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

Today is feast of St. Samuel, the prophet of the Old Testament. Many people do not realize that Old Testament figures are often considered saints. Here is the entry for St. Samuel in the Roman Martyrology:

2. Commemoratio sancti Samuelis, prophetae, qui puer a Deo vocatus, dein iudicis in Israel munere fungens, Deo iubente, Saulem unxit regem super populum, sed, illo postea a Domino ob infidelitatem reiecto, regalem unctionem contulit etiam Davidi, cuius ex semine Christus erat nasciturus. ... The commemoration of Saint Samuel, the prophet, who having been called by God when he was a boy, later exercising the office of a judge in Israel, since God was commanding it, annointed Saul as king over the people, but, after (Saul) was rejected by the Lord on account of his infidelity, he conferred royal annointing also upon David, from whose seed Christ would be born.

 

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003

In a story from Zenit news agency, I read last week that the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences organized a summer school or "Schola Aestiva" from 11-19 September in Sicily having invited 20 students from the Universities of Athens, Greece; Heidelberg, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Kiel, Germany; and Rome. The director of the program, Giovanni Maria Vian, of the Department of Patristic Philology of Rome’s "La Sapienza" University said that, "without the study of Latin, Greek, and the Classic and Christian heritage, there is the danger of losing the characteristic traces of European identity, precisely at the time when there is a desire to build the unity of the continent." As you know, there is hot debate now whether the constitution being drafted for a more closely united Europe should include any reference to Christianity, which was the foundation or major shaper of nearly every facet of European culture. Meanwhile, Zenon Card. Grocholewski, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, has formed a commission to promote the use of Latin in the Church. This may have been a response to the closure of the very last place in Rome where a person could get a degree in Latin Letters at a pontifical university, the “Salesianum”. Perhaps what we are seeing is a reversal of a trend. New initiatives are being undertaken even as old entities are dropping away. Change is a sign of life, in most cases.

Some e-mail from the Philippines: “I’m Fr. CVR, a priest of the archdiocese of Manila who’s presently assigned at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Minor Seminary. I would like to congratulate you for your excellent work. I’ve been looking for the Latin texts of the Collecta, Super Oblata and Post Communionem for quite a while now and your site has been of tremendous assistance. We celebrate the Mass in Latin every now and then…. Your analysis is also very helpful and I’ve come up with some of my homilies according to your explanations of the prayers.” Thank you Father! Keep up the good work there. It sounds like your seminary needs a copy of the 2002 Missale Romanum.

Our prayer for this week has not been in any edition of the Missale Romanum but it has an antecedent in the 1738 Missale Parisiense.

POST COMMUNIONEM
LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Per haec sacramenta, Domine, Christi participes effecti,
clementiam tuam humiliter imploramus,
ut, eius imaginis conformes in terris,
et eius consortes in caelis fieri mereamur.

This prayer has lovely rhythms and alliterations. It reads very elegantly. The parallelism of eius…conformes in terris with eius consortes in caelis is quite nice. To my ears it has more the style of a collect. Perhaps its origin in a non-Roman text accounts for this.

Right away some bells should be tinkling in the halls of your memory. This Post Communion is reminiscent of the prayer spoken by the priest during the offertory time of the Mass when he is preparing the wine and water in the chalice. More on this later.

How would this be WDTPRS without our citations of the precise and trustworthy Lewis & Short Dictionary? Effecti is a form of efficio which is formed in turn from facio (efficio (ecfacio)). It means, “to make out, work out; hence, to bring to pass, to effect, execute, complete, accomplish, make, form”. Imploro signifies “to invoke with tears, call to one’s assistance, call upon for aid; to invoke, beseech, entreat, implore” and by extension “to pray earnestly for, to beseech, entreat, implore, appeal to.”

For the person who is getting a their minimum daily requirement of Latin liturgy it is easy to make a connection between this week’s collect and the prayer said by the priest at the offertory of the Mass when he puts the tiny bit of water (symbolic of our humanity) into the wine (God’s divinity) in the chalice: "Per huius aquae et vini mysterium eius efficiamur divinitatis consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps. ... Through the mystery of this water and wine may we be made partakers of His divinity, who condescended to become a partaker of our humanity."

Remember that mysterium and sacramentum can be interchangeable in many liturgical contexts. Consors , -sortis, is an adjective meaning “sharing property with one (as brother, sister, relative), living in community of goods, partaking of in common” or a noun meaning “a sharer, partner”. Hence, by extension it signifies “of or belonging to a brother or sister, regarded as common heirs” and “a colleague, partner, comrade”. It can even mean “colleagues in power”. Think of the English word “consort” for a husband or wife and especially the spouse of a monarch and also “consortium” (Latin consortium) for a group of people or institutions sharing resources, etc. The Latin word is formed from con- and sors (“fate”). When you are a consortes you literally are sharing a common fate or destiny.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Having been formed into the participants of Christ through these sacramental mysteries,
we humbly implore your mercy, O Lord,
so that, conformed to His image on earth,
we may merit to made His partners in heaven.

In our prayer we have an elegant request informed with a humility tinged with sorrow (imploro). First, we recognize that the Holy Mass celebrated and the Holy Eucharist confected, the Holy Communion which has just been distributed and consumed by those who presented themselves, is the both the cause and sign of “participation” in Christ. To a certain extent it is indeed our action of going forward and receiving, but the true actor causing the participation is God Himself working in His Church. He initiates the participation and, once we determine to cooperate, He makes us capable.

Second, this old prayer accurately conveys what the Church has always taught about “active participation” in her liturgical documents and in the ordinary magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs. The Second Vatican Council mandated liturgical reforms so as to promote “full, active and conscious participation.” This active participation is not about kneeling, standing, carrying things, singing, clapping or hugging, etc. These are external activities that are not themselves the sum and total of “active participation”. They are outward signs or even outpourings of an interior, spiritual activity. The Council wanted all outward expressions and actions to be authentic expressions of what was happening within. By active participation the Church wants first and foremost what I call “active receptivity”, since the real actor in the sacred action of the Mass is Christ the High Priest. The point of Mass is not what we are doing for Him, but rather what He is doing for us. Thus, we must be actively receptive to His gifts. Furthermore, the Church identifies the properly disposed reception of Holy Communion as the summit, the ultimate form of “active participation”. Truly in making a good Holy Communion we are “formed into the participants of Christ through these sacramental mysteries.”

I am quite moved furthermore by the beautiful and rhythmical little phrase, with its fine cadence, humiliter imploramus. Above I say that this prayer carries a tone of humility tinged with sorrow. This is picked up from the root of imploro. Ploro means, “to cry out, to cry aloud; to wail, lament; to weep over any thing, to lament, bewail.” Imploro, “to implore”, has the overtone of making a request earnestly, urgently, even with tears. Perhaps it is not too much to say that, in this week’s prayer, the priest, even though he is standing nobly before the altar, hands raised and outspread in the orans position, is at least symbolically in the language of the prayer really weeping with his spiritual arms wrapped around the ankles of the Risen Christ glorious with their terrible splendid wounds… entreating God for your sake, O communicant!

Our goals as the result of the good Communion and the transformation we experience in the action of the Holy Mass is two fold, one of them immediate and one to come sometime in the future, is first to become better images of God here on earth – acting, speaking, thinking ever more like Christ would do – and therefore sharers of Christ’s glory in heaven. The word consors hints that we are to share the same fate as Christ. Christ is the “first fruits” (cf. Romans 8:23; 1 Cor 15:20; 1Cor 15:23; 2 Thess 2:13; James 1:8). As He is, so too may we be one day.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
God of mercy,
by this sacrament you make us one with Christ.
By becoming more like him on earth,
may we come to share his glory in heaven.

I think we can do be better than this in the future. We must earnestly pray for graces to be poured out on those preparing the new English translation, perhaps to come 2005. Have you written kind and warm letters of encouragement to your bishop lately? They have the charge of this matter after all. Imagine what it will do to us if we get a poor translation in the future!

A while ago I promised to provide more comments on the volume, Liturgy for the New Millennium: A Commentary on the Revised Sacramentary – Essays in Honor of Anscar J. Chupungco, O.S.B. (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2000). This “festschrift” concerns in large part issues dealing with the preparation of the ICEL translation of the second edition of the Roman Missal, the 1975MR, which translation was rather abruptly rejected by the Holy See even though it was a lame duck in the face of the imminent release back in March 2002 of the third edition. In the “festschrift” there is an article by Michael G. Witczak on “The Eucharistic Prayer in English: An Analysis and Evaluation of the ICEL Project.” Witczak provides examples from the Roman Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer) of the ICEL translation prepared in 1994 for the second edition. The examples give a taste of what we might have gotten had not Rome intervened so forcefully. For example, at the passage in the Canon Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis tuis… “For ourselves, too, we ask some share…” we would have been hearing instead: “For ourselves, too, sinners who trust in your mercy and love, we ask some share in the fellowship of your apostles and martyrs….and all your saints. Welcome us into their company, not considering what we deserve, but freely granting us your pardon.” (NB: the Latin of the last part includes the phrase: intra quorum nos consortium. Also, in the article, there is a Latin typo at this point: miserationem rather than the correct miserationum. It’s always one letter that gets you in Latin, friends!) I would direct your attention to the fact that, while better, the proposed 1994 ICEL version was still leaving out key concepts. The Nobis quoque is more literally rendered (not necessarily liturgically better) as “To us sinners also, Your servants, trusting in the abundance of Your mercies, deign to grant some share and fellowship with Your Holy Apostles and Martyrs…, and all Your Saints, amongst whose company we entreat You to admit us, not as an appraiser of our merits, but as a gracious giver of forgiveness. Through Christ our Lord.”

It is not my intention to propose in these articles smooth liturgically appropriate translations. However, I would settle for that literal version if the alternative would have to be like the 1994 ICEL proposal. As we draw toward the end of this year’s cycle of WDTPRS articles on the Post communion prayers, perhaps we might consider tackling the Eucharistic Prayers next year? [NB: Which is exactly what happened!]

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

His Excellency Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds and chairman of the new and improved ICEL, wrote a piece for The Tablet (5 August) describing the status quaestionis. Here are a few of his comments.

First, consider what he says about now superseded theory of translation called dynamic equivalence (my emphasis).
The originator of the idea of dynamic equivalence, Eugene Nida, himself ceased to use it in his later writings. In insisting on the importance of linguistic form and its interdependence with content, Liturgiam Authenticam takes account of recent work in linguistics. It must have been a difficult document to write, for it is always difficult – some would say impossible – to write about language prescriptively and well. But something needed to be said, for the current texts we use simply do not hand on the tradition of prayer that we find in the Latin Missal. Whatever is said about Liturgiam Authenticam by its critics, it has served us well as a key to unlock the treasury of the Missal. We have been surprised and delighted by the riches that a careful attention to forms of prayer has revealed to us.

 

“...the riches that a careful attention to forms of prayer has revealed ….” Sound familiar? I am reminded of how prestigious liturgists such as Jungmann and Bouyer repudiated their early claims about Mass being celebrated versus populum. The tide seems to be turning on those things, albeit slowly. In the meantime, however, O the damage done! Going on, His Excellency shared an example of ICEL’s new Post Communion for Easter Sunday. Let’s look at it and compare it with a reworked WDTPRS version of a few years ago.

NEW ICEL VERSION reported by Bp. Roche
With unfailing love and care, O God,
watch over your Church,
so that, renewed by the paschal mysteries,
she may reach the bright glory of the
Resurrection.

SLAVISHLY LITERAL WDTPRS VERSION from 2003
Look to Thy Church, O God, with unending dutiful good will,
so that, having been renewed by means of the paschal sacramental mysteries,
it may attain to the glory of the resurrection.

SMOOTHED OUT WDTPRS VERSION
Look to Your Church, O God, with unending gracious good will,
so that, renewed by the paschal mysteries,
she may attain to the glory of the resurrection.

The new ICEL version is very sound. Judge for yourself how it compares to the original through the medium of our WDTPRS version. Moreover, Bishop Roche comments on the “tone” of prayers, which has been a matter of constant concern for us.

We are constantly concerned with the issue of register. A register is a subset of a language suitable to a particular context: I would use one register to address Parliament and a different one to speak to a class of young children. Early in the process, we proposed that towards the end of Eucharistic Prayer 1 (the Roman Canon) the priest should say: "To us sinners also … deign to grant some share and fellowship with your holy apostles and martyrs." "Deign" was greeted with howls of derision from all sides: it was thought to belong to too formal a register for the liturgy. So we tried a much more colloquial version, "please grant some share and fellowship". This was judged too informal. So we finally settled on "be pleased to grant …" which seems to fall between the two.
The prayers of the Roman Rite use many expressions of courtesy in addressing God. To find the appropriate polite form for an occasion is not easy: ask yourself what you would say if you unexpectedly met the Queen, for instance. The liturgical texts that we currently use omit many deprecatory expressions found in the Latin original. We are restoring them, and in doing so trying to forge a new register of courteous address to God. Like any new register, it will need to be learnt.

One of the flaws in the lame-duck ICEL versions is how entirely banal they are. Here is Bishop Roche:

Some people assume that liturgical language should be comfortably predictable: it should not shock. That assumption was not shared by the compilers of the post-conciliar Latin Missale Romanum. Following them, ICEL has not been afraid to introduce an element of surprise into the prayers we are offering. What is surprising eventually becomes familiar, while retaining the vividness that initially caused surprise.

 

Many of us could name a piece of music that shocked us when we first heard it and that, as it has become familiar, has continued to enrich our experience. Liturgical texts have a long life. We want the landscape of the Missal to have some colour, some peaks and some troughs, not to be the dull monochrome desert across which we currently traverse year by year. To use a different metaphor, the Missal is a jewel-box, not a deep freezer.

YES! The language of prayer should not be entirely commonplace. It cannot be hitched to the way people talk in normal circumstances. Even in the best circumstances and environments, wherein people are well educated and genteel, even above average "common" parlance would not be good for liturgical prayer. But today … with our informality and vulgarity… UGH. The horror….

His Excellency, through the image of a jewelry box, makes the good point that liturgical language should fascinate and dazzle, captivate and bemuse, attract and make you focus. A jewelry box is a good description for this just as a deep freeze is for its opposite: in my freezer I have stacks of white paper packages, things sealed in bags and containers. There is nothing exciting going on in my freezer. Those frozen things get exciting only they are thawed out and my work at the stove begins. Everything needs to be "unpacked" before it can be useful and delightful. That is what WDTPRS has been doing all this time: dragging the content of the Latin prayers out of the deep freeze (= the lame-duck ICEL version) and doing some serious cooking with that content. Allow me to mix my metaphors wildly, but when you work from the Latin content, every plate on your table can be a jewel. Holy Mass, our foretaste of the heavenly banquet, deserves no less.

We must now turn quickly to this week’s “Prayer over the gifts”, which was the same as that for the fifth day of the Christmas Octave, 29 December. This prayer was not in a pre-conciliar edition of the Missale Romanum but it had an antecedent in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary during April.

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):
Suscipe, Domine, munera nostra,
quibus exercentur commercia gloriosa,
ut, offerentes quae dedisti,
te ipsum mereamur accipere.

Notice how our prayer begins with a form of suscipio and ends with accipio. Also, there are pairs of neuter plurals: munera nostra…commercia gloriosa.

Our oft-consulted Lewis & Short Dictionary informs us that commercium, which WDTPRS reviewed during the Easter season, means “trade, traffic, commerce” and therefore also “intercourse, communication, correspondence, fellowship.” O admirabile commercium - “O wondrous exchange!”, is the famous antiphon for the octave day of Christmas. In the ancient Latin of the Old Testament commercium refers to the covenant of man and God, a kind of “contractual agreement” and exchange of fidelity though between decidedly unequal partners. We now have a new covenant with God in Christ, a new commercium. As St. Leo the Great (+461) put it, the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we might become the sons of God.

We hear the word suscipe often in Catholic worship. Suscipio is “to take hold of in order to support, i.e. to take or catch up, to take upon one.” Among many other things it is used in a legal context as “to take upon one, undertake, assume, begin, incur, enter upon (especially when done voluntarily and as a favor; recipio, when done as a duty or under an obligation)” and thus in reference to a parent (natural or adoptive) and child “to take up a new-born child from the ground; hence, to acknowledge, recognize, bring up as one’s own.” Going on, accipio is at heart “to accept” and thus means by extension, implying action, “to take, to take possession of, to accept” and, concerning something that falls to one’s share, “to get, to receive, to be the recipient of.”

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
accept our sacrifice
as a holy exchange of gifts.
By offering what you have given us
may we receive the gift of yourself.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Catch up our gifts, O Lord,
by which glorious transforming exchanges are given impetus,
so that we who are offering what you have given
may merit to be recipients of You Yourself.

I am struck by the forceful action verbs. The strong imperative form suscipe means “snatch up, take up, catch up.” Exerceo is “to drive along, exercise”. In some contexts it can mean “drive” or “work” in the sense of “vex, harass”. Think of being emotionally “exercised”. We have verbs of offering, giving and taking or receiving. There is a back and forth conceptual rhythm in the prayer. The image comes to mind of two jugglers rapidly passing objects between themselves. The holy exchange is accentuated by the bookend verbs of the super oblata: suscipere… accipere.

One of the driving principles of Liturgiam authenticam (LA) is a proper understanding of inculturation. LA is the fifth instruction on how the liturgical mandates of the Council were to be implemented. The fourth instruction Varietates legitimae concerned precisely inculturation. Inculturation must be properly understood. There is a dynamic interchange and influencing process going on constantly between the “world” and the Church. Every different people of the globe has something of value to contribute to the Church at the same time that the Church, at least historically, forms and shapes whole peoples. This dynamic interchange means that the Church influences the world and the world in turn influences the Church. The Church gains many gifts from the world: music, art, architecture, languages and their literature, etc. These are taken in by the Church and made her own. However, and this is the key, everything the Church gives in this exchange must always be logically prior. This commercium goes on back and forth simultaneously with respect to the passage of time, but the Church… as the Church… gives and shapes first and then receives back what the world has done with her formation. That is to say, this is what happened when the Church carried out her role rightly.

A SMOOTHER VERSION:
Receive O Lord, our gifts
by which glorious exchanges are being made,
so that we, offering now what You have already given us
may in turn merit to receive Your very Self.

The concept of the sacrum commercium, a “holy exchange” is central to the Roman Canon. It is a frequent element of the prayers for Holy Mass after the post-Conciliar reform. God gives us bread and wine. We offer them back to God. God transforms them for us into the Body, Blood, soul and divinity of the eternal Son, Christ Jesus. These new Gifts transform us into acceptable offerings to God together with all our deeds and words. And then God gives us bread and wine…. This glorious exchange teaches us the mystery that earthly and temporal gifts freely given can become for us vehicles of eternal and spiritual graces.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005

AB writes by e-mail: “Does there exist an analytical Latin lexicon for the Latin Vulgate Bible (hard copy)? … Could you recommend a Latin Grammar and a separate Latin Dictionary for beginning students.”  I am unaware, AB, of an analytical dictionary of the Latin Vulgate.  Analytical Hebrew and Greek Biblical dictionaries would cover this ground.  WDTPRS recommends the detailed Latin Grammar by B. L. Guildersleeve and G. Lodge or else Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar and even one by Charles E. Bennett.  For a starting student dictionary try the widely available Cassell’s Latin Dictionary.  They can be purchased online through Amazon or other outlets.  Also, check used bookstores for cheap copies, though any decent book vendor should carry these.

Via the marvelous medium of e-mail JP writes from who knows where: “Lately I’ve been comparing your translations to the alternative opening prayers in my ICEL missal and found that sometimes it is closer in spirit to the original Latin than the “official” opening prayer from ICEL.  Maybe you could include them in your column also?”  I have never examined this, JP.   I studiously ignore those texts when I read Mass in English.   In fact, I wish I could ignore all lame-duck ICEL texts.  The “alternative” Opening Prayers are not in the official Missale Romanum and so we do not study them here.  ICEL went beyond its mandate in concocting them and they won’t be in the next English translation.  PS: I like saying “read Mass” once in a while, just to bug the lefties.

In the current issue of First Things (August/September 2005 – No. 155) there is an engaging article called “The Church’s Way of Speaking” by the distinguished Robert Louis Wilken of the University of Virginia.  Prof. Wilken is also adjunct faculty at my institute in Rome, the Augustinianum.  

What does Prof. Wilken have to teach us?  The content of our faith is handed on to us through the Church which has a particular language by which our knowledge and identity as Catholics is shaped.  This language is particular to the Church and is distinguished from secular language.  According to Wilken, “Just as there is a language proper to biology or to medicine, so there is a language proper to Christianity.  Our beliefs, our moral convictions, and our attitudes are carried by very specific words and images.  Words, not ideas, bring into focus with compactness and intensity what is honored and cherished.  They are the indispensable carriers of the Church’s faith as it is handed on from generation to generation” (p. 28).  St. Augustine (+430) said that the Church has a customary way of speaking, a consuetudo loquendi ecclesiastica … (ciu. 10.21).  As Wilken rightly points out, “The faith, then, is embedded in language.  It is not a set of abstract beliefs or ideas, but a world of shared associations and allusions with its own beauty and sonority, inner cohesion and logic, emotional and rhetorical power.  The Church’s way of speaking is a collection of the words and images that have formed the thinking and actions of those who have known Christ.  The faith they confessed cannot be divorced from the words they used, nor the words uprooted from the lives of their speakers.  Christian thinking is inescapably historical. … In using the Church’s language, we learn to live together as a community, to breathe in harmony.  We learn to think the Church’s thoughts, share its loves, and live by its precepts.  Without the distinctive Christian language there can be no full Christian life, no faithful handing on of the faith to the next generation.  For that reason, the words that embody what we believe and practice – words given us by those in whom Christ was present – cannot be frivolously tampered with, translated into another idiom, or discarded” (p. 29).  Prof. Wilken then explores how the Church’s culture has been increasingly chewed up by a hostile secular culture and how that hostile secular culture has increasingly become the “arbiter of meaning”.  “Consequently, a high premium is placed on translation from one idiom to another.  Translation, of course, is inevitable in any religious transaction….  If, however, Christianity is a culture in its own right, the Church must insist on its own way of speaking.  There must be translation into the Lord’s style of language, bringing alien language into the orbit of Christian belief and practice and giving it a different meaning” (p. 30).  I should add that this is precisely what WDTPRS has been explaining for years about inculturation: what the Church has to give in this dynamic two-way process must always be given logical priority.  Prof. Wilken continues: “More frequently, however, the task of handing on the faith is understood to mean rendering Christian language into the patois of modernity – even in liturgy, an area where one would expect the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of the Church’s way of speaking to be preserved” (p. 30).

Prof. Wilken has aptly presented the issue we have dealt with for years in this series.  He goes on in his article to argue with examples that something of the Church’s proper language has been lost after the reforms of Vatican II even in the Latin prayers for Mass.   This is a matter we have looked at before in WDTPRS and we can perhaps in a future article return to look at some of his examples.  However, today I want to apply what he said as the perfect description of what has been done in the past in liturgical translation into English, the wretched pabulum forced down our throats now for decades.  Consider these observations by Prof. Wilken about the “loss of theological nuance” and the interpolation of concepts alien to the Church’s true culture: “Such changes are deliberate, an attempt to accommodate the words of the liturgy to ‘the modern mentality’ (in the words of one of the revisers).  The translators display an embarrassing lack of confidence in what Christians believe and practice.  Some texts were judged ‘shocking for the man of today’ and ‘difficult to understand’ and for that reason were ‘frankly corrected.’  What we have here is a kind of inculturation of Western modernity” (p. 30).   Indeed, I would add to Wilken’s perfect summation that the translators as those who approved the bad translations thought we were all too stupid to grasp what people had somehow been able to understand for centuries.  This is also the attitude of those who today are actively trying to block or derail the work of creating a new, sound, beautiful and accurate English translation.  Wilken continues with a marvelous phrase that could nearly be a motto of what we do here each week (emphasis added): “The unique gift of liturgy, Roman (sic) Guardini wrote in his Spirit of the Liturgy, is to ‘create a universe brimming with fruitful spiritual life.’  Liturgy does not ‘exist for the sake of humanity, but for the sake of God.’  If the Bible is the lexicon of Christian speech, the liturgy is its grammar, a place to come to know and practice the Christian idiom and to be formed by it” (p. 31).

WDTPRS hats off to Robert Wilken and First Things for that article.  With our heads uncovered in respect for those profound observations as well as the content of what today’s prayer really says, let us move to our Collect.  Today’s prayer is at least as old as the Gelasian Sacramentary.  It was in the 1962MR for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost.  The newer version in the Novus Ordo adds a helpful comma after ut.  This Collect had been shaping people for centuries before ICEL got its hands on it in the ‘60’s.

COLLECT - (2002MR):
Deus, qui diligentibus te bona invisibilia praeparasti,
infunde cordibus nostris tui amoris affectum,
ut, te in omnibus et super omnia diligentes,
promissiones tuas, quae omne desiderium superant,
consequamur.
 
The great Lewis & Short Dictionary reveals that affectus means “A state of body, and esp. of mind produced in one by some influence, a state or disposition of mind, affection, mood: Love, desire, fondness, good will, compassion, sympathy.”  An interesting verb is consequor which means among other things, “pursue, go after, attend, to follow” and also, “to follow a model, copy, obey”.  It indicates, “to follow a preceding cause as an effect, to ensue, result, to be the consequence, to arise or proceed from.”  I am choosing to say “attain.”  There are many words of loving and longing in today’s prayer.  We have diligo, amor, affectus and we have other tangential words like cor, desiderium, promissio.  Diligio is marvelous.  Initially it means, “to value or esteem highly, to love”.  It also carries the impact of “careful, assiduous, attentive, diligent, accurate”, as in our word “diligent”.  When you truly care, you give your very best.  Desiderium is “a longing, ardent desire or wish, properly for something once possessed; grief, regret for the absence or loss of any thing [or person].”     

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who prepares unseen goods for those loving you,
pour into our hearts the disposition of your love,
so that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may attain your promises, which surpass every desire.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
God our Father,
may we love you in all things and above all things
and reach the joy you have prepared for us
beyond all our imagining.

Today’s Collect pulses with longing.  When I hear this pronounced aloud, I hear a connection between invisibilia at the beginning of the prayer and promissiones at the end.  The concepts are ordered climactically, beginning with the ways that we can love on our own (which is an unspoken starting point almost before the prayer begins), “natural” love, previous or apart from a baptized Christian’s new character.  We move then beyond human loves to how we can love in this world with the help of God’s grace which we ask Him to pour into our hearts (charity).  Then we aim at that love awaiting us in heaven, a love beyond anything we can experience in this life.  It will complete surpassingly our every hope and desire.  That is how I connect “invisible things” and “promises.”  We know they are there, but we haven’t attained them yet.  Since we are living in a state of “already but not yet” in regard to our participation in the Resurrection, what awaits us after our entrance into the Beatific vision is unimaginable.  We can only gasp and ache after it, longing for the completion God promised.

Although we have an ascent in and to Love personified in the Collect, we ought not oppose natural and supernatural loves.  Human love, sometimes called eros, isn’t automatically contrary to “religious love”.  We are human beings, not angels.  We must avoid on the one hand the extreme of trying to profane what is supernatural by locking it into the finite, and on the other hand desiring only and purely supernatural love in this life, which would render us ineffective and powerless.  We find fulfillment of our good earthly loves in the perfect love which is only in God.  Grace builds on nature, it doesn’t destroy it.  We therefore long for Love, we reach out to it, thirsting for its fullness, its completing, healing, transforming power.  In redeeming us, He did not undo us.  He lifts up who and what we are and makes us whole again.  This is the promise we live for in this vale of tears.  Think of the Preface for the Mass for Christmas, the celebration of Love Incarnate: “For through the mystery of the incarnate Word, the new light of Your glory dazzled the eyes of our mind, so that while we know God visibly, through Him we may be snatched up into invisible love… (in invisibilem amorem rapiamur).”  

Richard of St. Victor said: “Love is the eye and to love is to see.”  Love is the key to seeing the one who is otherwise unseeable.