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

The speech of H.E. Arthur Roche Bishop of Leeds and chairman of ICEL has been posted.

There were sensible things in the speech. 

In the WDTPRS articles I have spoken of "courtly" language.  Here is what bishop Roche said:

 

This might be called the ‘courtesy’ of the Missal. Liturgiam authenticam, insisting that translators respect the forms of expression found in the Liturgy, encourages us to speak humbly and courteously to God. But forms of courtesy vary from region to region: you know, for instance, how bishops are addressed differently in different countries. Courteous requests are often made in the form of questions like would you turn on the light? which do not seem appropriate for the Liturgy, since while Hebrew prayers often ask questions of God, Latin ones do not. In consequence, deprecatory language, which is necessary for a faithful translation of the Liturgy, does not come readily to hand. Translators have found that they need to stay close to the Latin in order to remain faithful to it, and users of these texts will be learning a new language of liturgical prayerful courtesy.

 

What about thie idea that the translations should get the "gist" of the prayer in whatever modern idiom is being used at the time?

 

Dynamic equivalence has become an outmoded idea: even its originator, Eugene Nida, ceased to use it in his later writings. Over the last thirty years specialists in language have become more aware that the form we choose for an utterance is itself expressive of our purpose in speaking. This is particularly important when we make requests. It is one thing for me to say turn on the light and another for me to say would you turn on the light? Both utterances convey the information that I want the light to be turned on by you. But we speak not only to inform, but also to persuade.

 

And…

 

Finally, let me consider with you the translation of et cum spiritu tuo. As you know, the translation of this as and with your spirit is required by Liturgiam authenticam. However, this translation cannot be understood without reference to St Paul, who will often address a person, for example Timothy, by referring to your spirit rather than simply to you. What is the significance of this? Well, he is addressing someone close to God who has God’s spirit. So when we reply and with your spirit we are indicating that we are part of a spiritual community, it is God’s spirit that has gathered us together. A further point that I would like to make with you, which resonates with many of the interventions at the recent Synod of Bishops, is that scriptural catechesis is central to liturgical catechesis. It was said of St Bernard that he knew the Sacred Scriptures so well that his language was biblical – he began to, as our young people would say today, ‘speak bible.’ My point is that in using a translation that is more faithful to Sacred Scripture we are teaching ourselves and our people to speak bible! Lex orandi, lex credendi. 

 

 I would say this is a good start.

Often the AP and Reuters photo captions are terribly muddled, since they are often written by non-Catholics or non-English speakers (and a combination of the same).  However, in this caption, the writer goet something that some of the bishops meeting in the plenary don’t seem to get.  If this Italian photographer gets it, why don’t they"

Pope Benedict XVI holds the wine chalice at a mass for the procession of the solemnity of Corpus Christi in St. John Lateran Square in Rome, Thursday June 15, 2006. In foreground, a Swiss Guard. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

 

Sure, what is in the vessel in the Pope’s hands used to be wine and is now the Precious Blood.  Also, in Italian, the word is "calice".  It isn’t a huge leap though, is it?  Remember.  Those who say that we need to haer "cup" and those sorts of words essentially think we are are stupid.

Don’t miss this one! 

I read in some blogspot out there some dopey comments about "standing" verbs in Latin in the context of the meeting of bishops at the Millennium in LA (which a quick search showed would cost me $701.41 for four nights there during the same time period as the conference meeting.  But I digress…

In another post today I looked at what circumstantes really means.  Building on the work I did a couple years back when writing on the Eucharistic Prayers, I think we can safely say, based on some serious sources, that circumstantes and circumstantes was a Biblical and Patristic way of addressing in a generic way those who were present, without literal reference to where they might physically be located.  Since that circumadstantes bring the verb adsto into the mix, and since that verb figures in the commonly used 2nd Eucharistic Prayer, we have better look at it too. 

I know this is like eliminating a dopey gnat with a hammer, but here we go.  The 2nd Eucharist Prayer we find the Memores igitur

LATIN TEXT (2002MR)
Memores igitur mortis et resurrectionis eius, tibi, Domine, panem vitæ et calicem salutis offerimus, gratias agentes quia nos dignos habuisti astare coram te et tibi ministrare. Et supplices deprecamur ut Corporis et Sanguinis Christi  participes a Spiritu Sancto congregamur in unum.

The first sentence of today’s text is identical to the ancient text attributed to Hippolytus, originally in Greek as was explained at the beginning our look at this prayer.  You might not immediately recognize asto as adsto, which the precious Lewis & Short Dictionary says means, “to stand at or near a person or thing, to stand by”  The L&S will also inform you that asto has the synonym adsisto. 

If you have ever heard the phrase “to assist (adsisto) at Holy Mass” this is the concept: you are present and actively participating. 

Also, during the Roman Canon, the priest describes the people as circumstantes, “standing around”.  This doesn’t mean they there around the altar with their hands in the their pockets (though I admit I have seen that happen). Rather, they are there morally and spiritually “around” the altar, participating each according to their vocation and capacity.  So, circumstantes is used to identify the baptized who are present. 

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Mindful, therefore, of His death and resurrection, we offer to You, O Lord, the bread of life and the chalice of salvation, giving thanks that You esteemed us as worthy to stand present in Your sight and minister unto You.  We also pray humbly that we participants of the Body and of the Blood of Christ may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.

Checking the source on liturgical Latin under the voice adsto (asto) we find: "se tenire auprès (servir)".  In Souter I found the fascinating simple entry: asto = sum (Comm. 2.35.12)  This is a reference to a poet Commodianus.  Doing some footwork on this in m own sources, here is what I found.  You always have to double check, after all.  Here you go, patristibloggers!  The reference is to Commodianus’  Instructionum libri ii  (in CSEL 15).  This work appears to be short poems addressed to different types of people.  For example, he advises drunks (Ebriosis).  This is in the section addressed to "Blabbers" and their need to shut up in church (De fabulosis et silentio).  Note the reference to the Sursum corda of the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer:

2.31.12ff.

Dum leue uidetur cumcumque neque uitatur
et quasi facile ruis dum ab utero illud,
fabulae subueniut, quo uenisti fundere preces
aut pulsare domum stomachi pro delicto diurno.
Bucina praeconum clamat lectore legente,
ut pateant aures, et tu magis obstruis illas;
luxaris labia, quibus ingemiscere debes.
Obde malis pectus uel in pectore solue.
Sed quia diuitias faciunt aut pecunias frontem,
inde perit omnis, quando sibi maxime fidunt.
Sic feminae quoque coeunt, qua se inicient balneo.
Et, de domo Dei ceu nundinas facitis, astent.
Terruit hinc Dominus: domus orationis adesto!
Sacerdos Domini cum ‘sursum corda’ praecedit,
in prece fienda ut fiant silentia vestra,
limpide respondis nec temperas quodque promittis.    
Exortat ille altissimum pro plebe deuota,
ne pereat aliquis; at tu te in fabulis uertis,
tu subridis ibi aut detrahis proximae forma;
indisciplinata loqueris, quasi sit Deus absens,
omnia qui fecit, nec neque cernat.

This is great!  It talks about the various types of blabbers in church during Mass!  We need a translation of this.  Do one of you want to tackle it??  Folks, this is straight from the early Church to us! 

Also, that use of the verb adsto (above) indicates presence in the church, not just standing. 

"But Father! But Father!" you might want to object.  "People STOOD at Mass!  We all KNOW that!  don’t try to tell us they didn’t!"  Speaking of blabbers, while talking about attitudes of prayer in church and getting control of your tongue…. St. Augustine speaks of different postures of prayer in his time, early 5th century North Africa.  Here is the bishop in the Enarrationes in psalmos 140, 18.  He has just finished speaking about getting control of your tongue.

You have now gained control of yours, you say?  I wonder if anyone is able to do so perfectly, in every respect.  Still, you think you have controlled your tongue.  All right, but how do you manage with your thoughts?  What do you do with the tumultuous rabble of rebellious desires?  No, I am not saying you yield to them bodily; I am quite prepared to believe you do not, and in fact I can see that you don’t.  But surely your thoughts sometimes throw you off course and bear you away, and often while you are kneeling in prayer?  You prostrate yourself or bow your head, you confess your sins and you worship God.  I can see your body lying there, but I wonder where the mind is flying.  I see the limbs lying still, but is the attention standing still?  Is it concentrated on him whom it is worshipping?  Is it not more often torn away by thoughts like a stormy sea and tossed hither and thither by the blasts? 

If you were talking with me now and suddenly you turned away to talk to your slave instead, ignoring me, would I not think you had been rude to me?  And this even though you were not a suppliant begging a favor from me but someone conversing with me as an equal.  Yet this is how you behave to God every day!

Okay, I could do a lot more but I think I better stop and ponder all this.

Let it be said that adsto in the context of the Eucharistic Prayer cannot be rendered in a facile way as "standing" or circumstantes as "standing around".  These words refer to the presence of participants in the midst of the sacred action of Holy Mass.

About the upcoming vote by the bishops on the draft translation, I tip my hat to American Papist    o{]:¬)    for the following predictably muddled AP story:

"My big concern is people are going to feel like they’re being jerked around. They finally got used to the English translation and now they have to get used to another translation," said Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and a Jesuit priest.

"It’s going to cause chaos and real problems and the people who are going to be at the brunt end of it are the poor priests in the parishes who don’t need any more problems."

To which I respond:  COWARD!

 

WAH WAH WAH

Friends, the good of the Catholic faithful require that we have new translations.  Rome has given norms.  The task is set before the entire Church. 

Pastors of souls who love their flocks will put their backs into explaining and presenting the changes properly.  Do parents of children simply curl up in little balls and WHINE about how hard it is going to be to educate their children, feed them, shelter them, see to their needs?  "*Sniff*... It’s soooooo harrrrrrrrrd!"

I am tempted to put this in terms more suited to Tony Soprano, but "Boo hoo!"

Someone asked me about the Latin phrase from the Roman Canon (1st Eucharistic Prayer) "omnium circumstantium".  This is one of the points surely to be addressed in the meeting of the bishops as they prepare to vote on the draft translation. 

A few years back I wrote my WDTPRS columns on the Eucharistic Prayers, but I haven’t posted them online on this blog yet.  In any event, here is something I wrote about omnium circumstantium:

Circumstantium is an active participle of circumsto, which means “to stand around in a circle, to take a station round; and, with the accusative, to stand around a person or thing, to surround, encircle, encompass.”  The people who are circumstantes are those who are “standing around”, not in a sense of being idle, but of location.  In more ancient manuscripts this was circum adstantes.   Standing for the whole Canon was the practice for the first thousand years or so.   As our understanding of the Real Presence grew and deepened, the practice of kneeling developed.  This is not some historical encrustation that needed to be scraped off of the Mass in a desire to return to the “pristine” way of liturgy.   Circum means “around” but that does not mean that in the ancient Church people literally stood in a circle about the altar.  In Roman basilicas the altar was between the presbytery, the large semicircular part of the apse where the clerics, especially priest(s) were properly situated, and the nave, the proper place of the faithful.  Often there is found a semi-circular area in front of altars which was the entrance to the crypt below and the remains of martyrs were found.  The most famous of these is the “Confession” of St. Peter’s Basilica.  If there were transepts, the people were then on three sides of the altar, but in no way standing around the altar in any close or proximate way.  

“Memento, Domine” – The Memento of the Living

LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Memento, Domine, famulorum, famularumque tuarum N. et N. et omnium circumstantium, quorum tibi fides cognita est, et nota devotio, pro quibus tibi offerimus: vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis pro se suisque omnibus: pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis, et incolumitatis suae: tibique reddunt vota sua aeterno Deo, vivo et vero.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Be mindful, O Lord, of Your household servants and handmaids N. and N., and of all the bystanders here whose faith and recognized vocational devotion is completely known to You, for whom we are making this sacrificial offering to You: and who assuredly also are offering to You this Sacrifice of praise for themselves and for all of their own loved ones: on behalf of the redemption of their own souls, for the hope of their own salvation and well-being: they also offer back their own solemnly promised sacrificial offerings to You Eternal God, Living and True.

I will add that in the source we call Blaise/Dumas we find under circumsto "se tenir debout autour (de la table de la sainte sacrifice)"

I went on the hunt for some new information about this word and I found a fascinating thing.  In Blaise/Dumas, which is a very important source, I found that circumstantes and circumadstantes is used similarly to other terms to denote the Christian people at the liturgy in general, and so it is like terms from the NT and Fathers such as populi tui, fratres dilecti a Deo, dilectissimi, sanctitas vestra. 

What is this all about?  It means that circumstantes might simply – rather can mean simply refer to the baptized people who are present and participating without any reference to where they are located in the church.  This is an important point for anyone considering what it means in the context of the Eucharistic Prayer.  I think my version of "bystanders" gets at that pretty well, though perhaps there is a touch of passivity echoing in the modern sound of the word which doesn’t please me.   Maybe we can say… "and of all the participants here whose faith and recognized vocational devotion is completely known to You,..."  Given the use of circumstantes as a "generic" way to talk of those present, this works.

Here are somethings pasted together from past WDTPRS articles on the prayers for Corpus Christi.

If you are not into the text, then perhaps you will enjoy the photo I shot last year of the Eucharistic procession for Corpus Christi which took place in the Vatican gardens behind St. Peter’s Basilica. The Swiss Guard did the honors. There were many pilgrims from Switzerland and Germany and Austria, including a very good choir and bands.

Writing as Joseph Ratzinger, His Holiness wrote about Corpus Christi and processions in a book on liturgy Feast of Faith. He had a very good paragraph on the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: quantum potes, tantum aude. I believe this to be the great byword of today’s feast.

COLLECT - (2002MR):
Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili
passionis tuae memoriam reliquisti,
tribue, quaesumus,
ita nos Corporis et Sanguinis tui sacra mysteria venerari,
ut redemptionis tuae fructum in nobis iugiter sentiamus.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who bequeathed to us under a wondrous sacrament
the memorial of Your Passion,
we implore, grant us
to venerate the sacred mysteries of Your Body and Blood
in such a way that we constantly sense within us the fruit of Your redemption.

I have heard from many places that the customs of Corpus Christi processions, Forty Hours Devotion, and Eucharistic Adoration are returning in force. People want and need these things. They help us to be better Catholic Christians through contact with Christ. The bad old days of post-Conciliar denigration of these necessary practices lingers a bit but the aging-hippie priests and liturgists are losing ground under the two-fold pincer of common sense and a genuine Catholic love of Jesus. In the seminary I attended in the 1980’s we were informed with a superior sneer towards those quaint old processions and devotions that, “Jesus said ‘Take and eat, not sit and look!’” Somehow, “looking” was opposed to “receiving”. This is the same error, I think, inherent in the puzzling idea that if people aren’t constantly singing or carrying stuff during Mass they are not “actively” participating as if listening and watching must be only “passive”. Younger people no longer have that baggage, happily. They desire the good things of our Catholic inheritance. They resist passé attempts to make Jesus “smaller”. They want much more, as much as the Church can give.

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):
Ecclesiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine,
unitatis et pacis propitius dona concede,
quae sub oblatis muneribus mystice designantur.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We beseech You, O Lord
kindly grant to Your Church gifts of unity and peace
which are mystically signified under the gifts here offered.

The vocabulary of today’s prayer doesn’t drive us scratching our heads to the informative Lewis & Short Dictionary, so let’s consider what the prayer is really saying in its content. In Thomas Aquinas’ beautiful sequence for Corpus Christi the Lauda Sion we hear sung, “Signs, not things, are all we see… here beneath these signs lie hidden priceless things.”

POST COMMUNIONEM:
Fac nos, quaesumus, Domine,
divinitatis tuae sempiterna fruitione repleri,
quam pretiosi Corporis et Sanguinis tui
temporalis perceptio praefigurat.

I suspect that there is more to this Latin prayer that the old ICEL version suggests. Sliding the hefty Lewis & Short Dictionary a little closer we can examine some of the vocabulary and pry its treasures loose.

The first word we should dig into is fruitio which means, “enjoyment”. It is derived from the deponent verb fruor, famous to Latin students as one of the several deponent verbs (utor, abutor, fruor, fungor, potior, vescor) whose “object” is usually in the ablative case, rather than the accusative or (in the case of 65 verbs) the dative. Fruor (infinitive frui) is “to derive enjoyment from a thing, to enjoy, delight in (with a more restricted significance than (utor) uti, to make use of a thing, to use it)”. One might remember the use of “use” in the Early Modern English of Shakespeare such as when Brutus says to the peevish Cassius in the tent before the battle, “By the gods / You shall digest the venom of your spleen, / Though it do split you; for, from this day forth, / I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, / When you are waspish. (Julius Caesar IV.iii.51-55)” or when the Bawd says to Marina in Pericles Prince of Tyre, “Pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will / you use him kindly? He will line your apron with gold” (IV.vi.51-2).

Note that the L&S definition I cite above makes a distinction between utor and fruor. Both mean “use” but fruor has the added note of enjoyment. St. Augustine of Hippo in Book I of his magisterial De doctrina christiana makes some distinctions about uti and frui. Before he became Pope, our Holy Father John Paul II wrote a book in 1960 entitled (in its English translation of 1981) Love and Responsibility (originally MiÅ‚ośći odpowiedzialność) which grew out of his lectures during 1958-59 at the Catholic University of Lublin. He explores the difference between uti and frui in the context of human sexuality. Taking a cue from St. Augustine, Karol WojtyÅ‚a explained that, since human beings are images of God, they are consequently the dignified subjects of actions. They must not be objectified and turned into the objects of uti – of “use” – for “utilitarian” purposes. That sort of “use” must never be applied to a human being in any sphere of human activity, whether sexual, economic, or other. As a contrast, the other way of “use” which is more aligned with frui use, includes the element of “enjoyment”, by which is meant far more than mere sensory pleasures. Proper “enjoyment” includes an appreciation of what things (or people) truly are. This sort of enjoyment-use is found in interpersonal relationships only when there is genuine love, in the sense of charity. Thus, all utilitarian-use (uti) of another person is wrong while enjoyment-use (frui) is proper when subordinated to authentic love. Simply put, people cannot be used as a means to an end without any respect for the fact that they, too, are “acting agents”, the acting subjects of their own actions. All “use” of others must be subordinated to the good of the persons involved.

We also have the word perceptio, (from the verb percipio) which basically signifies a “a taking, receiving; a gathering in, collecting.” It is also, by extension, “perception, comprehension”. St. Ambrose in his Commentary on Luke 4, 15 uses this noun with “frugum fructuumque reliquorum… a gathering of the produce of the earth and of the remaining fruits”. Both frux (which gives us the genitive plural frugum) and fructus (whence comes fructuum) are both related/derived from fruor, frui, fructus. At the time of his Holy Communion the priest once said or says now in the 1962MR, and may say with the 1970MR in a shortened version: Perceptio Corporis tui, Domine Iesu Christe, quod ego indignus sumere praesumo, non mihi proveniat in iudicium et condemnationem: sed pro tua pietate prosit mihi ad tutamentum mentis et corporis, et ad medelam percipiendam…Let not the partaking of Your Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I, unworthy, presume to receive turn out to be unto my judgment and condemnation: but by Your goodness, may it become a protection of soul and body and remedy to be received.…”

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Cause us, we beseech you, O Lord,
to be filled with the eternal enjoyment of your divinity,
which the worldly reception of Your precious Body and Blood prefigures.

Reception (perceptio) of the Host at Mass is the climatic moment in a sacred action which, glorious as it is, constitutes but a foreshadowing of our participation in the heavenly liturgical banquet before the throne of God. We receive Communion in this life (temporalis perceptio) as a token or promise of future glory (praefigurat). We want this gift of God to transform us in such a way that we will never loose this perceptio. We all have our own role to play in this transformation. The words fruition and perceptio both have a subtle agricultural overtone. We gather grain for bread that will be made into hosts for Mass, grapes for wine. Spiritually we reap what we sow as well. We must cultivate our relationship with God in the Eucharist, carefully and loving, with even greater attention than we might give to cultivating earthly relationships. Indeed our earthly relationships, for devout Catholic Christians, must reflect the bond of love and unity with have with Christ.

I will post the full texts of the articles as time allows.

 

While I tip my biretta to The Cafeteria is Closed     o{]:¬)    for this pornographic picture, but do you see anything wrong with this?   They are violating Redemptionis Sacramentum which clearly states that glass vessels are not to be used!   Someone should turn this in to the disciplinary section of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments!  And … and .. what the heck is that bread??!?  No, no, no, this is very wrong.