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

Here is a quick note to thank you who read, you who post and all those who have linked to this blog from their own. 

Your participation is much appreciated and I am grateful for the links.

However, maybe one or more of you can explain to me the whole St. Blog parish/ring/aggregator thing some day. 

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Trinity Sunday

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

Feedback.  PM of CA wrote an epistle (edited): “Thank you for all of your great work with the blog (www.wdtprs.com) ....  You have inspired me to write to the appropriate bishops regarding the new translations and I pray that all of our efforts are successful.”  Thanks for that, PM.  In June the American Bishops will vote on the draft translation.  The English speaking world is waiting for the USCCB.  In May, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, His Eminence Francis Card. Arinze, wrote to the President of the USCCB and, therefore, to the whole episcopal conference.  He reminded them that they have work to do, that their work must be done according to the norms issued by the Holy See, and that certain excuses just don’t cut the mustard. 

Some American bishops campaigning against the Holy See’s translation norms advance the neoLefebvrite notion that just because the translations are some thirty years old now they shouldn’t be changed.   That isn’t a good argument.  Cardinal Arinze put it very well in his letter: “…it is not acceptable to maintain that people have become accustomed to a certain translation for the past thirty or forty years, and therefore that it is pastorally advisable to make no changes.”  When you write kind and respectful letters to your own bishops this week, be sure to let them know that you pray for them.

Fr. WRF writes by e-mail: “Perhaps this is just a fantasy, but would it be too much to hope for a Sacramentary for use in the United States which had the Latin text and the English translation in parallel columns????”  Well, simply put, Yep!  The translation they would put in that other column is still a twinkle in the eyes of the bishops.  Perhaps the upcoming vote will help speed its gestation.  In the meantime, keep using the Latin Missale Romanum for all your liturgical needs during Mass.

I am writing this on the observance of Memorial Day in the USA.  On the WDTPRS internet blog fellow Patristic scholar and blogger Mike Aquilina posted an edifying comment: “I remember reading the story of Father Lawrence Lynch, an army chaplain at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. When he saw a man fall mortally wounded, he ignored orders to stay put and leapt from his foxhole to give the soldier last rites. As Father Lynch held up the Host, a shell exploded nearby and killed the priest instantly. Witnessing this scene, the officer who had ordered Father Lynch to stay in the foxhole scrambled to his side to take the sacred Host from his hands and consume it, lest it be desecrated.”  Thanks for that Mike.  Not only are stories of our fallen heroes inspiring, but at last I have heard of an occasion when the propriety of Communion in the hand was without dispute.

In the early Church no special day was designated for the Most Holy Trinity, but to combat the Arian heresy Catholics developed Creeds as well as an office for Sundays having canticles, responses, a preface, and hymns.  In the ancient Gregorian Sacramentary we find prayers and the Preface of the Trinity.  Pope John XXII (+1334) ordered a universal feast in honor of the Trinity on the first Sunday after Pentecost.  This day was raised to the dignity of a First Class feast by Pope St. Pius X.  It was made a Solemnity for the Novus Ordo.  There is a wonderful logic to the timing of this feast.  We focus on the Son’s Ascension to the Father, then the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and then the Triune God the Sunday after.  Today we celebrate our constant profession of belief in doctrine of a Holy Trinity, the most fundamental of Christian truths and most mysterious of all dogmas.  God the Father created us through the Son. God the Son redeemed us and revealed us more fully to ourselves (GS 22). God the Holy Ghost sanctifies us in our Holy Church. 

Here is our prayer for today’s Solemnity.  It is also the Secret of the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity in the 1962MR. 

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):
Sanctifica, quaesumus, Domine Deus noster,
per tui nominis invocationem,
haec munera nostrae servitutis,
et per ea nosmetipsos tibi perfice munus aeternum.

To get at what the prayer really says we can look to our old friend the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary.  The verb perficio means “to achieve, execute, carry out, accomplish, perform, dispatch, bring to an end or conclusion, finish, complete.”  Perficio thus has the impact of “completing” and “perfecting”.  According to the resource we calls Blaise/Dumas on liturgical Latin, servitus is “submission to God” and also “service of God” especially on the part of priests.  Blaise also indicates that nostra servitus is tantamount to saying “nos, servi tui… we/us, your servants”.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord our God,
make these gifts holy,
and through them
make us a perfect offering to you.

SUPER LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Sanctify, we entreat You, O Lord our God,
these sacrificial offerings of our servitude
by the invocation of Your hallowed name,
and through them bring us ourselves to completion as an everlasting offering to You.

REWORKED LITERAL VERSION:
By the invocation of Your holy name,
we entreat You, O Lord our God,
sanctify these sacrificial offerings of our submissive service
and through them bring us to perfection as an everlasting offering to You.

The idea here is that by our unity with the Triune God, the Trinity of Divine Persons, we reach the goal for which we were made.  We come to our completion only in unity with God.  We can perceive this in our own lives.  Something in us will always be lacking so long as we are estranged from God and His plan.  The great Bishop of Hippo St. Augustine (+430) exclaimed at the beginning of his Confessions:“You move us to delight in praising You, for You formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”  Some of you will remember the basic questions of the Baltimore Catechism. 

Does this sound familiar?  “Q. Why did God make you?  A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.”  We were made for communion with the Holy Trinity.

What do we believe about the Trinity?  I cannot do better than to quote great Creeds.  You know the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed from Mass.  Taste now the so-called Athanasian Creed (or Symbolum Quicumque), which probably came from 5th century Latin Gaul and was attributed to the Greek speaking St. Athanasius of Alexandria (+373).  Read this aloud and savor the lack of ambiguity!

Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the Catholic faith.  Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally. Now this is the Catholic faith: We venerate one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity (unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in unitate veneremur), neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. For the Father is one Person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another.  But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty.  What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit.  Uncreated is the Father; uncreated is the Son; uncreated is the Spirit.  The Father is infinite; the Son is infinite; the Holy Spirit is infinite. Eternal is the Father; eternal is the Son; eternal is the Spirit: And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal; as there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings, but one who is uncreated and unlimited.  Almighty is the Father; almighty is the Son; almighty is the Spirit: And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty.  Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God. Thus the Father is Lord; the Son is Lord; the Holy Spirit is Lord:  And yet there are not three lords, but one Lord. As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so Catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords.  The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son. Thus there is one Father, not three fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three spirits.  And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three Persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal (coaeternae sibi sunt et coaequales); and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three Persons.  Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the Trinity.

This Creed echoes still fifteen centuries later in Pope Paul VI’s wonderful Credo of the People of God (in Sollemni hac Liturgia – 1968):

We believe that this only God is absolutely one in His infinitely holy essence as also in all His perfections, in His omnipotence, His infinite knowledge, His providence, His will and His love. He is He who is, as He revealed to Moses, and He is love, as the apostle John teaches us: so that these two names, being and love, express ineffably the same divine reality of Him who has wished to make Himself known to us, and who, "dwelling in light inaccessible" is in Himself above every name, above every thing and above every created intellect. God alone can give us right and full knowledge of this reality by revealing Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whose eternal life we are by grace called to share, here below in the obscurity of faith and after death in eternal light. The mutual bonds which eternally constitute the Three Persons, who are each one and the same divine being, are the blessed inmost life of God thrice holy, infinitely beyond all that we can conceive in human measure. We give thanks, however, to the divine goodness that very many believers can testify with us before men to the unity of God, even though they know not the mystery of the most holy Trinity.  We believe then in the Father who eternally begets the Son, in the Son, the Word of God, who is eternally begotten; in the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Person who proceeds from the Father and the Son as their eternal love. Thus in the Three Divine Persons, coaeternae sibi et coaequales, the life and beatitude of God perfectly one super-abound and are consummated in the supreme excellence and glory proper to uncreated being, and always "there should be venerated unity in the Trinity and Trinity in the unity (semper unitas in Trinitate et Trinitas in unitate veneranda est)."

Creeds and prayers of Holy Mass cannot include every possible idea, but they express a great deal.  The words we use to pray and to confess our Catholic faith are crucial.  Changing words changes concepts.  Pray now that those tasked with preparing translations will, with God’s help, be faithful in their charge.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Trinity Sunday

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005

JM writes via e-mail: “When a new The Wanderer arrives in the post I always turn first to your column. It is with trepidation that I quibble with one so versed in the nuances of language. However it seems to me that one of the problems confronting the Church today is the confusion of Church canon with the institutions of democracy. Should you not refer to the ‘investiture’ of our new Pope rather than to his ‘inauguration’?”   Okay, JM, that sounds fine.  Let’s hope we don’t have to concern ourselves with this choice again for a long time.   Do consult, however, your own trusty well-thumbed Lewis & Short Dictionary and reassure yourself that the word “inauguration” is from inauguro stemming from the ancient Roman religious practice of augury, “to take omens from the flight of birds, to practice augury, to divine”.  Priests would watch the patterns made by birds flocking in the skies thereby make predictions about the future.  With more relevance to our topic inauguro means also, “to give a certain sanctity to a place or (official) person by ceremony of consulting the flight of birds, to consecrate, inaugurate, install.”  So, “inauguration” will work, but if it creates confusion, we can surely find a clearer word.

Here is an anecdote you will not find anywhere else.  During the inaug… investiture Mass of Benedict XVI, I was with the press corps on top of one the colonnades flanking the area where the altar was.  Right after the Holy Father was invested with his pallium and Fishman’s Ring, an odd thing happened.  A singular crow flew out from behind the top of the Basilica’s façade, circled the area over the altar, loudly cawed a few times and then flew away.  This was amazing.  There are in Rome great flights of swallows and ubiquities of sparrows this time of year and, alas, vast lofts of pigeons and flocks of seagulls, but murders of crows are scarce.  They simply don’t come around venues with large numbers of people and they tend not to be alone.  In art and statuary the glorious St. Benedict (+c. 547) is normally depicted with a crow.  A biographical dialog once attributed to the great St. Pope Gregory I (+604) recounted that Benedict was accustomed to feed a crow with bread at his table.  One day the crow saved Benedict from being killed through a loaf of bread that had been poisoned.  The crow flapped and hopped about cawing a warning against the envenomed loaf.  This is why in art Benedict has his crow.  I am not sure what to divine from the appearance of the crow at Pope Benedict’s Mass but I was pleased to see and hear him around the place, alone and not with his murder. 

The collective nouns for birds makes me wonder about the collectives for all the clergy and prelates gathered for that investiture Mass.  We had, of course, a college of cardinals.  Could we say, perhaps, a committee of bishops, an ostentation of monsignors, a quarrel of priests, a huddle of deacons and a chattering of seminarians? WDTPRS wants to know.

Apropos the Trinity, on the coat of arms of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, now gloriously reigning (I love saying that), in the principle place there is a seashell, a scallop.  The Holy Father said that the scallop on his crest came from a story recounted about St. Augustine of Hippo (+430).  Papa Ratzinger is deeply rooted in the Fathers of the Church, particularly St. Augustine.  Augustine’s treatise on the Trinity is one of the greatest works of systematic theology ever penned.  In his treatise he delved into this awesome mystery fully aware of our incapacity to grasp its reality.   An oft depicted medieval legend narrates how Augustine, at the seashore one day, saw a child vainly attempting to empty the sea into a hole in the sand with a shell.  The bishop remarked that this was an impossible task.  The child, really an angel, riposted that Augustine’s project of trying to grasp the Trinity with human reason was more impossible yet. 

Small metal scallop shaped scoops are often used to pour water when conferring baptism as the Trinitarian formula is spoken.  The scallop is also the symbol of pilgrims.  For centuries they would fix a shell to their cloaks or hats when traveling to Jerusalem, Rome or other holy sites.  The Church and all of us her baptized members are pilgrims in this world traveling toward the heavenly Jerusalem.  The origin of the Trinitarian baptism scallop is probably a confluence of both traditions, that of the pilgrim and that of Augustine’s anecdote.  Now it is on the coat-of-arms of Benedict, gloriously reigning.  But now let us move to today’s Latin prayer, substantially rewritten, which has roots in the Collect for this same Sunday in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal. 

COLLECT - (2002MR):
Deus Pater, qui, Verbum veritatis
et Spiritum sanctificationis mittens in mundum,
admirabile mysterium tuum hominibus declarasti,
da nobis, in confessione verae fidei,
aeternae gloriam Trinitatis agnoscere,
et Unitatem adorare in potentia maiestatis.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father,
you sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.

What does the Latin really say?  A key to this Collect is maiestas.   In the writings of the Fathers of the Church maiestas is conceptually related to gloria.  We have seen what follows more than once in these columns, but since you are no doubt giving out gift subscriptions let us review this for the WDTPRS newcomers.  In the Latin Fathers Sts. Hilary of Poitiers (+367), Ambrose (+397) and in early liturgical texts, maiestas/gloria has to do with more than simply fame, celebrity or splendor of appearance.  The Latin liturgical gloria is the equivalent of biblical Greek doxa and Hebrew kabod.  Latins also translated doxa with the words like maiestas and claritas. It has to do with man’s recognition of God as God and the acknowledgment of the salvation won for us by Christ, crucified and risen. At the same time this “glory” is a power of God that transforms us into what He is.  “Glory” in this sense is the salvation which the Risen Christ communicates to us, a sharing of His divine power which transforms us for eternity.  This was foreshadowed in Moses’ meetings with God in the tent.  When God came to speak to Moses He descended like a cloud (Hebrew shekinah).  When Moses came forth from the shekinah his face and shone like the sun and had to be veiled.  In our Collect we adore the gloria Trinitatis and the maiestas Unitatis, which has potentia.  In the L&S we see that potentia means, “might, force, power”.  The majestic glory of the Trinity is more than mere splendor.  It is transforming power. 
<supportLineBreakNewLine]—>
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God the Father, who, sending into the world
the Word of Truth and the Spirit of sanctification,
declared Thy wondrous mystery to men,
grant us, in a confession of true faith,
to recognize the glory of the eternal Trinity,
and to adore Its Unity in the power of majesty.

In this Collect there is a reference to those moments in Scripture when God granted a manifestation, an epiphany of the Trinity and of the glory of God.  At Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan the Holy Spirit was seen in the form of a dove descending and the voice of the Father was heard (cf. Luke 3).  Before going to His death in Jerusalem Jesus was transfigured before the eyes of Peter, John and James (cf. Matthew 17) and God again revealed the wondrous mystery (admirabile mysterium) that He is Three in One, a Trinity of divine Persons.  In our confession of true faith (vera fides) in the Creed we recognize (agnoscere) God to be Three and One.  The Triune God is God the Father, God the Word of Truth, God the Spirit of sanctification, One God in three eternal divine Persons.  In the articles about prayers used during the Conclave we learned the difference between cognosco and agnosco.  The L&S says for agnosco, “as if to know a person or thing well, as having known it before, to recognize: agnoscere always denotes a subjective knowledge or recognition; while cognoscere designates an objective perception.” Man can reason toward this on his own, as did the pagan Neoplatonic theologians, but only by the gift of faith, of grace, and of divine revelation enable us to profess (confiteor) the Trinitarian mystery fully, in an authentic way.

If you are faced with trying to explain this to someone, you might consider this.  In the mystery of the One and Threefold nature of God we believe that, from all eternity, before material creation and time itself, the One God desired a perfect communion of love and therefore expressed Himself in a perfect Word.  This was always so in an absolutely all embracing single instant of being in which there can be no distinction of past, present, or future, no sequence of events in the way we observe things bound in matter and time as we are.  The Word God uttered beyond and outside of time was and is a perfect self-expression, containing all that God is, perfectly possessing every characteristic of the Speaker: being, omniscience, omnipotence, truth, beauty, and personhood.  Thus, from all eternity there were always in perfect unity the divine Persons – the God who spoke and the Word who was spoken, the God who Generates and the God who is Generated, true God with and from true God, God Begetter and God Begotten, distinct Father and distinct Son having the same indivisible divine nature.   There was never a time when this was not so.   These two Persons eternally regard and contemplate each other.  From all eternity they knew and loved each other, each embracing the other in a perfect gift of self-giving.  And since a self-gift of these perfect divine Persons, distinct while having but one divine nature, is a perfect mutual self-gift, perfectly given and perfectly received, the very Gift between them also contains all that each of the Persons have: being, omniscience, omnipotence, truth, beauty, and personhood.  Thus, from all eternity there are three divine Persons having one indivisible divine nature, God the Father, God the Son and the perfect mutual self-gift of love between them, God the Holy Spirit.  This is the foundational saving doctrine we believe in as Christians and which we celebrate on Trinity Sunday.   This is the One and Three God in whose image and likeness we are made.  At the core of everything else we believe in and hope for, we will find this mysterious doctrine of divine relationship, the Triune God.

The communion of Persons in the Trinity is written into our beings as images of God.  Our dealings with others ought to reflect the communion we were created for in God’s loving plan.  We must also do our best to give the Trinity glory here in all that we do, think and say so that we may merit a share of Its divine transforming glory for eternity. 

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  Trinity Sunday

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003

Some feedback from FA in Italy (my translation): “I attended the Holy Mass celebrated by His Eminence Card. Castrillón-Hoyos in S. Maria Maggiore: it was a beautiful day.  There were at least 200-2500 people, and not just the usual gloomy and sour traditionalists… there were many young men and women, some with veil and some not, but all very happy to be there and very focused.  There were many families with young children.  Some pessimists wanted to pick at details in order to find flaws in this special day.   I think that in the main it was a great success both for the Curia and for the more reasonable traditionalists…. The prevailing mood was one of gratitude toward the Holy Father.  For one day, some broken hearts bled a little less and some people discovered that the Church is more complex than they had dreamed, for good or for bad.  It is certain that if the Church “lives from the Eucharist” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia) then some would do well to read the Holy Father’s writings and rethink how Mass ought to be celebrated and how the Church is to be built up among the people.”  Thanks, FA.  Your comments underscore for me the contrast between the false and feigned “tolerance” preached by many of the (seemingly) more progressive stripe and, on the other hand, the fruits of an authentic diversity and tolerance in the Church.  Also, as you point out, the way we celebrate Mass is inextricably connected with how the Church is built up amongst God’s people and, therefore, what characteristics that people of God will have and reveal to the world around them.  Of course, the use of Latin in both the older rite and the Novus Ordo will be central to this, but so will celebrations using the vernacular, which isn’t going to go away.  Thus, translations remain an issue of urgent and critical importance even for those who rarely or never attend Novus Ordo Masses in the vernacular.  Good translations will benefit everyone because they will serve to build up the Body of Christ.  The whole point is how, as Christians humbly obedient to our vocations of building the living temple the Church, are we going to build up the people of God for His glory and our salvation?  Is this sacred calling to be served by presenting anything less than the true and beautiful content of all the Church has to give, in her liturgy and her teachings?  Also, how is it to be served by acrimony, pettiness and bickering?  

POST COMMUNIONEM

LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Proficiat nobis ad salutem corporis et animae,
Domine Deus noster, huius sacramenti susceptio,
et sempiternae sanctae Trinitatis
eiusdemque individuae Unitatis confessio. 

This was the Postcommunio of the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity in the 1962MR.  There is a pleasant rhyme herein of susceptio and confessio, three syllable words preceded by words of four syllables and both deserving a little closer inspectio.

The indomitable Lewis & Short Dictionary indicates that a susceptio is “a taking in hand, undertaking” and “an acceptance”.   This is a substantive derived from the verb suscipio.   The deponent verb confiteor gives us the noun confessio, which means in its basic meaning “a confession, acknowledgment” and thus also “a creed, avowal of belief” and more specifically in the Latin Vulgate “an acknowledgment of Christ” (Rom 10:10, Heb 3:1) and therefore in the early Church “an acknowledgment of Christ under torture; and hence, “torture, suffering for religion’s sake” (Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 1).

A review of vocabulary is always important and can provide some new insights into the deeper meaning of a prayer, but often the structure or word order can give clues as well.  Today we have one main very proficiat, coming from proficio (“to profit, derive advantage” and “to be useful, serviceable, advantageous, etc.,”) an old friend of WDTPRS vets.   This noun has two subjects, susceptio and confessio.   Susceptio is further specified by huius sacramenti (“reception of this sacrament”) and confessio is delineated in two ways, Trinitatis (“of the Trinity”) and Unitatis (“of the Unity”).  Often in Latin we will have a sentence structure of noun and then, frequently at the very end, main verb, with many other clauses and material in between which can be pealed open like layers of an onion.  Here, the verb is out front as the very first word and the final subject noun is the last word.   For me, this structure emphasizes the nouns susceptio and especially confessio and the intimate relationship between them as well as the concepts that are attached to them, that is, the intimate bond at the moment of Communion between our reception of Christ’s Body and Blood with our “confession” of a God who is Triune – Three distinct divine Persons having one indivisible divine nature.  Furthermore, the theme of distinct elements in indivisible unity is even carried into the effect we hope for from the act of Communion in Mass: “health” of both “body and soul”.  Latin salus is “a being safe and sound; a sound or whole condition, health, welfare, prosperity, preservation, safety, deliverance” and also in Christian contexts such as the Vulgate “salvation, deliverance from sin and its penalties.   It can be rendered as both “health” and “salvation”.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):

Lord, God,
we worship you, a Trinity of Persons, one eternal God.
May our faith and the sacrament we receive
bring us health of mind and body.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:

May the reception of this sacrament, O Lord our God,
and also the confession of our faith in the holy everlasting Trinity
and of the undivided Unity of the same,
profit us for the salvation of body and soul.

We have pairs of terms in this Latin prayer which underscore relationships: corpus and anima, susceptio and confessio, Trinitas and Unitas.   Each element is necessary for and balances the other.

Humans are by God’s design persons comprised of both body and soul (corpus et anima).  By contrast, angels are persons having only a soul but no body.   The temporary separation of body and soul results in death.  Their reunion at the end of time produces the resurrection of the flesh.   God loves us so much that he provides sustenance for both constituent elements.  In Holy Communion we have a food which our body transforms into what it is (flesh and blood) and which transforms our souls in to what It is (more perfect images of the Triune God after the Person of the Risen Christ).  For us to participate in this mysterious exchange of transformations we must both inwardly and outwardly conform to the transcendent reality we seek to embrace and be embraced by. Thus, before we can receive the transformed and transforming Host in Communion, we must be in an authentic communion of faith both with a larger group of believers and partakers called the Chur