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

With the appointment of Bishop-Elect Paul Joseph Swain to the See of Sioux Falls, that means that H.E. Samuel Aquila, Bishop of Fargo, is no longer to be the Apostolic Administrator of Sioux Falls.

Right?

Old new to you?  I learned today that Pope Benedict XVI has cancalled the 12 year annual Christmas concert because, get this,  "he does not share his predecessor’s taste for pop music and wants to avoid scandal" or so it is reported by La Stampa.  I guess that concert was infra Pontificis dignitatem.

The concert will be trasferred to Monaco and won’t be held in the Paul VI audience hall.   The Pope didn’t attend last year, which made some of the old guard freak out. 

"It is impossible not to notice a change under the new pontiff," the ANSA news agency said. "Benedict XVI is a very sober pope and is not inclined toward variety shows. He is more concerned about leading the faith of Catholics to its spiritual essence."

La Stampa suggested that Benedict XVI’s reluctance to continue the Christmas concert tradition stems not only from the German-born pope’s preference for classical music, but also his desire to avoid the small scandals that have plagued the event in recent years.

Some really stupid things happened at those concerts, I can tell you.   I suppose some dopey people will say, "Gee, the Pope must hate music." or "Wow, the Pope must hate young people."

I respond, "Let’s reclaim dignity!"

There are some really interesting people listed in the Marytrologium Romanum today, who I cannot pass up mentioning.

I already mentioned in another entry St. Joseph of Arimethea and St. Nicodemus, from the New Testment.

Today is also the feast of St. Aristides, a philosopher who wrote to the Emperor Hadrian.

There is an amazing Paulinus, bishop and martyr, who was deeply involved with the Arian controversy (referred to in the MartRom as ariana infestatio).

At Lindisfarne, St. Aidan, bishop and abbot.

Blessed Andrew of Borgo San Sepolcro, which was the birthplace of the painting of one of the most perfect paintings ever conceived by the mind of man.  (I am sure one of you can tell me what this painting is.  It is in Borgo San Sepolcro, btw.)

And the amazing St. Raymond Nonnatus (yes, from Latin non natus), who became Master General of the Mercedarians who labored to raise money to ransom slaves from the infidel Muslims, took up the sword to fight for them, or offered their own persons in their stead.  St. Raymond, get this, when he exchanged himself for a captive in North Africa was tortured.  The members of the religion of peace spiked his lips and sealed his mouth to keep him from preaching.  He was eventually ransomed.  He was named cardinal by Pope Gregory IX but died on his way to Rome at the age of 36.

On the blog Wormtalk and Slugspeak I was astonished to see a word not so many people use or even know: Gomer. "Well!" quoth I, "It is time to talk about Fat Man’s Laws of the House of God!"

"But Father!" you are sure to be saying, "What does this have to do with St. Augustine? Or what prayers really say??"

The answer to that should be obvious once you get the Laws.

Samuel Shem’s book The House of God about doctors and interns at a Boston hospital in the 1970’s is my constant inspiration. Especially useful for understanding all things ecclesiastical are the Fat Man’s Laws of the House of God which I have constantly before my eyes.

Especially these days, for reasons that ought to be apparent.

Here are a few things you need to know before you get the list.

GOMER: An acronym of “Get Out of My Emergency Room”. These are patients admitted frequently with complicated but uninspiring and incurable conditions. They are sometimes called “too old to die.” GOMER applies also to patients described as “LOL in NAD” or “Little Old Lady in No Apparent Distress”, who would do better with some help at home than coming to the ER where really bad things could happen to her.

GO TO GROUND: The equivalent of “Go to turf”, which means basically being shifted off to someone else’s department.

BUN: “Blood Urea Nitrogen” is test that measures the the amount of nitrogen in the blood that comes from urea (which is secreted by the liver and removed from the blood by the kidneys).

LASIX: A brand name of Furosemide which is a loop diuretic used for congestive heart failure and edema. It has also been used to prevent race horses from bleeding through the nose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Furosemide.png

BMS: The best medical student from the Best Medical School.

And now you are ready for Fat Man’s Laws of the House of God.

Please keep in mind possible ecclesiastical connections. The (helpful interlinear commentary) is mine.

I. GOMERS DON’T DIE.
(Some people simply live and live and live against all odds and indicators.)

II. GOMERS GO TO GROUND.
(The best way to handle GOMERS is to shove them off onto someone else.)

III. AT A CARDIAC ARREST, THE FIRST PROCEDURE IS TO TAKE YOUR OWN PULSE.
(See to yourself first, after all, it’s all about you.)

IV. THE PATIENT IS THE ONE WITH THE DISEASE.
(It’s not your problem, right?)

V. PLACEMENT COMES FIRST.
(Put the problem somewhere, and figure out what the problem is later.)

VI. THERE IS NO BODY CAVITY THAT CANNOT BE REACHED WITH A #14 NEEDLE AND A GOOD STRONG ARM.
(If it’s stuck force it, if it breaks, okay, it had to be replaced anyway.)

VII. AGE + BUN = LASIX DOSE.
(Really simple solutions to really complicated problems might not work, but what the heck!)

VIII. THEY CAN ALWAYS HURT YOU MORE.
(Tell me about it.)

IX. THE ONLY GOOD ADMISSION IS A DEAD ADMISSION.
(Both the paperwork and the time required are greatly reduced.)

X. IF YOU DON’T TAKE A TEMPERATURE, YOU CAN’T FIND A FEVER.
(Like putting your hands over your own eyes in order to hide from a problem.)

XI. SHOW ME A BMS WHO ONLY TRIPLES MY WORK AND I WILL KISS HIS FEET.
XI-A. Al’s Corollary: Show me a resident who only triples my work, and I will kiss his/her feet.
(If they only screw up my life a little, I’ll be happy. Good one for Italy. Cf. Latin: Primum non nocere.)

XII. IF THE RADIOLOGY RESIDENT AND THE BMS BOTH SEE A LESION ON THE CHEST X-RAY, THERE CAN BE NO LESION THERE.
(Given what we know about their real level of competence, if they came up with something, it must be wrong.)

XIII. THE DELIVERY OF MEDICAL CARE IS TO DO AS MUCH NOTHING AS POSSIBLE.
(This both cuts down on your work load and satisfies XI at the same time.)

I am thinking that you readers could perhaps make your own connections with what we see going on in the ecclesiastical world around us.

For example, are there any parallels between, say, (cf. XIII) a BMS with a Radiology Resident looking at a problem and a Liturgy Expert with a… ex-sister in charge of the parish choir?

Is there a parallel between, say, LAW III and being faced with making a decision about Catholic politicians who support abortion?

Have at!

Today is the feast of Sts. Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus:

1. Hierosolymae, commemoratio sanctorum Ioseph de Arimathaea et Nicodemi, qui corpus Iesu a cruce depositum acceperunt, involverunt in sindone et posuerunt in monumento. Ioseph, nobilis decurio et discipulus Domini, regnum Dei expectabat; Nicodemus autem, ex Pharisaeis, princeps Iudaeorum, ad Iesum nocte venerat interrogans de missione eius atque coram pontificibus et Pharisaeis, qui volebant Iesum apprehendere, causam eius defendit. .. At Jerusalem, the commemoration of Saints Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus, who received the Body of Jesus once taken down from the Cross, wrapped it in a burial shroud and placed it in the tomb. Joseph, a noble decurion (member of the senate of a Roman colony) and disciple of the Lord was awating the kingdom of God; Nicodemus, on the other hand, of the Pharisees and a leader of the Jews, went to Jesus in the night asking Him about His mission and, in the presence of the priests and Pharisees who wanted to arrest Jesus, defended His case.

 

The Bishop of Hippo speaks about Nicodemus in one of his Tractates on the Gospel of John 11. He has a fascinating riff into Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:

6. This Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, did not savor of this spirit and this life. Saith Jesus to him, "Except a man be born again, he shall not see the kingdom of God." And he, savoring of his own flesh, while as yet he savored not of the flesh of Christ in his mouth, saith, "How can a man be born a second time, when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?" This man knew but one birth, that from Adam and Eve; that which is from God and the Church he knew not yet: he knew only those parents that bring forth to death, knew not yet the parents that bring forth to life; he knew but the parents that bring forth successors, knew not yet the ever-living parents that bring forth those that shall abide.

Whilst there are two births, then, he understood only one. One is of the earth, the other of heaven; one of the flesh, the other of the Spirit; one of mortality, the other of eternity; one of male and female, the other of God and the Church. But these two are each single; there can be no repeating the one or the other. Rightly did Nicodemus understand the birth of the flesh; so understand thou also the birth of the Spirit, as Nicodemus understood the birth of the flesh. What did Nicodemus understand? "Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?" Thus, whosoever shall tell thee to be spiritually born a second time, answer in the words of Nicodemus, "Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?" I am already born of Adam, Adam cannot beget me a second time. I am already born of Christ, Christ cannot beget me again. As there is no repeating from the womb, so neither from baptism.

7. He that is born of the Catholic Church, is born, as it were, of Sarah, of the free woman; he that is born of heresy is, as it were, born of the bond woman, but of Abraham’s seed. Consider, beloved, how great a mystery. God testifies, saying, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Were there not other patriarchs? Before these, was there not holy Noah, who alone of the whole human race, with all his house, was worthy to be delivered from the flood,—he in whom, and in his sons, the Church was prefigured? Borne by wood, they escaped the flood. Then afterwards great men whom we know, whom Holy Scriptures commends, Moses faithful in all his house. And yet those three are named, just as if they alone deserved well of him: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this is my name for ever." Sublime mystery! It is the Lord that is able to open both our mouth and your hearts, that we may speak as He has deigned to reveal, and that you may receive even as it is expedient for you.

The USCCB issued a program for formation for US seminaries. Inter alia the conference has codified that Patristics (study of the theology of the Fathers of the Church) is to be included. Here are the relevant paragraphs:

201. Patristic studies constitute an essential part of theological studies. Theology should draw from the works of the Fathers of the Church that have lasting value within the living tradition of the Church. The core should include Patrology (an overview of the life and writings of the Fathers of the Church) and Patristics (an overview of the theological thought of the Fathers of the Church).[130]

[130] See Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on the Study of the Fathers of the Church in the Formation of Priests (1989).

210. In historical studies, the core should include courses on the history universal and the history of the Catholic Church in the United States that way which reflects her multicultural origins and ecumenical context. Among the study of patristics and the lives of the saints are of special importance.

Today is the feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. I consider this (also) my name day, and in a way it is even more appropriate than the Nativity of John in June.

Here is the Roman Martyrology entry for " the greatest man born of woman", as the Lord called him:

Memoria passionis sancti Ioannis Baptistae, quem Herodes Antipas rex in arce Macherontis in carcere tenuit et in anniversario suo, filia Herodiadis rogante, decollari praecepit; ideo, Praecursor Domini, sicut lucerna ardens et lucens, tam in morte quam in vita testimonium perhibuit veritati. ... The memorial of the suffering and death of St. John the Baptist, whom King Herod Antipas held in the prison in the citadel of Macheron and, on his birthday, since the daughter of Herodias was making the request, ordered to be beheaded; thus, the Precursor of the Lord, like a bright shining lantern, gave witness to the truth in death as much as he did in life.

Will it surprise you that St. Augustine spoke fairly often of St. John the Baptist?

Here is a piece of s. 380, preached in a year we can’t quite figure out. As a matter of fact, it might not be an actual sermon, but something assembled from other pieces. Still, it is Augustinian:

8. So let us recognize these two things in the very differences of [Christ’s and John’s] deaths. We read that John suffered martyrdom for the truth; was it for Christ? It wasn’t for Christ if Christ isn’t Truth. It certainly wasn’t for His Name, and yet it was for Truth itself. I mean the reason John was beheaded, after all, was not that he had confessed Christ. But he was urging self-control, he was urging justice; he was saying, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife" (Mk 6:18). The law, you see, which had commanded this, had also commanded about those who died without children, that brothers should take the wives of their brothers, and raise up seed for their brothers. Where this reason was lacking, the only motive was lust. It was this lust that John was rebuking, a chaste man rebuking an incestuous one; because this too is what he represented: "It is necessary for him to grow, but for me to diminish" (Jn 3:30).

 

The commandment had alredy been given that if anyone died without seed, his closet relation should take his wife and raise up seed for his brother. After all, why had God commanded this if not to signify in this way that the brother’s seed was to be raised up to the brother’s name? The commandment, you see, was that the child to be born would have the name of the deceased. Christ was deceased, the apostles took His spouse, the Church. Those whom they begot of her they did not name Paulians or Petrians, but Christians.

So let both their deaths also speak of these two things: "It is necessary for him to grow, but for me to diminish." The one grew on the Cross, the other was diminished by the sword. Their deaths have spoken of this mystery, let the days do so too. Christ is born, and the days start increading; John is born, and the days start diminishing. So let man’s honor diminish, God’s honor increase, so that the honor of man may be found in the honor of God.

Augustine makes the connection between the change of seasons and the births of John the Precursor and Christ the Messiah. Very nice. It is something to reflect on when on the deck here at the Sabine Farm when I realize more an more that the days are getting shorter.

Today I have been thinking about the impact of Augustine. (Actually, I think about that nearly every day.) This morning in a chat with a friend who is a true scholar of Augustine, I gleened something. If you want to put a quick and simple frame around Augustine try this. Augustine teaches better than any other saint, except perhaps for St. Paul, that there is no charity without a deep concern for truth.

This has monumental importance for the life of the Church.

The paring of the words veritas and caritas are found very often in Augustine’s works. One of the truly moving pairs is found in s. 358 preached in Carthage on Friday 19 May 411, during the Pentecostal Ember days. It concerns the schism of the Donatists (sort of ancient Lefebvrites… sort of). There is about to be a meeting of bishops in Carthage and the Lefebvrites … er… um… Donatists are on the agenda.

Augustine addresses his listeners in the congregation often as "your Charity" or in this case…

1. May your holinesses’ prayers come to the aid of us bishops in the responsibility we carry for you, and for our enemies and yours, for the salvation of all, for public order, for the common peace, for the unity which the Lord has commanded, which the Lord loves. Help us at one and the same time to speak about his to you, and to rejoice over it together with you. Of course, if we love peace and charity, we ought to talk about them always. Much more so therefore at this time, when peace is being loved in such a way that those people are real danger of loving it and holding onto it themselves, those to whom we do not render evil for evil, and with whom, as it is written, "though they hate peace, we are at peace" (Ps 120:7), and because we speak peace to them, they wish to overwhelm us. So those people, being of that nature, are caught in a deadly trap between love of peace and the shame of humiliation, and since they refuse to acknowledge defeat, they are taking no steps to be undefeated. Those, you see, who refuse to be defeated by truth, are defeated by error.

Oh, if only charity rather than animosity could overcome them! We for our part love, cling to and defend the Catholic Church, not on the strength of human arguments, but of divine testimonies; and we are inviting its enemies to be reconciled with it and enter its peace. What am I to do with someone who pleads for a part and brings an action against the whole? Isn’t it good for him to lose the case, because if he loses he will hold onto the whole, while if he wins, he will be left with the part – or rather if he appears to win, because it’s only truth that ever wins. The victory of truth is charity. (Immo si vincere sibi videbitur, nam non vincit nisi veritas: victoria veritatis est caritas.)

Above, I compared the Lefebvrites with the Donatists. In certain respects that sticks. They are indeed guilty of setting up their altars against the altars of the Catholic Church, as a Church of the "pure".

At the same time, is not what Augustine says above also applicable to the progressivists and even the somewhat acquiescent majority in the Church who have at times and in various places treated the Church’s Tradition and also "traditionalists" themselves with neglect or contempt?  If once in ancient N. Africa the Donatists were actually in the majority and Catholic the minority, and Catholics were afraid of being overwhelmed and forced into the void, today the situation is reversed; the traditionalists are in the minority and fear going into the void. 

How great is the need for truth and charity on both sides?

There is no victory without truth. This can be applied to every aspect of our life.

Augustine died on 28 August 430. His friend and biographer Possidius describes his last days during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals. Sometime before the early 8th century, Augustine’s remains were translated from N. Africa to Sardinia for fear of desecration. It is possible that St. Fulgentius of Ruspe took Augustine’s body to Sardinia. Fulgentius had run afoul of the Arian Vandal overlords in N. Africa and was driven out.

During the 8th century Augustine’s remains were in danger again, but this time by another gang of vandals called Arabs, who were swarming all over the Mediterranean as pirates and brigands. Sometime between 710 and 730 King Liutprand of the Lombards translated Augustine a second time and, on some 11 October, had him interred in Pavia in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro. It is thought that Liutprand had to pay a huge ransom the bones from some muslim thug. (Hard to believe, I know.) Eventually, with the passage of time people simply forgot where the saints bones actually physically were in the church. Eventually the church itself came to be controlled by two different Augustinian groups, the Canons Regular and the Hermits. Let’s just say their relations were strained and leave it at that. Then something happened that set off the war between them.

In 1695 a group of workman were excavating under the altar in the crypt of the church. The found a marble box containing human bones. The box apparently had some charcoal markings spelling the part of the word "Augustine", though those markings disappeared. Great chaos ensued.

The memory of just where the relics of Augustine were placed in the church had been lost through the passing of the years. Finding them again set off a rather unedifying battle for their control between the Augustinian Hermits and the Canons Regular. Eventually Rome had to step in to resolve things. Pope Benedict XIII, a Dominican who changed his numbering from XVI to XIII so as to avoid counting an anti-pope, got involved personally. He was very interested in saints and canonized the huge number of 18! This was also at the time when the future Pope Benedict XIV, Propsero Lambertini, published his fourth and final volume On the beatification of the servants of God and of the canonization of the blessed. Pope Lambertini would give us the legislation for the canonical processes of canonizations that has lasted with some few changes to today.

In any event, Benedict XIII sent a letter to the Bishop of Pavia telling him to get their act together and figure out the questions of authenticity and control. Additional studies were made under someone appointed by Benedict and by 19 September of 1729 things were wrapped up. Processions were held, solemn proclamations made about the authenticity of the relics, a great Te Deum was sung and there was a fireworks display, and anyone who decided to disagree and start the bickering again would be excommunicated. Ah! Those were the days, no? The next year under Pope Clement XII the Cardinal Secretary of State (and a patron of the Canons Regular) commissioned the carving of the large main altar with its reliefs, completed in 1738, and which you can now see today in the church where Augustine’s tomb is even now.

 

Many bloggers and certainly patristibloggers will be posting today about St. Augustine. Rather than relate the same old stuff you already know, you might be interested in other less known episodes from the life of this titanic figure who so influenced the course of Western Civilization. Here with the help of the best biography of Augustine I have read, by Serge Lancel, is a description of how Augustine was made a priest of Hippo (pp. 151 ff). Remember that Augustine had been a Manichean, had gone to Milan for a position as imperial orator, had converted and was baptized by Ambrose, returned to N. Africa and started a monastic community in his home town of Thagaste. In recruiting for his community, Augustine would avoid towns which had no bishops, lest he be constrained to remain and be consecrated (emphasis mine).

Passing through Hippo to meet a friend who wanted to talk to him about his monastic vocation, Augustine had had to prolong his stay, as we have seen, because of the man’s wavering. There he attended church and took part in the services without keeping on the alert, since the bishopric was duly provided with a bishop. But he, Valerius, was old; Greek by birth, he was a mediocre speaker in Latin and knew no Punic at all, though it was a good thing to know at least a few words to use with the rustic faithful, who spoke the remnants of Carthage’s ancient language, very much bastardized, as a kind of patois. In a text from this era, Augustine records a detail about his bishop which is very significant in this respect: in a conversation between peasants Valerius had heard the word salus – or at least something near it – and had asked one of them who also knew Latin what the word meant; he had answered ‘three’ (tria), and Valerius had gone into ecstacies over the remarkable meeting, between one language and the other, of "salvation" and the Trinity!

Moreover, the Christian community headed by Valerius was not in a good position at this time. The Manichaeans prospered at Hippo, under the leadership of a "priest" named Fortunatus, whom Augustine had known previously at Carthage when they had been co-religionists in the sect, and whose clever proselytism had won followers among the town’s citizens as well as in the little foreign colony. At the same time, the community itself was divided: the Donatists there were in a strong position, and their bishop, Faustinus, was able to indulge in a gesture as serious and symbolic as forbidding bakers to cook bread for the Catholic minority. Valerius clearly lacked the stature to stand up to them, even less to put the situation right. Was Augustine unaware of this state of affairs? The faithful of Hippo, for their part, were only too conscious of it, and when the old bishop declared in his sermon that he needed a priest who was capable of helping him, there was a unanimous shout from the congregation. Immediately recognized, surrounded, dragged into the apse to the bishop in his chair, Augustine was ordained priest forthwith.

He had not been able physically to oppose this enforced ordination. He burst into tears and, Possidius recorded later, some of the congregation mistook the meaning of his tears, seeing them as chagrin for entering the clergy through the back door, instead of acceding directly to the episcopacy! Assuredly, those tears had quite a different significance; as Possidius also says, setting down what Augustine later confided to his friends, looking ahead to his almost inevitable elevation to the position of bishop, "he had the premonition of the multiplicity and immensity of the perils that the guidance and government of a church would bring to bear on his life." Here again, even though Hippo was not Milan, the image that came to his mind, symbolic of such a heavy burden, was that of Ambrose, whom he had seen to terribly busy, faced with such important responsibilities. But there was still something else at the root of the knot of anguish which had formed in his heart; such a rude change of destiny implied a farewell to what had been his considered aspiration, since Milan and Cassiciacum in 386, of which the deificari in otio, of course, in his letter to Nebridius told of his strong spiritual need, a life of the spirit and of prayer in a monastic setting, which did not rule out serving others but did not put it in institutional terms. In the evening of his life, making an appraisal of it in a sermon to those people to whom he had devoted his life, the bishop says: "I had said farewell to all worldly hopes, and what I might have been I no longer wished to be; but by no means did I seek to be what I am." On that day early in 391, with a few fine books already behind him, but with an immense work in gestation in his head, he knew that henceforward days would no longer suffice, and that night vigils would have to be added to daily work: in die laborans et in nocte lucubrans, as Possidius would write.

Augustine already had a pretty sound theological training, and ran no risk of finding himself actually in the situation Ambrose had experienced, of having to learn while teaching, but he was aware that Valerius had appealed to him particularly for the ministry of preaching. And for that first time in his life, someone who know how to speak before the high and mighty of this world, address a cultivated public, correspond with people who were more or less his peers, now had to envisage speaking before the lowly of Hippo, before fisherman (piscatores) who were also sinners (peccatores), for whom Christ had come more than for philosophers and the erudite, and whom he had to reach with their own words. He had already been reproached for the difficulty of understanding certain of his works; besides complementing his scriptural reading, he needed to learn to speak in simple terms – ad usum populi – of things as complicated as the soul, God or the Trinity. Only just ordained, he asked for leave, for both study and meditation.

The letter he addressed to his bishop was preserved. Nothing, he says first, is more satisfying than the office of bishop,priest and even deacon, but nothing is more srethced than to perform it for the vainglory of the social status that accompanies it. And nothing is more difficult than to do it when fully conscious of the lofy misison entrusted to a bishop, priest or deacon. He continues:

I was ordained when I was thinking of giving myself time to get to know the divine Scriptures, and I had made my arrangements so as to benefit from the otium necessary for his negotium. And, to tell the truth, I did not yet know what I lacked for this task, which now torments and crushes me … Perhaps your Holiness will object: "I would like to know what is missing in your education." My reply is that the things I don’t know are so many that I could more easily enumerate those that I know than those I would like to know. I would dare to say that I know and hold with firm faith what concerns my own salvation; but how could I make use of this knowledge for the salvation of others, "seeking not what is useful to me but what is useful too the greater number for their salvation" (cf. 1 Cor. 10.23)? and perhaps, or rather without any doubt, there are counsels written in the holy books which, by knowing and meditating upon them, the man of God may improve his service in ecclesiastical matters and even, in the hands of sinners, either live without failing his conscience, or die, but without losing the only life that is worth Christian hearts sighing for, in humility and meekness. But how could that be obtained except as the Lord himself says: "by asking, seeking, knocking at the door" (cf. Matt.7.7; Luke 11.9)? That is to say, by means of prayers, reading and tears. It is with this aim that I wanted to ask my brothers to obtain from your very earnest and venerable Charity a little time, just until Easter, which I now desire and hereby request.

Augustine obtained a few weeks’ liberty from Valerius. Perhaps not quite until Easter, which fell that year on 6 April, for there is at least one sermon delivered by the new priest included in the series of "quadragesimal" catechesis sermons, to bear witness that his priest ministry began at Hippo as early as March 391. Where did he go for his brief additional spell of training? Probably Thagaste, at his home, or rather in the "monastery" he would leave to Alypius. For he would have had to settle his affairs, before organizing his life and that of his future companions at Hippo in the real monastery for which Valerius had offered him the material wherewithal. The bishop had in fact given him a house with a garden near the cathedral church. At the cost of accepting the priesthood, and having to give up a great deal, Augustine had attained the goal to which he had aspired for a good few years. We shall have occasion to return to both the concrete realities and the developments and regulatory arrangements of the monastic life he would live at Hippo for nearly forty years.

This morning at the Sabine Farm Holy Mass was celebrated with the 1962 Missale Romanum in the presence of both St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica. Before Mass began, the great saint was honored with a parade in front of the chapel:

A bit hard to see, perhaps, but this is a procession of wild turkeys.

Here are a couple snaps of the relics of St. Augustine and St. Monica on the altar.

Other saints today:

Today is, incidently, the feast of St. Edmund Arrowsmith, one of the English martyrs. In his entry in the Martyrologium Romanum (below) you will find an item, which refers to entry no. 11 for William Dean and seven companions.

12. Lancastriae item in Anglia, sancti Edmundi Arrowsmith, presbyteri e Societate Iesu et martyris, ex eodem ducatu oriundi, qui post plures annos in patria curae pastorali addictus, cum sacerdos esset et ad catholicam fidem multos induxisset, ipsis protestantibus loci invitis, sub Carolo rege Primo fune suspensus occubuit. ...

 

There is a frequent reader of this humble blog who will desire, I think, to contribute his own outstanding transation!

Going across the pond, we find this for Bl. Junipero Serra!

13*. Monte Regali in California, beati Iuniperi (Michaelis) Serra, presbyteri ex Ordine Fratrum Minorum, qui in tribubus illius regionis adhuc paganis, multis incommodis aermnisque gravtus, Evangelium Christi idomate populorum loci praedicavit atque parperum et humilium iura strenue defendit. ... At Monterey in California, [the feast] of Juniper (Michael) Serra, priest of the Order of Friars Minor, who burdened by many troubles and difficulties preached the Gospel of Christ among the tribes of the region who were still pagans, and strenuously defended the rights of the poor and humble.

 

Fox News’ journalist Steve Centanni and his cameraman have been RELEASED!

Let there be sung Non Nobis and Te Deum.

This is the chapel in the church of St. Augustine in Rome (literally across the street from my back door) on the day when the bones of St. Augustine were brought from their resting place in Pavia to Rome. For the first time since 387, son and mother were reunited.

Here is a closer shot of her tomb.

How did the tomb of St. Monica wind up here?  Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Inside the Vatican (December 2004) on the abovementioned event.  I used the alternate (and more accurate Punic) spelling of the saint’s name – "Monnica" (emphasis not in the original):

Most visitors to the Eternal City find it puzzling and wondrous that Monnica’s remains would be in Rome and even more so that Augustine’s should be in northern Italy, or that we have them at all.  How did this come to pass?  Monnica died at age 56 of a malarial fever at Ostia, Rome’s port city, not far from where modern Rome’s port, DaVinci airport, is situated.  After Augustine’s baptism in 386 by Milan’s bishop St. Ambrose (+ AD 397), Monnica and Augustine together with his brother Navigius, Adeodatus the future bishop’s son by his concubine of many years whom Monnica had forced Augustine to put aside, and friends Nebridius, Alypius and the former Imperial secret service agent (agens in rebus) Evodius were all waiting at Ostia to return home to Africa by ship.  They were stuck there for some time because the port was blockaded during a period of civil strife.  As she lay dying near Rome, Monnica told Augustine (conf. 9): “Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.”  She was buried there in Ostia.  In the 6^th century she was moved to a little church named for St. Aurea, an early martyr of the city, and there she remained until 1430 when her remains were translated by Pope Martin V to the Roman Basilica of St. Augustine built in 1420 by the famous Guillaume Card. D’Estouteville of Rouen, then Camerlengo under Pope Sixtus IV.  As fate or God’s directing have would have it, in December 1945, some children were digging a hole in the courtyard of the little church of St. Aurea next to the ruins of ancient Ostia.  They wanted to put up a basketball hoop, probably having been taught the exciting new game – so different from soccer – by American GIs.  While digging they discovered the broken marble epitaph which had marked Monnica’s ancient grave.  Scholars were able to authenticate the inscription, the text of which had been preserved in a medieval manuscript.  The epitaph had been composed during Augustine’s lifetime by no less then a former Consul of AD 408 and resident at Ostia, Anicius Auchenius Bassus, perhaps Augustine’s host during their sojourn.  It is possible that Anicius Bassus placed the epitaph there after 410 which saw the ravages of Alaric the Visigoth and the sacking of Rome and its environs.  One can almost feel behind these traces of ancient evidence Augustine’s plea to his old friend sent by letter from the port of Hippo Regius over the waves to Ostia.  Hearing of the devastation to the area, far more shocking to the ancients than the events of 11 September were for us, did Augustine, now a renowned bishop, ask his old friend to tend the grave of the mother whom he had so loved and who in her time had wept for her son’s sins and rejoiced in his conversion?

Turning again to Serge Lancel’s excellent Augustine, the best biography I know of the great Bishop of Hippo (p. 11 ff) we can get a view of Monica and her son and their relationship (my emphasis):

In the course of [The Confessions], Monica appears less as a model than as a permament point of reference, a beacon whose light, sometimes dimmed – as when he deserted and fled from his mother on his departure for Rome in 383 – marks out an as yet uncertain route. In the spring of 385, in Milan, rediscovering an Augustine who had broken with Manichaeism but did not yet adhere to the Christian faith, she would assure him of her conviction that before she departed this life she would see him a faithful Catholic. She had spared no effort to achive this goal, neither prayers nor tears nor the hard-won courage to ban her son from her house on his return from Carthage in 373. With other early Christians, she shared the gift of those visions in which divine revelation comes, for those who know how to interpret it, to throw light on a the path ahead and do away with doubt. For instance, the inspired dream she had in the depths of her despair, when Augustine was in his twentieth year. She had seen herself stading on a wooden rule, and a luminous young man approached her, joyful and smiling; when he asked her the cause of her sadness and daily tears, she replied that she was weeping for the perdition of her son; then the young man – surely Christ – told her to look more closely to discover that where she was stadning, there also stood her son. And Monica saw Augustine, standing by her side on the same rule. That is how they would be, both close to the divine, one summer evening in 387 at Ostia.

 

The last few decades of our twentieth century were more distant from Monica’s mental universe and her social environment than the fifteen preceding centuries, which leaves a great deal of room for simplification and even caricature. Where Augustine saw an exemplary Christian widow, always giving alms and going to church twice daily to pray and not to gossip, we would be tempted to see a visionary bigot, somewhat inflexible and totally lacking in what we call a sense of humour. With a nudge from Freudianism, the worried and perhaps over-attentive mother, passionately set on "travailing in the spirit" for the one she had travailed for in the flesh, has been perceived as carnally possessive and abusive by analysis for whom the Confessions sometimes seem to serve up their dubious theories on a platter. For example, this phrase of Augustine, recalling his Christian childhood which his father was still a pagan, and stating simply that Monica "did her utmost to make thee, my God, my father rather than him". We are told that the feeling of guilt, which in fact is strong in Augustine – and subsequently characteristic of medieval and modern Christianity – was the result of difficult relations between a mother and son of genius and a devout and dominating mother. The doctrine of original sin, and Augustinian creation, would emerge from it. Thus, according to this interpretation, for centuries a major feature of the moral character and religious feeling of our western world would be the outcome of neuroses engendered in Augustine’s psyche in his earliest childhood by his relationship with his mother.

Let us return to Thagaste, on the ides of November 354. Let us imagine Patricius, the too quickly forgotten father, and his wife, bending over the cradle of their newborn son. Was it at that moment that they decided on the name he was to be given? In the case of a male infant, naming was the father’s choice, but we can wager that Monica had her say in giving him the name Augustine, made commonplace for us by over a thousand years of countless bearers of this Christian name, but in those says so rare, and above all so ambitious: literally the "little Augustus" or the "little emperor". Did his parents, in the foreknowledge of a unique desitiny, bestow it on one who would make it illustrious? Bearing this diminutive, a child would grow whose posthumous glory would one day eclipse that of the masters of the world.

From Serge Lancel’s Augustine, the best biography I know of the great Bishop of Hippo (p. 8 ff):

Before devoting himself entirely to Mother Church, as he approached the age of forty, Augustine had had a concubine for about fifteen years, fo whom he had beem very fond and who had given him a son; then, at the same time as a fleeting engagement, a second short-lived liaison.  But only one woman really counted in his life, and that was his natural mother, Monica.

As we may guess from reading a few pages of Book XI of the Confessions, Patricius had taken a wife in Thagaste from a milieu close to his own.  He had married Monica, as his would describe it in a phrase borrowed from Virgil, "in the fullness of her nubility", which means that he had not married a child, a practice that was in any case more rare then in Agrica that in Rome itself.  The couple had three children, in what order we do not know: a girl, who remains anonymous to us, but who, once widowed, would later become the superior of a community of nuns, and two boys, Augustine and Navigius, whom we shall find with his brother in Italy, at Cassiciacum, then at Ostia at their dying mother’s bedside. 

...

So Monica had been born into a Christian family and was, as we would say today, a practicing believer.  The religious practices of Christians at that time, in North Africa, sometimes included aspects that would be surprising to us, such as the custom of taking offerings of food to the tombs of martyrs, for agapes that only too often degenerated into orgies; an obvious survival of the pagan festival of the Parentalia.  Of course, Monica did not indulge in those excesses.  If the baskets she brought to the cemetery contained, besides gruel and bread, a pitcher of unadulterated wine, when the time came to share libations with other faithful, she herself would take only a tiny amount, diluted with water, sipped from a goblet in front of every tomb visited.  Was this sobriety a memory of some experience in her early youth?  Augustine tells this sotry whcih he says he heard from the lady hersself.  Raised in temperance by an old serving-woman who enjoyed the complete trust of Monica’s parents, she had fallen into a bad habit.  Well-behaved girl that she was, she was sent to the cellar to fetch wine from the cask, but before using the goblet she had brought to fill the carafe she would just wet her lips with the wine, not because she liked it, says Augustine, but out of childish mischief.  But gradually she had acquired a taste for it, to the point where she was drinking entire goblets of it with great gusto.  Fortunately she had cured herself of this incipient liking for drink in a burst of pride: the maidservant who accompanied her to the cellar, having fallen out one day with her young mistresss, insultingly called he a "little wine bibber".  Stung to the quick, Monica had immediately stopped her habit.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003

In that bastion of commonsense The Wall Street Journal (6 Aug 2003) I read a review by Charlotte Allen of the New York Times (called by one bishop I know “Hell’s Bible”) religion columnist (and past editor of Commonweal) Peter Steinfels’ new rather liberally oriented tome A People Adrift: the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in America (Simon & Schuster).  Ms. Allen, while saying that Steinfels is speaking sympathetically of some issues about which most conservatives are usually quite concerned, makes some good observations regarding Mr. Steinfel’s book and his comments about “ghastly innovations” including “insipid music, architectural overhauls that have transformed parish churches into sterile auditoriums, and translations of the Latin liturgy into dumbed-down and even ungrammatical English.  (My own favorite: “the glory and honor is yours.”) “ Ms. Allen might need to make a review.  That should have been “all glory and honor is yours”, which is equally ungrammatical.  Nevertheless, her point is well taken.  

JP writes with a question: “As a reader of your articles from the first one published in The Wanderer almost 3 years ago, I was wondering if in addition to consulting Lewis & Short, do you also consult Stelten’s Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin to see if any new meanings/nuances maybe at work in the prayers of the new Roman Missal?  Or is there some other reference you use instead of Stelton for that purpose?  The reason I ask is that Lewis & Short covers (I think) Latin usage only up until the time of Augustine, whereas most of the prayers of the Roman Missal were written after that point (including some written relatively recently, ca. 1970).  I would think that there may be other meanings/nuances intended by the authors of the prayers that were not in use until after Augustine and I was just wondering how you take that into account when writing your articles.”  Thanks for the question.  First, L&S actually covers authors to around A.D. 600 including the Christian poet Venantius Fortunatus.  Second, Leo F. Stelton’s handy little Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995 – DEL) has a preface by Stelton saying that “this book is not intended to be a research dictionary”.  Rather, it is a “practical manual for seminary students once they have completed introductory courses in the Latin language” and that it might be useful also for laypeople.  So, DEL is helpful for the beginning student for a quick consultation.  As such its entries do not include citations showing the word in contexts, thus also keeping the size of the volume down.   

I often consult, as you have seen, the Latin Vulgate, both the older and the newer, as well as Greek lexical tools, such as Lampe’s great dictionary of Patristic Greek when I make a connection between a phrase in a prayer and something from the New Testament or from the Fathers.   Also, JP, the L&S is a research dictionary available in virtually every library as is Andrews, ed. Harper’s Latin Dictionary. A new Latin dictionary founded on the translation of Freund’s Latin-German lexicon. Rev., enl., and rewritten by Charlton Lewis and Charles Short (1907).  It is in one manageable, though large, volume and it is relatively cheap at $175 brand spanking new.  Other than that, I do not regularly consult other Latin dictionaries.  [NB: This is no longer the case now.  I also consult Souter and two dictionaries edited by Blaise, mentioned below and some others as well.]  I consult my memory and experience, however, from years of reading later Latin texts in various fields.  My experience is that, in the main, if you have a good grasp of Latin the one volume L&S will give you virtually everything you need.  The 40,000 word entry Oxford Latin Dictionary (P.G. Glare, ed., 1968) is very large format, quite expensive (new $295) and limited to classical texts only extending to the end of the 2nd century A.D.  Forcellini’s Totius latinitatis lexicon (1858-1887) is in 10 volumes and rare.  The many volume Thesaurus linguae latinae or TLL (1900+) is still in the works, is huge, and not easy to get to.  There are some Latin etymological dictionaries which I have looked at when I was near a library that possesses them.  Useful (and hard to get and expensive) are A. Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs du moyen-âge. Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi, praesertim ad res ecclesiasticas investgandas pertinens (1975) and C. du Fresne, seigneur Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis. 5th. ed. by Favre, 10 vols. (1883-1887).   On the other hand L&S includes very useful etymological information, so Blaise and Du Cange are overkill.  [NB: An opinion I have revised somewhat over time.]

L&S is better suited for the rough and tumble work we do in WDTPRS each week and it is entirely available online through the good folks at Tufts University in the USA running the awesome Perseus Project with mirror sites at Chicago, Oxford and Berlin (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/).  [NB: Recently the entire Tufts project has been revised and extended.  The site, with its mirrors, is fast and amazingly useful.]

POST COMMUNIONEM
LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Plenum, quaesumus, Domine,
in nobis remedium tuae miserationis operare,
ac tales nos esse perfice propitius et sic foveri,
ut tibi in omnibus placere valeamus.

In the 1962MR this was the Postcommunio of a votive Mass for the consecration of a bishop.  How it got here, I am not sure.  

Miseratio means “a pitying, pity, compassion, commiseration”.  In the Roman Canon we hear the phrase (which we reviewed just last week) “secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum sperantibus”.   L&S tells us that a remedium is “that which heals again; a cure, remedy; a medicine” and, logically therefore, “a means of aid, assistance, or relief; a remedy.”   Curiously, a form of remedium is only twice found in the Latin Vulgate, and both times in Tobit (cf. vv. 6:7; 10:4).  I would point out that the last time we saw remedium in one of our prayers was for the Super oblata of the 4th Sunday of Lent.  In that prayer remedium appeared also with the verb perficio, as it does today.   Perficio, perfeci, perfectum is the source of the English word “perfect”, meaning “to achieve, execute, carry out, accomplish, perform, dispatch, bring to an end or conclusion, finish, complete.”  Thus it is also “to make perfect’ and also “to bring about, to cause, effect”.  It is often constructed with ut and the subjective following, as it is in our prayer.  

About our ut and subjunctive construction today.  Please notice those words tales and sic.  To make sense of all this think in these terms: we are asking God to make us “such” or rather, “the kind of person” who will, as a result, do x,y, or z.  We want to be aided, warmed and cherished (foveri is a passive infinitive) by Him in such a way (sic) that there is a consequent result.  The result follows in the ut clause.

The verb foveo signifies in its basic meaning “to warm, to keep warm”.  By extension it means “to cherish, foster any thing”.  Interestingly, when applied to physical things and, for example, diseases it can be “to foment (whether with warm or cold remedies).”  I think we have all heard tales (or maybe some of you readers have experienced yourselves) the various remedies of yesteryear.  If you had “the grip” you would be smeared with a poultice or a cataplasm of something like hot goose grease.  Then you would be wrapped up to bake under so many blankets that you felt rather like a combination of St. Lawrence and St. Margaret Clitherow.   It is interesting that foveo is used in relationship with remedium.  Concerning other physical things, foveo is used for holding a child on one’s lap, or staying warm while wintering in a military camp.  In regard to mental things, foveo is as you might suspect, “to cherish, caress, love, favor, support, assist, encourage”.   

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord may this eucharist increase within us
the healing power of your love.
May it guide and direct our efforts
to please you in all things.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We entreat you, O Lord,
work in us the complete remedy of your compassion,
and graciously make us to be the sort of people, and also to be supported in such a way,
that we are able to please you in all things.

When I hear this prayer I make a couple strong connections.  My first connection is with the priest’s prayers at Holy Mass.  I mentioned above the link in the word miseratio to the Roman Canon, the only “Eucharistic Prayer” in the Latin Church for a very long time, and the one I use nearly always.  Also in the Mass prayers the priest says the word “remedium”.  After his own Holy Communion and that of the faithful (in other words seconds before he recites this Post communion prayer), as the server pours the first bit of wine into the chalice for the ablutions in order to break the substance of the last drops of the Precious Blood that may have pooled at the bottom, the priest says in the newer form of Mass as in the older: “O Lord, grant that what we have taken by mouth may be received with a pure mind and heart: and that from a temporal gift it may become for us an eternal remedy (remedium).”

I also am struck by the imagery of illness and remedy.  Christ is the great physician of our souls.  In His Sacrifice we have obtained the remission of our sins, the greatest sickness we can ever have.   By dying He destroyed our death earned by sin.  By rising He restores our life and the hope of a glorious resurrection.  In His own Person, then, we have the perfect remedy for everything that ails us, whether it be original sin or its unreconstructed effects, or our actual sins.  In the slightest fragment of a consecrated Host we have the price of every sin ever committed or to be committed.  In the slightest drop of the Precious Blood is the elixir of eternal life.  They are the full and perfect remedy (plenum remedium) by which God perfects us.  

The words foveo and remedium together in this prayer are very evocative. There come to mind the old remedies of heating and anointing.  Think of our prayer today as coming from a time when there was no central heating, before modern medicine, when a chill might mean the death knell.  Imagine that we, as weakened and sick children are being given, in Holy Communion, precisely what we need to make us whole again, to become the sort of people (tales) we ought to be.  In our Communion, God is, in a sense, anointing us yet again with a burning hot remedy.  Since the Council we speak often of the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist) whereby we become Christians in a fuller and fuller way.   In two of the sacraments we are literally anointed on the exterior of our bodies. In the Eucharist we are perhaps being “anointed” from within.  By the hands of the priest, alter Christus, He anointed us on our breasts and our backs at our baptism with the Oil of the Catechumens saying (in the old fashioned way of things by which most of you readers were baptized), “I anoint you with the oil of salvation, in Christ Jesus our Lord, so that you may have everlasting life”.  Just after the baptism itself, God anoints us through the priest with Holy Chrism, saying “May Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has given you a new birth by means of water and the Holy Spirit and forgiven all your sins, anoint you with the Chrism of salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord, so that you may have everlasting life.”   In Confirmation we were anointed in the forehead with Holy Chrism in the Holy Ghost as the bishop (or priest) said: “I sign you with the sign of the Cross and I confirm you with the Chrism of salvation”.  These sacraments must not be allowed to go dormant within us.  We must cherish them and keep them active.

In a good Holy Communion, God – the only effective remedy – is wrapping us up in His love, drawing us onto His lap, healing us, and keeping us warm in the winter of this world.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

One of my favorite blogs Laudator Temporis Acti provides amusing daily fare.  Recently the blogger cited Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (Ch. 2) and I had to share it with you.  It reminds me of the attitude I encounter rather often in my work:

Mr Vladimir, arranging his cravat, observed him in the glass over the mantelpiece.

“I daresay you have the social revolutionary jargon by heart well enough,” he said contemptuously. “Vox et. . . You haven’t ever studied Latin—have you?” “No,” growled Mr Verloc. “You did not expect me to know it. I belong to the million. Who knows Latin? Only a few hundred imbeciles who aren’t fit to take care of themselves.”

Oh yah?  Well, let us once again compare the Latin original of the today’s Super Oblata, called sometimes the “Prayer over the gifts”, and compare it with the lame-duck ICEL version and see what happens.  

Today’s prayer is strikingly different in style from what we have seen hitherto.  It is of new composition for the Novus Ordo edition of the Missale Romanum, though an element of it can be found in the 1962MR in the Secret of the votive Mass pro Ecclesia unitate… “for the unity of the Church”.

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):
Qui una semel hostia, Domine,
adoptionis tibi populum acquisisti,
unitatis et pacis in Ecclesia tua
propitius nobis dona concedas.

The Latin of this prayer is not terribly challenging.  The dense Lewis & Short Dictionary says that semel is an adverb meaning “once, a single time” and also in a succession it equals primum, primo “the first time, first”.  The verb acquiro means “to add to, to get or acquire”.  Unus, a, um can mean either “one” or “a single”, “sole”.  This is not the adverbial unā, meaning “in one and the same place, at the same time, in company, together”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O Lord, who acquired for Yourself a people of adoption
by a single victim sacrifice offered once only,
graciously grant to us the gifts
of unity and peace in Your Church.

When you work directly with the Latin texts of our prayers for Mass, and have a knowledge of the Latin version of the Scriptures (yet another good reason for priests to say the Liturgy of the Hours and Mass in Latin), you start recognizing in the prayers references to biblical passages.  These are rarely apparent in the lame-duck ICEL versions.  Even if you can’t immediately identify the phrase at the basis of a line in a Latin prayer, you get the sense that it was biblical and so you can start searching for it.  For example, that adoptionis populum acquisisti instantly sent me running to consult Scripture because of two familiar phrases, one Pauline and the other Petrine: adoptio filiorum Dei and populus acquisitionis.  Let’s look into these.

WDTPRS has examined adoptio in the past.  You might recall that adoptio is “adoption” in the sense of “to take as one’s child.”  Paul says adoptionem filiorum Dei ... “adoption of the sons of God” in the Latin Vulgate of Jerome which translates the Greek (h)uiothesia. The noun (h)uiothesia, occurs five times in the New Testament (Rom.8:15,23; 9:4; Gal.4:5; Eph.1:5). This compound noun means “placing as a son”. Being a “son” or a “daughter” of God through the adoption won for us by Jesus Christ has enormous consequences for how we face the vicissitudes of life.  Paul wrote to the Romans (8:15): “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” The Christian, integrated into Christ and His Church, can with confidence invoke the Father in time of need.  God hears our prayers not as a stranger God, but as a loving Father.  

A note is in order about Latin filii or “sons”.  Filii can be equally “children” rather than just “sons” according to the literal meaning.  Latin masculine plurals, depending on the context, can include females even though the form of the word is masculine.  In Latin, the masculine is inclusive.  So, we can say in English “adoption of children” and not just “of sons” without getting into anything too eerie.  

We can get some help to understand the phrase populus acquisitionis from 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race (populus a[d]cquisitionis), a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (RSV).  In the Church’s liturgy we find this phrase still in the Gregorian chant Communion antiphon of Thursday in the Octave of Easter, though in the newer Vulgate we find populum in acquisitionem; it is even cited obliquely in the new 2002MR’s GIRM 5… “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (RSV).  If we look back at the Greek original for this we find laòs eis peripoíesin (the noun peripoíesis from the verb peripoiéo) which by studying similar words in Eph 1: 14, 1 Thess 5:9, and 2 Thess 2:14 gives us the sense of a people acquired or redeemed, much as someone would buy a slave to set him free.  We Christians, however, become the “possession” of God in a new way.  We are not redeemed to be slaves, but rather as sons and daughters.

The context of that passage from 1 Peter was a series of admonitions, indeed imperatives, presented to Christians for the sake of their new life and new identity.  Our phrase populus acquisitionis falls in the context of the fifth of those admonitions (1 Peter 2:1-10), namely, that we are to long for spiritual nourishment so we can mature in our Christian lives.  We grow like infants into adulthood, built up into a temple, and thence into a royal priesthood.   The image Paul uses harks to how a parent gives milk to an infant child to foster his growth.  God gives also richer solid food as we mature, that is, as we can handle it.  And we can handle it as we grow and we need it for our life.
 
In our prayer today I sense a conceptual movement.  We move from being slaves to being sons.  We start as infants and then mature into a people of priests who belong entirely to God.  Consider also the phrase unitatis et pacis and see what it brings to mind.  A quick consultation of a Biblical concordance takes us to another Pauline text, Ephesians 4:1-6:

I therefore, the prisoner in the lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (servare unitatem spiritus in vinculo pacis).  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Paul, speaking in the manner of a prisoner or a slave, uses the word vinculum to describe the “bond of peace”, the “link of a chain”.  Because we belong to the Church integrally and truly by our baptism, Paul’s description is to be extended to us.  Turning our attention back to how we participate at Mass, today’s prayer is in the context of the offertory.  At this moment we are readying what is necessary (including ourselves) for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Merciful God,
the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ
made us your people.
In your love,
grant peace and unity to your Church.

Do we find the content of the Latin prayer in the lame-duck ICEL version?  Does it pay to know Latin?  You decide.

Let me ask you.  What would the last thirty some years have been like if we had had better translations all along?  What would our Church be like today had the mandate of the Council to maintain Latin been obeyed?  Would we have a different sense of our identity as Catholics?  Would those things have helped us better influence the society we live in?  Would we be better prepared to handle the pressures of daily life?  Would so many people, including clergy, have been acquiescent in the face of popular cultural trends and the destruction of our education system?  I think much of what we see going on today could have been averted.  We can’t know anything for sure, but I have little doubt that things would have been very different indeed.   This is because I believe that the true Actor at Mass is Christ Jesus the High Priest.  Mass is effective and nourishing.  Had things been in better shape, Catholics would be different today.  Lex orandi, lex credendi!  The way we pray has a reciprocal relationship with what we believe.  

There is no question that faithful church-going Catholics are in many places receiving nourishment and graces from the liturgy they participate in.  I am thinking about all this again, however, because of an experience I had this week.  I was called upon to preach at a Solemn Mass for the feast of the Assumption celebrated in the cathedral of Camden, New Jersey, using the 1962 Missale Romanum.  The level of intense and grateful participation at that Mass was remarkable.  The large number of well-behaved and happy children was thought provoking.  The way people dressed was exemplary.  When it was time to make responses and sing, they raised the roof.  I am also thinking of my home parish of St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minnesota where Holy Mass is celebrated often in Latin using the Novus Ordo.  In the last thirty years, some thirty men have been ordained from that one parish and many young men from St. Agnes are in the seminary.  In each case, the respective books are followed carefully, the preaching is solid, and everything is done with the sort of love that inspires care, on the part of the sacred ministers, and fervent attention on the part of the congregation.

Holy Mass is the source and summit of our Catholic lives.  It deserves the best and so do we.  If Mass must be celebrated in the vernacular, and apparently it must, then we need good translations which are accurate and beautiful.  This is especially important for critical texts in the Mass, such as consubstantialis in the Creed and pro multis in the consecration of the Precious Blood.

To grow into serious committed Catholics capable of making an impact on society, we need all that the Church desires to give us.  We adults could if necessary get by on baby food alone.  We could, if necessary, survive on milk and some nearly predigested veggies, but we would not thrive.  Would we be able to do our work well?  Could we respond with zeal and vigor to God’s will in our lives, having been fed only on such pabulum?  A new translation is in preparation.  More satisfying nourishment will come, God willing, through our beautiful prayers in a new translation, which will increase our yearning for the perfect food, containing in Itself all delight.

A SMOOTHER WDTPRS VERSION:
O Lord, who adopted for Yourself a People
by the Sacrifice offered once and for all time,
graciously grant us the gifts
of unity and of peace in Your Church.