

I don’t think I posted this one earlier.  Enjoy!   I think I might have the best place in Rome to watch the fireworks when they are near San Pietro.  As a matter of fact, folks have come to sit in my bathroom for the view!




If you were watching the Z-Cam tonight, you would have seen fireworks behind the dome of Sant’Agnese!

You’ve seen them before… shots of Roman evenings and sunsets. I guess I just can’t help myself.

You can see the swallows swooping around as they love to do in the mornings and evenings.

COLLECT:
Deus, cuius gratia iusti ex impiis
et beati efficiamur ex miseris,
adesto operibus tuis, adesto muneribus,
ut quibus inest fidei iustificatio
non desit perseverantiae fortitudo.

This prayer was not in pre-Conciliar editions of the Missale Romanum.  It had a precedent in the Sacramentarium Bergomense.  There are elegant parallels here as well as snappy rhythmic phrases.  This is a delight to pronounce.

SUPER LITERAL VERSION:
O God, by whose grace we are made
just people out of impious and happy people out of wretches,
be present with Your works, be present with gifts,
so that the fortitude of perseverance will not be lacking
to those in whom there is the justification of faith.

SMOOTHER VERSION:
O God, by whose grace we are made
into just people after having been impious and blessedly happy after being miserable,
be present to us now with your works, be present with Your gifts,
so that the strength of perseverance will not be lacking
to those in whom there is the justification of faith.

God, who created the universe and everything in it out of nothing, makes justified people out of the wicked and the sinner.  He makes those who are wretched and miserable into joyous children of God.  

One of the things that popped into my mind as I translated this prayer today was the verse of the awful Amazing Grace.   "Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) / That saved a wretch like me!"  The idea is that we are wretches before and remain always wretches, "wretch" being a description of our totally corrupt nature which remains corrupt even after baptism.

Catchy tune, of course, but that is not Catholic teaching.

Let’s have some catechism.

In the Fall of our First Parents the whole human race contracted original sin and our human nature was wounded.  On our own we are incapable of repairing the damage, for it is simply disproportionate to man’s powers to do so.  The one who is both man and God, however, was proportioned to this work and He repaired the breech.  When we are incorporated into His Person, we benefit from the merits of the Sacrifice He made on our behalf.  The way we are integrated into Him is, fundamentally, the sacrament of baptism.

In the sacrament of baptism we are at once both justified and sanctified.  We are justified in the sense that the debt we owed on account of our sins (including Original Sin).  God cleanses us of the guilt of those sins and we are just in His sight.  At the same time, we are also made holy by the indwelling of the Trinity.   We are cleansed and made pleasing at the same time.  Classical protestant teaching says that baptism justifies but we still remain filthy in our nature.  We are justified but not sanctified.  We remain interiorly corrupt
 no matter what we do, but Christ interposes Himself between us and the Father so that we appear to be clean even though we are not.  This is not Catholic teaching, of course.   For Catholics sanctification and justification are two sides of the same coin.   

Spinning this out a little more, as an example I recall from Lutheran doctrine that a justified person remains forever a sinner because of concupiscence, which is not removed by baptism.  Concupiscence describes the disordered desires and difficulty we have in controling our appetites we have because of the wounds to our will and intellect.  The baptized person is described by Lutherans as simul justus et peccator ... righteous and sinner at the same time.

On the other hand Catholics know that concupiscence is not in itself a sin.  Justification in baptism removes sin but not concupiscence.  Lutherans think concupiscense itself is sin.  Thus, they separate justification and sanctification from each other.  For them, concupiscence itself makes people sinners.  Concupiscence makes us guilty before God and it is never removed from us.  This was and is contrary to Catholic teaching.  The Council of Trent correctly taught that justification makes us righteous.  It condemned with an anathema the error that justification is only an "imputation" of Christ’s righteousness (which is at the heart of the Lutheran description of man as a heap of dung covered over with white snow).  Trent also condemned with an anathema the claim that concupiscence itself is sin.

We have been given great gifts by God, including sanctification.  Christ’s merits become our merits.   What we need to do is persevere in sanctity to the end of our lives.  It is difficult, this life of grace and sanctity, but it is possible.  This is part of what the late Pope was trying to show the world through the great emphasis he placed on beatifications and canonizations.  

I hear the movie is risible.

This from the NY Daily News.

Some quotes:

Most offered only lukewarm praise or shrugs of indifference.

Others laughed or jeered at parts of the nearly 2-1/2-hour thriller and dumped on star Tom Hanks’ performance as well as what they called a potboiler script.  ... "Nothing really works. It’s not suspenseful. It’s not romantic. It’s certainly not fun," according to Stephen Schaefer of the Boston Herald. ... The Cannes audience of critics – arguably the toughest in the world – clearly grew restless as the movie dragged on to a long sequence of anticlimactic revelations. ..."I kept thinking of the Energizer Bunny, because it kept going and going and going, and not in a good way," said James Rocchi, a film critic for CBS 5 television in San Francisco. ...One especially melodramatic line uttered by Hanks drew prolonged laughter and some catcalls, and the audience continued to titter for much of the film’s remainder.

 

I am going to rush out and see this one! 

COLLECT:
Deus, innocentiae restitutor et amator,
dirige ad te tuorum corda famulorum,
ut, quos de incredulitatis tenebris liberasti,
numquam a tuae veritatis luce discedant.

In the Gelasian Sacramentary this appeared on Saturday of the Octave of Easter.  However, The Redactors changed infidelitatis to incredulitatis.  A little "p.c." touch there, perhaps, and I don’t mean "post communionem".

LITERAL VERSION:
O God, restorer and lover of innocence,
direct the hearts of your servants toward You,
that, those whom you freed from the shadows of religious disbelief
may never deviate from the light of Your truth.

Obviously, incredulitas or "religious disbelief" as the superb Lewis & Short Dictionary reveals, could apply to just about any religion, and even more obviously in the context of this Collect the religion in question is Christianity.  Given the antiquity of this prayer, the original word infidelitas was a shot at the Jews and pagans still wandering in the shadows of errors.  

Let us not forget the document Dominus Iesus issued from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over the signature of Cardinal Ratzinger in 2000.  Here is a nice part:

22.  With the coming of the Saviour Jesus Christ, God has willed that the Church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity (cf. Acts 17:30-31). This truth of faith does not lessen the sincere respect which the Church has for the religions of the world, but at the same time, it rules out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism “characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another’”. If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.  However, “all the children of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results, not from their own merits, but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be more severely judged”. One understands then that, following the Lord’s command (cf. Mt 28:19-20) and as a requirement of her love for all people, the Church “proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6). In him, in whom God reconciled all things to himself (cf. 2 Cor 5:18-19), men find the fullness of their religious life”.

Just for kicks let’s stroll down memory lane to John Paul II’s 1998 document Ad tuendam fidem.  I really like these bits:

Canon 598 – § 1. Those things are to be believed by divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God as it has been written or handed down by tradition, that is, in the single deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and which are at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn Magisterium of the Church, or by its ordinary and universal Magisterium, which in fact is manifested by the common adherence of Christ’s faithful under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium. All Christian faithful are therefore bound to avoid any contrary doctrines.

§ 2. Furthermore, each and everything set forth definitively by the Magisterium of the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals must be firmly accepted and held; namely, those things required for the holy keeping and faithful exposition of the deposit of faith; therefore, anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Canon 1436 § 2 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, consequently, will receive an appropriate reference to canon 598 § 2, so that it will now read:

Canon 1436 – § 1. Whoever denies a truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or who calls into doubt, or who totally repudiates the Christian faith, and does not retract after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished as a heretic or an apostate with a major excommunication; a cleric moreover can be punished with other penalties, not excluding deposition.

§ 2. In addition to these cases, whoever obstinately rejects a teaching that the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising the authentic Magisterium, have set forth to be held definitively, or who affirms what they have condemned as erroneous, and does not retract after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished with an appropriate penalty.

Did you notice that above we read "all Christian faithful" and not "Catholics"?

I think you should all organize Ad tuendam fidem anniversary parties for tomorrow, 18 May.  Bring a questionable book and… well… have fun.

I am thrilled to report that a friend of mine has provided us with a version of The Internet Prayer in Mandarin Chinese.  It took time and effort for him to put this together, so I would appreciate you’re saying a prayer for him. 

CHINESE (MANDARIN)   NB: This may not appear correctly if you do not have the proper fonts.
  LISTEN
浏览网际网络祈祷文 汉语（华语）

全能永生的天主，
是您照您的肖像创造了我们人类，
并赐给了我们您的独生子—耶稣基督，
帮助我们发掘生命中的真，善，美。
在教会圣师怡铎主教（Saint Isidore）的代祷下，求您护佑我们，
让我们在浏览网际网络时，
能够善用五官三思，只做讨您喜悦之事;
并让我们以恒久的爱心来关爱生活中遇到的每一个人。
以上所求，是靠我们的主基督。啊们。

At a recent press conference that never took place a journalist shouted, "Hey, Holy Father!  Whaddya thinka Washington D.C.??"

"I haven’t been there for a while, but if given another chance, I’ll give it Wuerl."

BaDumBum

Mike Aquilina, a fellow patristicist, posted an amusing piece which you ought to look at.  He states he cannot find a link to the Fathers, however.  

I grant you, this is a task. At least it is a task to make a good link.  However, picking up on the Latin word bufo, perhaps something can be done.  My first reaction was make a connection with the first Georgic of Virgil.  I know that more for the great phrase exiguus mus, rather than for the reference to the bufo, but there it is. 

"But Father!" you say, "that’s not patristic!"  Yes, I know.  But let’s have some fun with it.

Augustine uses a form of bufo once, and not in a very interesting way; it is mostly a comment on word forms in De grammatica: regulae, namely, "Ab epicoeno struthio hirundo hirudo curculio bufo et talia. Ab u uocali solum neutrum, quod in singulari indeclinabile est, in plurali declinatur, ut cornu ueru genu tonitru:..."  blah blah blah  I do like the reference to the struthio or "ostrich" here, however.  Each year when we sing Tenebrae at St. Agnes in St. Paul (I think you have all heard of that place by now), in one of the Lamentations (I think on Saturday) we get the forelorn image of the struthio in deserto, which I always find amusing.  (I hope Dr. LAL, M.D. is reading this!)

Cassiodorus in De orthographia 5 is equally uninteresting and even more pedantic about the bufo.

You don’t get into any interesting texts until you move into later centuries.  To make a far too long post longer, medieval authors really have a thing about the poor little bufo who takes it on the chin, or whatever you call what they have, everytime.  Bernard of Clairvaux has something to say about the bufo but I would rather not write it here.  Look it up in the Vitae sancti Malachiae 41.  Even the critter loving Franciscan Bonaventure was pretty hard on the bufo (not to mention the Jews) when talking about the salvific water and Blood from Christ’s side in a Sunday sermon (6,6): "Hoc autem medicinali liquore impii Iudaei adeo sunt offensi ut ruinam mortis incurrerint et ruinam super ruinam multiplicarent spernendo medicamentum saluberrimum et antidotum quo genus humanum salvabatur simile bufonibus qui adeo offenduntur de bono odore fragrante de arboribus vinearum ut in fugam convertantur."  I mean, really, was that slander necessary?  Poor bufo.

The famous Thomas a Kempis in his Sermones ad novicios (Sermons to novices) is simply cruel to our bufo, though admittedly with real style!  Thomas the Novice Master is literally giving these kids hell, saying that to get over the desire for honors or even simply to stay in their cells for a little extra sleep, they should picture the ghastly flames of hell roasting their twisting crackling bodies.  They should summon to their minds the scariest things pppppossible, including the bbbbufo!  Get a load of those great active participles all strung together.  Read it aloud, shout, wave your hands around like flames as if you are trying to scare a bunch of novices!  "Pone in mente tua quae naturaliter horribilia videntur, scilicet ollam succensam pice plenam, sulphure foetentem; attende leones frementes, canes mordentes, serpentes saevientes: bufones corrodentes, dracones glutientes; et vinces citius turpissima vitia ad cor tuum maculandum per diabolum tibi immissa: fugabisque longius a te torporem mentis, somnolentiam corporis, et desiderium vanissimae laudis."  Wasn’t that fun?  You have got to read the whole thing sometime.

My favorite reference, is perhaps applicable to the whole DaVinci Code "thing".   I think Dan Brown would do well to keep this one in mind.  Keep in mind what a bad reputation the wretched bufo has by the time Thomas de Chobham (+c.1233/6) in his Summa de arte praedicandi says, and I think rightly:

Melius autem esset homini habere bufonem in ore, quam diabolum… It would be better for a man to have a toad in his mouth, than the devil.

COLLECT:
Deus, qui ad aeternam vitam
in Christi resurrectione nos reparas,
da populo tuo fidei speique constantiam,
ut non dubitemus implenda,
quae te novimus auctore promissa.

This prayer had an antecedent in ancient sacramentaries, such as the Sacramentarium Hadrianum, among prayers for Eastertide: Deus qui ad aeternam vitam in Christi resurrectione nos reparas, erige nos ad considentem in dextera tua nostrae salutis auctorem, ut qui propter nos iudicandus advenit, pro nobis iudicaturus adveniat.

An interesting word here is constantia.  This is a virtue.  In the potent Lewis & Short Dictionary the word constantia is found to mean “a firm standing, steadiness, firmness, immutability, unchangeableness, constancy, perseverance”.  Think of how this derives from con + sto (to stand).  By extension, constantia has a moral overtone as “firmness of character, steadfastness, immovability, constancy, self – possession”.  I used this in my Prayer for translators posted elsewhere in this WDTPRS blog. 

Dubito is a very cool word.  We run into it during the Triduum and at the end of the Litany of the Holy Cross: Respice, quaesumus, Domine, super hanc familiam tuam, pro qua Dominus noster Iesus Christus non dubitavit manibus tradi nocentium et crucis subire tormentum.  Back to dubito.  I want to give you too much information on this one.  Skip it if you are already bored.  L&S says (this is so cool): “for duhibitare, freq. from duhibeo, i. e. duohabeo (cf. habitare from habeo), to have or hold, as two, v. dubius; cf. also Gr. doiazo from doioo; Germ. zweifeln from zwei], to vibrate from one side to the other, to and fro, in one’s opinions or in coming to a conclusion (freq. in all periods and sorts of composition; in class. prose usually with negations or in a negative interrogation, as: non dubito, haud dubito, quis dubitat? etc.”  Neat, huh?  Well… it is to people like me.  Going on… “to waver in opinion or judgment, to be uncertain, to be in doubt, to doubt, question” and by extension “to waver in coming to a conclusion, to be irresolute; to hesitate, delay”.

LITERAL VERSION (revised after review and comments):
O God, who in the resurrection of Christ
procured us for eternal life,
give to Your people perseverance of faith and hope,
in order that we not doubt there must be be fulfilled,
the things which, you being their author, we know were promised.

SMOOTHER YET:
O God, who in the resurrection of Christ
procured us for eternal life,
give to Your people perseverance of faith and hope,
in order that we not doubt that the things which You
promissed are going to be fulfilled, as You were their author.

I think we have to take that nd form in implenda today as a future passive.  Surely there may be a dimension of necessity found in it (as is often the case in these nd forms.  However, Latin lacks a future passive participle and the nd fills that niche.  So, in the first reading I had it wrong, I think.  My commments below, will modify accordingly.

Many interesting things are happening here.  The overarching idea comes from constantia and dubito.  We are asking the one who dragged us back from eternal death and the agony of separation from God, to give us firmness of purpose.  But that’s not all.  It is one thing to have firmness of purpose in regard to what needs to be done.  It is another thing to do those things.  So, we also need a promptness of spirit.  Perseverance in intention and firmness to action are both need. 

Also, we ask for perseverance in faith and in hope.  Great.  How about love?  Where is charity?  I think the dimension of charity is to be found within the implenda, the promissa.  The things we fulfill and carry to completion are manifestations of our charity.  Consider that all good initiatives come from God.  Consider as well that we are called upon to carry out what God initiates.  We comform our will to His plan and then He makes us strong enough to bring it about.  Clearly our manifestation of charity comes in the actual carrying out of His will.  To paraphrase something you have already taken to heart: Christ has no hands on earth but yours.

Finally, as if there can be a finally with these prayers, Christ pulled us back from the brink, recovered us by offering Himself as payment (reparo) in a gloriously terrible Sacrifice.  We were promised our own Crosses.  We were told that we too would be called upon to suffer and make sacrifices.  In the role we have been given to fulfill (implenda) in this vale of tears, we will imitate our Lord.

Christ did not waver in His moment of truth.  How often do we waver in the face of things which are far less challenging, even pleasurable if, to tell the truth, we just get to work and do them? 

Remember that by the Sacrament of Confirmation, which deepens our baptismal character, we can draw great strength in moments of need.  The Enemy and our own wounded nature will make some choices and actions difficult.  Our hope and even our faith will be challenged.  We can call upon, so to speak, that Sacrament of Confirmation, our “confirmed character” for those actual graces we need when we are facing something difficult.  “O God, who by the sacrament of confirmation deepened and strengthened my bond with You and Your indwelling in me, in this moment of need give me the courage and force to do what I must do for Your glory and the sake of my soul’s salvation.”  

Right now (as of 1540 Rome time and 0840 EDT) I have the Z-Cam on.  It is pointed at the Church of St. Agnes "in agone", on the P.za Navona as I write. 

Given the kerfuffle about St. Agnes these days,... well… I thought perhaps you could pray to the great virgin marytr for the people involved while looking at a live shot of her church in Rome, at the place where some traditions have her martyrdom.  The skull of Agnes is in the church you see on the Z-Cam.

The Z-Cam might be looking somewhere else later, but will make sure we get to see Sant’Agnese often in the next days and weeks.

PS: As other choices I have Castel Sant’ Angelo, St. Peter’s, the Gianicolo, Sant’Andrea della Valle, Sant’Ivo with its strange cupola by Borromini, the Pantheon, and the Victor Emanuel monument.  Some of these can over lap.  This all might be more interesting than a shot of my desk while I work, right?

I am still receiving many messages from people upset about the doings at St. Agnes in St. Paul.  People are worried about the changes.  Some are afraid St. Agnes will fall apart.  Really afraid.  Others are angry about Fr. Altier. Really angry.

I have to say that if it weren’t for changes in the past, they wouldn’t have a parish they long to protect now.

Let’s leave aside the fate of Fr. Altier for a while.  Whatever beef he might have with whatever program, or whatever stick might be stuck in whatever craw of the chancery… blah blah blah… Fr. Altier couldn’t stay there at St. Agnes forever, right?  Eventually, he would have to go, even if it was because Death reassigned him with his inevitable scythe.  Priests come and priests go.  In Rome there is a proverb: Morto un papa, se ne fa un altro… A Pope dies, ya’ make another". 

A Catholic parish is no more a fly in amber than Holy Mother Church.

Let’s consider a few things.

When you enter the rectory of St. Agnes parish, there is a line of photos of the former pastors.  There were impressive pastors in that parish and impressive assistants. 

Consider that if Msgr. Alphonse Schladweiler had not left St. Agnes in 1957 to become the first Bishop of New Ulm (thus changing the borders of the Archdiocese), Msgr. Bandas would not have come.  Bandas was a peritus at all the sessions of the Second Vatican Council.  He implemented the liturgical changes mandated by the Holy See as they were written and intended, without experimentation or exaggeration or confusion.  If Msgr. Bandas had not died in office when he did, Msgr. Schuler would not have come.  Msgr. Schuler, a member and officer of international Church music organizations, came to St. Agnes in 1969, on the cusp of the Novus Ordo.  He brought with him an expertise in the Church’s sacred music as well as a spirit of obedience to doing what the Council asked.  He defended the school when the world (and women religious) was freaking out.  If Msgr. Schuler had not stepped down, Fr. Welzbacher would not have come.  Fr. Welzbacher, one of the five truly brilliant men I know, raised preaching to a new level (he must be heard to be believed) and also restructured the school in a time of great challenge.  He integrated his contributions into what others had done before.  The new man coming in and he will leave his stamp.

Moreover, all the men who have been around St. Agnes and who are now priests have gone on to be pastors, teachers, writers, etc., all applying what they gained their to the service of the Church in other ways.  One is now a bishop.  They spent many and happy hours, days, months, years at the parish.  They moved on to new tasks.  Change is necessary.

Years ago I wrote an article on change for the journal Sacred Music. I began that article with a quote from Il Gattopardo (in English The Leopard): "Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi…. If we want everything to remain the way it is, then everything must change".

Over at open book, Amy wrote a piece on my friend of many years and onetime companion of (my American) seminary Fr. Altier.  I want to have a little fun with something she wrote,

"...the parish of St. Agnes in St. Paul, MN, a parish famous among even people who have never been there in the same sense that St. John Cantius of Chicago and Assumption Grotto in Detroit are – well-known for traditional liturgy and fine music."

Respondeo dicendum, it might be better to say, "St. John Cantius and Assumption Grotto are known for liturgy and music in the same sense that St. Agnes is". 

My point is that St. Agnes has been at this a lot longer and, perhaps, with a more ambitious schedule, at least as far as sacred music is concerned. 

I remember occasions when the pastors of both St. John’s and the Grotto came to St. Paul to visit the former pastor of St. Agnes.  They wanted to pick his brains and see how things were done so they could implement programs in their own places.  Keep in mind that I know both the pastors of those wonderful places.  I count them as friends and admire them a great deal.

On a more international note, we had the rector of the famous Brompton Oratory as a visitor to the house I live in here in Rome.  When he learned that I was from Minnesota he asked me if I knew Msgr. Schuler (of St. Agnes).   We exchanged some tales and wound up with the amusing quip that rather than St. Agnes being known as the Brompton of America, Brompton is sometimes called the St. Agnes of England!  Very often here I meet people from all over the world who know about St. Agnes and ask all about it. 

There is nothing wrong with some healthy competition and ribbing, of course.  Here is the important thing to keep in mind: the success of one place takes nothing away from the successes of other places.  When something truly works then everyone benefits.  The more people who do things which work the more people benefit.  The pie is made bigger and more delicious by the wonderful slices we take from it, not smaller or limited.    This applies to many good things by which we nourish our faith.  Even blogs!

On Sunday, as I mentioned elsewhere, the Pope spoke a brief message in Latin to a group of students who had made a trip to Rome.  I transcribed what he said.  Here is the text and a short audio clip.

Laetamur Collegii Corderii discipulos magistrumque Romam advenisse;  Quos salutare volumus, eiusdem (eosdem ?) simul adhortantes ut per Latinum sermonem pristinae sapientiae thesauros copiose attingant.

 

Nice!

Monday of the 5th Week of Easter

COLLECT:
Deus, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis,
da populis tuis id amare quod praecipis,
id desiderare quod promittis,
ut, inter mundanas varietates,
ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia.

This prayers is same as the Collect for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time and also in the 1962MR on the Fourth Sunday after Easter.  In the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary you find it on the Third Sunday after the close of Easter. 

All those long "eeee" sounds produced by the Latin letter i are marvelous. Note the nice parallels: id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis as well as ibi…sint corda and ubi…sunt gaudia.  In the first line the genitives unius…voluntatis are elegantly split by the verb efficis.  A master made this prayer.

The pages of our opportunely situated Lewis & Short Dictionary divulge that varietas means “difference, diversity, variety.”  It is commonly used to indicate “changeableness, fickleness, inconstancy.”  I like “vicissitude.”  The adjective mundanus, a, um, “of or belonging to the world”, must be teased out in a paraphrase.  Efficio (formed from facio) means, “to make out, work out; hence, to bring to pass, to effect, execute, complete, accomplish, make, form”.   Voluntas means basically “will” but it can also mean things like “freewill, wish, choice, desire, inclination” and even “disposition towards a thing or person”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, You who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will,
grant unto Your people to love that thing which You command,
to desire that which You promise,
so that, amidst the vicissitudes of this world,
our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are.

Let us revisit that id…quod construction. We could simply say “love that which you command,” or “love what you command”, but to me that seems vague and generic.  Of course, we must love everything God commands, but the feeling I get from that id…quod is closer to what the Anglican version expresses: “love the thing which you command… desire the thing which you promise.”  This seems more concrete.  

We love and desire God’s will in the concrete situation, this concrete task.  A challenge of living as a good Christian in “the world” is to love God in the details of life, especially when those details little to our liking.  We must love him in this beggar, this annoying creep, not in beggars or creeps in general.  We must love him in this act of fasting, not in fasting in general.  This basket of laundry, this paperwork, this ICEL translation…. Hmmm…, didn’t I say it was a challenge?  God’s will must not be reduced to something abstract, as if it is merely a “heavenly” or “ideal” reality. “Thy will (voluntas) be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Today during the traditional Sunday Regina Caeli audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father spoke in Latin to a group of young people, Latinists, in attendance.  I will get the text for you later.  Today is a busy day.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 5th Sunday of Easter

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

A priest friend in the USA sent encouraging news.  Fr. WS of Omaha (NE) relates he is going to implement in one of the parishes entrusted to his charge a Holy Mass each Sunday sung in Latin.  Both his parish council and the local archbishop were happy for him to do so.  Fr. WS had many years ago frequented the famous St. Agnes Church in St. Paul (MN) where the long-time pastor Msgr. Richard Schuler had founded the flourishing program of sacred orchestral music for proper use in the celebration of Holy Mass with the Novus Ordo Missae.  St. Agnes had been founded for German speaking immigrants, but shifting demographics had changed the area dramatically.  The use of Latin and the marvelous treasury of the Church’s music on Sundays assured not only that the actual desires of the Second Vatican Council were being respected more in the observance than the breach but also that many people would come from far and wide to attend Holy Mass there on Sundays and feasts. 

Many priests have taken a page from Msgr. Schuler’s playbook, and his influence is felt in wonderful places like Assumption Grotto Church in Detroit and St. John Cantius in Chicago.  Here is some of what of Fr. WS wrote (edited):

“You already know that I was trained at the St. Agnes School of Liturgy under Monsignor Schuler and that I was the ‘voice’ on St. Agnes’ original recordings of the Masses for Christmas, Easter and Pentecost made back in the 80’s. …  St. Francis was a Polish national parish until about four years ago.  To preserve this heritage the hymns will be in English, Polish and Latin.  Now the parish is Anglo/Hispanic (with Hispanics making up the largest segment of the parish).  There is a Spanish Mass Sundays at noon.  We will have a sung High Mass on the major feasts.  The scripture readings, homily and prayers of the faithful will be in English.  The Mass will be ‘ad orientem’.  Eventually I hope to add a communion rail.  The parish is over 100 years old; this building was put up in 1968.  It has a beautiful mosaic of Christ rising from the tomb; the tabernacle is centered prominently on the back wall of the sanctuary.  Soon we will be revising the shrines of Our Lady and St. Joseph to improve their appearance.  The sanctuary is thrust-type with 6 banks of pews arranged in a u-shape.  The church seats around 400.”

Please join me in thanking Fr. WS for his efforts on behalf of the souls of the people entrusted to his care.  Father told me by phone he is hopeful the Latin will also be a unifying force for the different groups represented in his parish.  Furthermore, Father is obeying what the Council commanded: steps should taken to see that people are able both to sing and to speak in both Latin and their mother tongue those parts of the Mass that pertain to them (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 54). 

Friends, we need a new translation of the Roman Missal and we need it soon.  We also need more Latin.  We need a generous opening of the enormous treasury of the Church’s sacred music in Latin.  We need generosity in regard to the magnificent heritage we have a claim to as Catholics.  The Church must also foster new forms of music and art. This is beyond question.  Holy Church has for centuries given to humanity two great gifts reflecting God’s glory: saints and art.  Saints are living examples of the truth and beauty of God.  Sacred arts reflect God in non-living things, almost as if they were God’s grandchildren. 

The Catholic Church has ever been the greatest patroness of the arts the world has ever known.  Bishops and priests hold the keys to the treasury.  Laypeople should plead pressure and provide, but the clergy authorize what is integrated into the liturgical celebrations in our churches.   For this reason, seminarians need formation in these matters before ordination.  Steps should be taken in Catholic centers of high learning to offer training in all the sacred arts.  For two millennia, each generation of Catholics has given to the next precious artistic gifts.  They bequeathed to us their very best.  When future generations look back at us, what shall they say we gave them?
<supportLineBreakNewLine]—>

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR): 
Deus, qui nos, per huius sacrificii veneranda commercia,
unius summaeque divinitatis participes effecisti,
praesta, quaesumus, ut, sicut tuam cognovimus veritatem,
sic eam dignis moribus assequamur.

This prayer was originally in the 1962MR as the secret of the 18^th Sunday after Pentecost.  The ancient Gelasian Sacramentary had a similar prayer.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord God,
by this holy exchange of gifts
you share with us your divine life.
Grant that everything we do
may be directed by the knowledge of your truth.

Is this what the Latin really says?   Let’s look at vocabulary using the mighty Lewis & Short Dictionary. 

Before that, I must share something.  Last night I was gently mocked for this regular feature of these WDTPRS columns.  I was out to eat Chinese with the head of a Roman institute together with an official of a Vatican congregation.  They poked more than a little fun at me about all the vocabulary and details in these articles.  “I can just picture,” said one of them mirthfully, “the little old ladies in Minnesota reading with rapt attention about the Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine.”  Picking up on this, the other guy added, “I can just hear someone saying ‘Rats.  Father Z says to look this up, but I lent Volume Seven of the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament to Gladys last week!’”  Folks, I try to provide a little something for everyone in this series.  So, let’s get back to work.

Latin assequor is “to reach by pursuing” and “to attain to by an effort of the understanding”.  Mos means in the plural, as we have it today, “manners, morals, character” in the sense of “behavior, conduct.”  Think of the English word “mores”.  “O tempora, O mores!”, cried the consul M. Tullius Cicero (+43 BC) in his second oration against the dissolute L. Sergius Catilina or “Catiline”, who conspired with others like himself to unmake the authority of the senate, plunder the treasury of the Roman people, and set Rome ablaze.
<supportLineBreakNewLine]—>
The Lewis & Short Dictionary, which is so precious you would never lend it to Gladys or anyone else for that matter, says that commercium means “trade, traffic, commerce” but also “intercourse, communication, correspondence, fellowship.”  Every student of Latin knows that epistolarum commercium is an exchange of letters, correspondence back and forth.  Perhaps you will recall the phrase O admirabile commercium - “O wonderous exchange!”, the famous antiphon of Vespers and Lauds of the octave day of Christmas which has been set to glorious sacred music by composers of every age. 

This commercium is an Old Testament reference to the way in which man entered with God into a covenant, a contract and exchange (though between unequal partners).  Our new covenant with God is a commercium, the mysterious participation of the divine Second Person of the Trinity in our humanity, the way that the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we might be made the sons of God.

There is a strong juridical/legal overtone to the word commercium.  Ancient Romans classified people in roughly three different categories, cives (citizens), latini (those closely tied to Rome but without full status), and peregrini (foreign residents).  A civis had the rights, among other things, of connubium et commercium, the right to contract legal marriage and to conduct business and commerce (Latini had commercium and the peregrini had neither).   This also included inheritance rights.  Eventually in the dissolution of the Republic into the Empire these were the only truly valuable rights in the civitas (the body-politic, the body of the citizens united in a community including all the integrated cities, etc. – think of St. Augustine’s City of God…De civitate Dei).    

Returning to commercium Eamon Duffy gives us some food for thought (emphasis mine):

In marked contrast to many of the longer and more discursive prayers of other rites, especially those of the East, these crisp and often tightly structured prayers (read: Collect, “secret”, post-Communion) offer a unique glimpse of Roman tradition at its most profound and most memorable. Fidelity to the tradition would demand faithfulness in transmitting something at least of the quality of these prayers into the vernacular. In discussing the distinctive theological merits of the Roman liturgy, Cipriano Vagaggini, one of the key figures in the production of the Post-Conciliar Mass, singled out the notion of a "sacrum commercium", a holy exchange, in the eucharistic offering, which is so central in the Roman canon. Bread and wine, he wrote, "are chosen from among the gifts God has given us and are offered to him as a symbol of the offering of ourselves, of what we possess and of the whole of material creation. In this offering we pray God to accept them, to bless them and to transform them through his Spirit into the Body and Blood of Christ, asking him to give them back to us transformed in such a way that through them we may, in the Spirit, be united to Christ and to one another, sharing in fact in the divine nature."  Vagaggini was discussing the theological focus of the Roman Canon, but this notion of a "holy exchange" in fact underlies many of the most characteristic prayers of the Roman Rite, and could even be claimed, I think, as one of its defining features…. In the Missal its characteristic form is binary: prayers over the offerings or after Communion repeatedly explore the paradox that earthly and temporal things become, by the power of God, vehicles of eternal life. The Missal is never tired of this dialectic, and prayer after prayer rings the changes on it (cf. The Tablet of 6 July 1996, pp. 882-3).

The translation in preparation is of critical importance.  However, as I have repeatedly reminded you faithful WDTPRSers, a campaign is being waged against the norms established by the Holy See.  The norms found in Liturgiam authenticam from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments uphold precisely what Fr. Duffy spoke to above.  However, there are Catilines resisting these norms and working to usurp the process.  They want a style of liturgical language reflecting how people actually talk today, which is ever shifting and which tends to the lower denominators rather than the higher.  In contrast, the norms foresee a sacral style rooted in the structure of the prayers and the deeper traditions of English literature.  I want for you and for me a translation which will give us our inheritance, deep and beautiful prayers which sprang forth from the early Church and were written even in the blood of martyrs.  Even the newly composed Latin prayers are rooted in this living tradition. They too echo with our forbears’ deepest aspirations. 

SLAVISHLY LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who through the exchanges of this sacrifice which are to be venerated,
made us participants of the one and supreme Godhead,
grant, we beg, that, just as we have come to the knowledge of Your truth,
we may grasp it by means of worthy practices of life.

Our response to the wondrous gift that God offers us must be met with a response on our part that compels us in love and gratitude to conform our outward lives to what we have inwardly recognized as the Truth.  Lip service is not enough.  Action is required.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  5th Sunday of Easter

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003

Dare we to hope?  The 2 May 2003 edition of the Catholic Herald published in the UK provides a story by Simon Caldwell that the Pope is preparing “to lift restrictions on Tridentine Mass: English bishops request secret report from Latin Mass Society”.  According to the story, “John Paul II is understood to be ready to grant a "universal indult" by the end of the year to permit all priests to choose freely between the celebration of Mass in the so-called Tridentine rite used up to 1962 – before the disciplinary reforms of the Second Vatican Council – and the novus ordo Mass used after 1970.”   This document has been around for years waiting for a signature from the Holy Father.  It was scuttled once, in the late ‘80’s when the heads of European episcopal conferences caught wind of it and complained.  Apparently this is now seen as a useful tool, in keeping with the Pope’s commands in his Motu Proprio of 1988 Ecclesia Dei.  Also, in the story is the encouraging news that, “Last month, the Holy Father, who celebrated a Tridentine Mass last summer, published a command called Rescriptum ex Audientia to authorise the celebration of the old rite Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, by any priest who possessed an indult.”  This author is in Rome right now and will test this at the Vatican Basilica.  During the years I lived in Rome, I constantly witnessed rudeness and flak offered by the sacristans of the Basilica to anyone who used or intended to use the older form of Mass.  Complaints were made, of course, to no effect.  The word from those in charge of the Basilica under now retired Virgilio Card. Noè was that the older, “Tridentine”, form of Mass (and I am not making this up), “might confuse the laity.”   Aside from the fact that this condescension shows little grasp of the intelligence of laypeople, it is also divorced from reality.  On any given morning in the Vatican basilica you will see simultaneously at different altars, the Divine Liturgy celebrated by Ukrainian Catholics, the Syro-Malabar Rite from India, individual celebrations, mass con-celebrations, and the Novus Ordo Mass (with greater or lesser degrees of “making it up as you go”) in every language of the world including Latin.  My personal experience is that people know how to respond very well and properly to everything that pertained to them when the older form was used but were without a clue at certain points (without booklets or aids) during spoken Masses in Latin with the Novus Ordo (e.g., the response after the Mysterium Fidei or after the Our Father).  So, this Rescript is a piece of good news.

The Catholic Herald also claims that “the Vatican also asked the Scottish bishops, ahead of their five-yearly ad limina visit to Rome in March, to reveal what provisions they made for the celebration of the old rite Mass in their dioceses. Since the meeting, the Scottish bishops have stepped up their provision from just four a year in the whole of the country to at least one a month in Glasgow and Edinburgh.”  It looks to me as it there is a strong effort being made to create an ecclesial atmosphere conducive to talks with the SSPX and possible reconciliation. 

According to a report in the Adoremus Bulletin (vol. IX, no. 2 – April 2003) there was a plenary meeting in Rome of the Vox Clara committee (VC) from 12-14 March at the offices of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW).  This committee was set up in July 2001 to ride shot-gun, er um, act as a liaison between ICEL and the CDW to ensure that the new translation norms of Liturgiam authenticam (LA) are properly observed when the new liturgical books are prepared.    The VC considered a draft of document, called a ratio translationis which will guide the specific application of LA and provide the guiding principles of English translation work.  VC also looked at some translations of parts of the Missale Romanum.  So, everyone, the work is moving forward.  Would it be too much to ask you to offer some fasting and prayers for the VC committee and those who will be doing the work?  This is so important to our future worship in our churches, my friends.  In the meantime, the Holy See approved the English edition of the revised (1990) Rites of Ordination.  You might remember that it was, in my opinion, an earlier wretched translation of these all-important rites that served as ICEL’s Waterloo.  The rejection of that translation and the subsequent actions of the CDW marked the beginning of the dismantling of the “old” ICEL and its reshaping into a “new” entity.

When you are in Rome, you pick up all sorts in interesting tidbits.  For those of you who think that Latin is nearly dead everywhere, I learned yesterday that after Holy Week liturgies in the cathedral of Bamberg, Germany the whole congregation sang Compline in Latin.  Also, in Antwerp, Belgium at the Church of St. James (Greater) Mass is offered every Sunday in the language of our heritage replete with Gregorian chant.

POST COMMUNIONEM

LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Populo tuo, quaesumus, Domine, adesto propitius,
et, quem mysteriis caelestibus imbuisti,
fac ad novitatem vitae de vetustate transire.

This was mostly based on the Postcommunio of Monday in the Octave of Pentecost in the 1962MR: Adesto, quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo; et, quem mysteriis caelestibus imbuisti, ab hostium furore defende.  I guess that last part, “…defend (us) from the rage of enemies…” smacked a little too much of the diabolical, and therefore the Devil, and therefore hell and, clearly, it had to go. 

The vocabulary for our prayer today is rather straightforward.  Still, we can consult the azure-bound Lewis & Short Dictionary and deepen our knowledge of some of the familiar (at least to students of Latin) words.  The verb imbuo denotes, “to wet, moisten, dip, tinge, touch” and thus “to fill, tinge, stain, taint, infect, imbue, imbrue with any thing” and by extension “to inspire or impress early, to accustom, inure, initiate, instruct, imbue.”  Transeo is, “to go over or across, to cross over, pass over, pass by, pass” or also “to go or pass over into any thing by transformation, to be changed or transformed into a thing.”  For example, you might like the proverbial chicken “cross over” the road  or like the shepherds in Luke 2:15 “go over” to Bethlehem to see what had happened.  Were you to cross over a river, surely you would get wet and your clothes would be tinged and imbued with water.  Anything that passes through dye is certainly tinged.  Our souls are tinged and permanently marked with the Christian character when we are baptized.  We “transit” from old death over to new life. We “put on the new man” with our baptismal garments.  There is a prayer that may be said when putting on a surplice: “Indue me, Domine, novum hominem… O Lord, clothe me with ‘the new man’….”

The noun vestustas means, “old age, age, long existence” and novitas, “a being new, newness, novelty.”  By extension novitas also means “the condition of a homo novus, newness of rank.”  A novus homo or “new man” was a political and social upstart, a man without pedigree or ancient family background such as Gaius Marius (157-86 BC), the great military reformer, seven-time consul and eventual dictator of Rome.  He did not come from a patrician background and was thus sneered at by the Senatorial class as a “new man”.  Still, when there was no one else who could be put in the field against the chieftain Jugurtha rampaging in North Africa, whom no one had been able to subjugate, Marius raised an army from the poorer classes of Rome (capite censi or “head count”) and not from the land owner class as was always done in the past, and he paid for their equipment himself.   When the action was over, he secured public land to be distributed to them and thus secured their loyalty to him, and not to the Senate, forever.   His chief aide de camp was the notorious Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BC) who also became a dictator, a ruthless one.  Marius, now with a record as an effective general, would be asked to battle the Germanic Cimbri and Teuton tribes who had soundly pasted six generals and their legions.  Marius was successful in two major campaigns and thus came to be regarded as the savior of and “Third Founder” of Rome.    By securing the loyalty of the military to himself personally, Marius changed the face of Rome forever and paved the way for Julius Caesar and the following Empire.  However, all in all the idea of novus anything was pejorative.  In fact the term for “revolution”, a very much despised concept by the entrenched Roman autocracy, was res novae…. “new things”.  Pope Leo XIII would begin his famous encyclical of 15 May 1891 on social issues and the condition of workers and against the alarming rise of strange atheistic theories with the gloriously sculpted and ringing words, “Rerum novarum semel excitata cupidine,... Once the passion for revolutionary change was aroused—a passion long disturbing governments—it was bound to follow sooner or later that eagerness for change would pass from the political sphere over into the related field of economics.”  In ancient Latin terms, the novum was looked at with suspicion.

That is the way the novus homo and res novae were conceived of in worldly terms.  But our prayer today was clearly inspired by St. Jerome’s Vulgate version of Romans 6:4-5: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory (gloria) of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (nos in novitate vitae ambulemus)” (RSV), and also Romans 7:6: “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (in novitate spiritus et non in vetustate litterae)” (RSV).  Concerning novitas as the “condition of the novus homo” we can consult also Ephesians 2:14-15: “For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man (novum hominem) in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end” (RSV) as well as Ephesians 4:23-25: “And be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature (lit. “new man” – novum hominem), created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.  Therefore, putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (RSV).  Paul’s view of the old covenant and the freedom of the new covenant shape our Holy Communion this Sunday.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Merciful Father,
may these mysteries give us new purpose
and bring us to a new life in you.

Perhaps we can do a little better than this even if we eschew trying to make a lovely version suitable for the liturgy itself and just stick closely to a…

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We beg you, O Lord, propitiously to stand by your people,
and cause them, whom you have imbued with heavenly sacramental mysteries,
to cross over from the old state of being unto a new condition of life.

The imbuo (“moisten, tinge, imbue”) calls to mind several things.  At this time of year where I live there is a great deal of preparation for planting going on.  Seeds are being planted and seedlings raised (in a greenhouse) in preparation for transferal out of doors when the ground finally thaws and the threat of frost is over.  These seeds and baby plants must be kept warm and moist at all times and given good light.    I see older, dormant plants sprouting leaves and flowers and coming back to life.  Our heavenly Father loves us.   When we die in sin we are like cut-off branches or life-less sticks still rooted but pointing vainly to the sky.  While there is earthly life, however, there is hope of spiritual renewal.  We must avoid the threats and killing effect of the frost of near occasions of sin.  When we draw near to the source of all life, both physical and spiritual, our God like a master gardener tends us, moistens our dry souls, and brings us from a death-like state into a new and fruitful condition of living.  When we hear today’s prayer, conscious of the Real Presence within us at that moment and mindful of the progress of the Easter season moving towards the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, we can be confident indeed that God is standing with us.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Fifth Sunday of Easter

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2002

In WDTPRS last week I said we might review the translation controversy surrounding the now-in-force General Instruction of the Roman Missal’s (2002GIRM) paragraph #299, about the placement of the altar and the direction of celebration of Holy Mass.   Background: the U.S. Bishops’ Conference issued on 16 November 2000 a document called "Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture, and Worship" (BLS).  BLS was intended to replace the heinous 1978 statement Environment and Art in Catholic Worship which served at the foundation for the “denovation” of countless churches even though it really had no authority. BLS has a section about the placement of the altar in which it quotes 2002GIRM #299 (remember that what I now call the 2002GIRM had been released in Latin in 2000, far in advance of the release of the 2002 Missale Romanum). The bishops’ BLS gives an English translation of #299 in footnote #75:

In every church there should ordinarily be a fixed, dedicated altar, which should be freestanding to allow the ministers to walk around it easily and Mass to be celebrated facing the people, which is desirable whenever possible….

In the National Catholic Register of 7-14 April 2002, a statement was made that, according to the new GIRM, it is now preferable to celebrate Mass “facing the people.”  If the Register is making this mistake, it would appear that there was some serious damage caused from the mistranslation of #299 used by the bishops.  Let us look at #299.  The last time we examined it at length was in the third article of WDTPRS for the 2^nd Sunday of Advent in the year 2000:

Altare maius exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum peragi possit, quod expedit ubicumque possibile sit.

The English version in BLS (above) is faulty.  The translator failed to see that quod refers back to the main clause of the sentence. The bishops’ translator fell into the common trap of translating the Latin word by word, rather than reading the whole sentence. Their translator made #299 read as if there is a preference or even a requirement in the law itself to celebrate Mass facing the people. But #299 indicates nothing of the kind. That paragraph really says:

The main altar should be built separated from the wall, which is useful wherever it is possible, so that it can be easily walked around and a celebration toward the people can be carried out.  (Emphasis added)

This paragraph explains the distance of separation from the wall: at least far enough so that it can be used from either side, rather than just an inch or two of separation.  The Latin doesn’t even hint that Mass must be said versus populum.  It only provides that it can be.  And that is not an absolute, either. What makes this very troubling is that on 25 September 2000 the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments issued a clarification (Prot. No. 2036/00/L) regarding #299 in the new Latin GIRM. That clarification says:

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has been asked whether the expression in n. 299 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani constitutes a norm according to which the position of the priest versus absidem [facing the apse] is to be excluded.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, after mature reflection and in light of liturgical precedents, responds:
Negatively, and in accordance with the following explanation.

The explanation includes different elements which must be taken into account. First, the word expedit does not constitute a strict obligation but a suggestion that refers to the construction of the altar a pariete sejunctum (detached from the wall).  It does not require, for example, that existing altars be pulled away from the wall. The phrase ubi possibile sit (where it is possible) refers to, for example, the topography of the place, the availability of space, the artistic value of the existing altar, the sensibility of the people participating in the celebrations in a particular church, etc.

Clearly, there are continuing difficulties in providing dependable translations of the Latin texts. This particular error demonstrates that we need a good and accurate translation of the 2002GIRM – which is now in force – and we need it NOW.  Is it too much to imagine that the Holy See released the new GIRM appearing in the new 2002MR way back in the year 2000 so that we could have a good translation in hand at the moment it came into force? The texts of the new Latin GIRM and BLS can be found at the U.S. Bishops’ website (http://www.nccbuscc.org).

SUPER OBLATA:

LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Deus, qui nos, per huius sacrificii veneranda commercia,
unius summaeque divinitatis participles effecisti,
praesta, quaesumus, ut, sicut tuam cognovimus veritatem,
sic eam dignis moribus assequamur.

This prayer was originally in the 1962MR as the secret of the 18^th Sunday after Pentecost.  The ancient Gelasian Sacramentary had a similar prayer.

ICEL:
Lord God,
by this holy exchange of gifts
you share with us your divine life.
Grant that everything we do
may be directed by the knowledge of your truth.

So, what does the Latin really say?   Let’s look at vocabulary using the mighty Lewis & Short Dictionary when we want to dig deeper.  Since my computer’s automatic spelling checker is simply with child to change commericia into “commericial”, which doesn’t seem terribly liturgical, we start there.  Commercium means as you might suspect “trade, traffic, commerce” but also “intercourse, communication, correspondence, fellowship.”  Every student of Latin knows that epistolarum commercium is an exchange of letters, correspondence back and forth.  Perhaps you will recall the phrase O admirabile commercium - “O wonderous exchange!”, the famous antiphon of Vespers and Lauds of the octave day of Christmas, known traditionally as the Feast of the Circumcision, which has been set to music many times and in every age.  This commercium is an Old Testament reference to the way in which man entered with God into a covenant, a sort of business contract and exchange (though between unequal partners).  Now our new covenant with God is in the new commercium, the mysterious participation of the divine Second Person of the Trinity in our humanity, the way that the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we might be made the sons of God.   There is a strong legal overtone to the word commercium.  Ancient Romans classified people in roughly three different categories, cives, latini, and peregrini.  The civis had the rights, among other things, of connubium et commercium, the rights to contract legal marriage and to conduct business and commerce (Latini had commercium and the peregrini had neither).   Eventually in the dissolution of the Republic into the Empire these were the only two rights in the civitas (think of St. Augustine’s City of God…De civitate Dei) that were really valuable.  We get some food for thought from Eamon Duffy (cf. The Tablet  6 July 1996, pp. 882-3):

In marked contrast to many of the longer and more discursive prayers of other rites, especially those of the East, these crisp and often tightly structured prayers (read: Collect, “secret”, post-Communion) offer a unique glimpse of Roman tradition at its most profound and most memorable. Fidelity to the tradition would demand faithfulness in transmitting something at least of the quality of these prayers into the vernacular. In discussing the distinctive theological merits of the Roman liturgy, Cipriano Vagaggini, one of the key figures in the production of the Post-Conciliar Mass, singled out the notion of a "sacrum commercium", a holy exchange, in the eucharistic offering, which is so central in the Roman canon. Bread and wine, he wrote, "are chosen from among the gifts God has given us and are offered to him as a symbol of the offering of ourselves, of what we possess and of the whole of material creation. In this offering we pray God to accept them, to bless them and to transform them through his Spirit into the Body and Blood of Christ, asking him to give them back to us transformed in such a way that through them we may, in the Spirit, be united to Christ and to one another, sharing in fact in the divine nature."  Vagaggini was discussing the theological focus of the Roman Canon, but this notion of a "holy exchange" in fact underlies many of the most characteristic prayers of the Roman Rite, and could even be claimed, I think, as one of its defining features…. In the Missal its characteristic form is binary: prayers over the offerings or after Communion repeatedly explore the paradox that earthly and temporal things become, by the power of God, vehicles of eternal life. The Missal is never tired of this dialectic, and prayer after prayer rings the changes on it.

Translations are critically important, are they not?  

Our super oblata today gives all of us food for thought in light of the Church’s present needs.  Note well that Latin assequor is “to reach by pursuing” and “to attain to by an effort of the under standing” while mos means in the plural as we have it today, “manners, morals, character” in the sense of “behavior, conduct.”  Our response to the wondrous gift that God offers us must be met with a response on our part that compels us in love and gratitude to conform our outward lives to what we have inwardly recognized as the Truth.  Lip service is not enough.  Action is required.  how we need action in our Church today to conform our conduct to what we know and say is good and right and true.  O tempora, O mores!

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who through the exchanges of this sacrifice which are to be venerated,
have made us participants of the one and supreme Godhead,
grant, we beg you, that, just as we recognize your truth,
we may grasp it by means of worthy practices of life.

“O tempora, O mores!” So cried the consul Cicero in his second oration against the dissolute L. Sergius Catilina, who conspired with others like himself to unmake the authority of the senate, plunder the treasury of the Roman people, and set Rome ablaze.