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

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003

A veteran WDTPRS reader alerted me to the comments of in the July/August issue of Adoremus Bulletin made by Fr. Gino Dalpiaz, C.S. of the Italian Cultural Center in Stone Park, IL, with a query about my own experience: "When I compare the ICEL translation of the liturgical texts we’ve been using these past thirty years with the translation found, for example, in the magnificent Italian Missal I’m very familiar with, I get extremely upset. ICEL did not translate. It made up prayers from whole cloth under the guise of translation. ‘Truth in advertising’ meant nothing to ICEL. It was a bait-and-switch thing. Most of the time there was no similarity between the English and the masterful Italian translations of the Mass prayers. I felt cheated because I wanted to know exactly what the original Latin prayers given us by the Church meant, not what a group of so-called translators wanted me to believe. These are not ‘trifling’ matters.”

Indeed, these are not trifling matters, Reverendo Padre!  Davvero, mica sono sciocchezze! The issue of translation is of critical importance.  Christ continues to work through the Church to give us what we need for our journey through life and come through to the happiness of heaven.  The Sunday Mass and its prayers are indeed the sole contact many Catholics have with Christ’s voice speaking today in a living Church.  We need good translations.  While no translation is perfect, which we will always grant, with care and prayer we can craft texts which convey with transparency the content of the Latin originals.

I would say in reaction to the statements of Fr. Dalpiaz in Adoremus that the Italian translation of the Missale Romanum is far in a way superior to the early ICEL work in respect both to its accuracy and beauty.  The Italian is not perfect, but it is better.  Furthermore, I think it is right to feel cheated, not only because he should have been able for decades now to hear the content of the Latin prayers through good English translations but also because in order to get at the content of the Latin he had to go to the Italian, itself a translation.  So, everyone, be hopeful, but also persevere in prayer and writing kind letters of encouragement to those who have the care of this difficult matter.

I read on the website of one the largest dioceses in the world, the Archdiocese of Milan (http://www.diocesi.milano.it), that Dionigi Card. Tettamanzi (whom many consider a frontrunner among the papabili), on 8 September, feast of the Nativity of Mary, has initiated a missionary-style program of conversion there parish by parish.  His Eminence has issued for this purpose a major pastoral letter entitled "Mi Sarete Testimoni…You Will Be My Witnesses" (cf. Acts 1:8) outlining a three-year plan.   In his homily for the feast of the Nativity of Mary, Card. Tettamanzi stressed the importance of assuring that celebration of Sunday Masses, especially, was characterized by a very highly quality so that people could truly experience an encounter with God and thus be more able to give themselves over to Him in obedience.   In response to the problem of so many people being sacramentalized but not actually, interiorly evangelized, the Archbishop of Milan also stresses the frequent reception of the sacraments in a way that is lived.  Moreover, he urges the presence of solid practicing Christians in every aspect of the life of society.  We cannot opt out and we must bring something new and fresh to the world.   In his presentation of his program Card. Tettamanzi seems to be making an integral connection between what we receive through Holy Mass and the graces that come from the other sacraments, and the mores and trends of society as a whole.  As the one goes, so goes the other.  His Eminence is also basically saying that what has been going on as a routine for a long time now is no longer adequate.  He is shaking things up in Milan.  
 
Scholion: In reference to my mention last week of the famous phrase of the ancient Latin poet Horace, “Nunc est bibendum…”, did you know that the name perhaps the most recognizable product images/characters in the world, the bulging white pile of tires referred to as “The Michelin Man” is Bibendum?   He got this name through a series of circumstances.  The maker of the pneumatic tire André Michelin was defending its advantages by saying that “the tire drinks obstacles”.   The following year the brothers Michelin were at an exposition in Lyon and, seeing a stack of different sized tires, Eduoard quipped to André, “If it had arms it would look like a man.”   In 1887 the illustrator Marius Rossillon (aka O’Galop) showed the brothers Michelin an advertising poster (remember that Michelin also did the travel guides which gave restaurants their coveted star ratings) depicting a fat Bavarian beer drinker raising a tankard and saying Horace’s famous phrase “Nunc est bibendum!”  André made the connection between the drinker, his own phrase that pneumatic tires “drink obstacles”, and the pile of different tires.   So, in 1897 the same O’Galop made a new poster from the directions of André showing a man made from tires at a banquet table raising a glass full of the tire’s perennial nemeses (nails and broken glass) offering a toast “To Your Health!  Michelin Tires Drink Obstacles!”   Soon after the poster came out, someone who saw André Michelin passing by exclaimed, “There’s Bibendum!”  This name quickly passed to the chubby tire character and the soubriquet stuck.  And for the sake of being inclusive, Bibendum has a wife and child: Bibette and Bébib.  And now, I will put the brakes to this digression lest you tire of this trivia, and move on to this week’s…

POST COMMUNIONEM
LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Quos tuis, Domine, reficis sacramentis,
continuis attolle benignus auxiliis,
ut redemptionis effectum
et mysteriis capiamus et moribus.

This was the Postcommunio in the 1962MR for the Mass for the conferring of Holy Orders (in collatione Ordinum).  There are some ear catching sibilant s’s in the first part of this prayer and the first line has a lovely cadence: reficis sacramentis… long short short long short long long.

I am certain that your own copy of our bastion of clarity and bulwark against obfuscation the Lewis & Short Dictionary, which we are happy to extol, has already discovered to you that the verb attollo means “to lift or raise up, raise, elevate, lift on high” and also “to enlarge, aggrandize, to render prominent or conspicuous, to extol”.  We often see in these Post Communion prayers forms of the verb reficio, which refers to refreshing and nourishing, strengthening with food, and so forth.  Continuus, a, um is an old adjectival friend applying to time/space phenomena.  For space ideas it means a “joining, connecting with something, or hanging together, in space or time, uninterrupted, continuous.”  For time notions it is “following one after another, successive, continuous” in the sense of unending or incessant.    Auxilium, from the verb augeo, means “help, aid, assistance, support, succor” and in the plural, auxilia, etc., it is “auxiliary troops”.  In medical terms it signifies “an antidote, remedy”.  Auxilium is a familiar word for those who have the opportunity to participate at Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament when the O salutaris Hostia, the customary hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), is sung:  “O salutaris Hostia / Quae coeli pandis ostium. / Bella premunt hostilia; / Da robur, fer auxilium… O saving Victim, who opens the gate of heaven.  Hostile wars are pressing us; Give strength, bring aid….”  As we have seen several times already in these columns, capio is an extremely polyvalent word, with meanings ranging from, basically, “to take in hand, take hold of, lay hold of, take, seize, grasp” to, by extension, “to win, captivate, charm, allure, enchain, enslave, fascinate” and “to deprive one of his powers or faculties, to harm”.  In our prayer today we hear something like “to take, seize, obtain, get, enjoy, reap”.  A very important word today is mos, moris, meaning “manner, custom, way, usage, practice, fashion, wont, as determined not by the laws, but by men’s will and pleasure, humor, self-will, caprice” and therefore also in a moral point of view “conduct, behavior; (in plural) manners, morals, character”.  You will remember the cry of M. Tullius Cicero while he was consul (B.C. 63) in his first great diatribe against Lucius Sergius Catilina, the chief of a group of conspirators against the state: O tempora! O mores! (1 Cat. 2).  “Mores” is also an English word.  Regular readers of WDTPRS instantly recall that mysteria and sacramenta are often interchangeable.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
help us with your kindness.
Make us strong through the eucharist.
May we put into action
the saving mystery we celebrate.

Usually ICEL is content to chop the periodic sentence of the Latin original into two sentences.  Today’s ICEL version uses three, making it even more haltingly awkward than usual.  While in these weekly columns we are not attempting to produce a translation which is in every respect suitable for use in the Mass, perhaps we can nevertheless do better even when providing something quite literal.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Kindly raise up, O Lord, with unending helps,
those whom you renew by your sacraments,
so that we may grasp the effect of redemption
both in the sacramental mysteries and in conduct of our lives.

Consider that this prayer was part of a Mass for conferring Holy Orders, sacramental ordination.  Now it is used in a very different context, a Sunday Mass in a parish church.  Given the origin and previous application of this prayer it may be useful for the laity in the pews listening to it to be sharply aware of their own mode of participation in the priesthood of Christ through their own baptismal character.  If lay people do not offer sacrifice in the manner of the ordained priest, they are nonetheless called upon in Mass to unite their sacrifices to that which the priest offers.  They must exercise their own mode of priesthood.  This does not end at the doorway of the church.  Our baptismal character is an integral part of who we are every moment of our lives and, indeed, into eternity.   I have always though it significant that Holy Communion takes place so close to the dismissal from Mass.  While you are hopefully waiting respectfully for the priest to leave the sacred precinct of the sanctuary and are then offering a good and recollected act of thanksgiving after Mass’s close, it seems as if no sooner as we receive the Body of Christ in Communion then we are out the door and back into the world God sends us out to work in.

In our prayer today there is a theme of continuity.  We even have a form of the word continuus.  In the beginning of the Post communion Father refers to the constant helps we depend on from the actual graces God confers upon us.  The effect of redemption will be eternal and unending.  In the final line we hear of that eternal effect linking and yoking together our participation in the sacred sacramental mysteries we experience in Holy Mass, on the one hand, with the conduct and mores of our lives on the other.  For the baptized Catholic Christian there must be continuity between our reception of the sacraments and the way we live.

At the time of the second anniversary of 11 September 2001, as we watch the cultural trends and the present burning debates in society, can we… ought we… as Catholic Christians bring something new and fresh to the public square?   Dear friends, “Bella premunt hostilia”!  If we are going to dare to receive Holy Communion at Mass, we need to be more than simply “properly disposed” regarding our Eucharistic fast and the state of grace. In keeping with the themes of  “salt and light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-16) each one of us must be prepared also to be beacons of Christ outside the confines of the parish church too, beaming by our words and actions what we gain from the Eucharist into the world’s every niche and corner where we may have influence.  

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

This week let’s plunge right in.  Here is the so-called “Prayer over the gifts” for this Sunday’s Holy Mass.

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR):  
Munera, quaesumus, Domine, tuae plebis propitiatus assume,
ut, quae fidei pietate profitentur,
sacramentis caelestibus apprehendant.

The first time I wrote about this prayer, I thought it might be a new composition for the Novus Ordo.  I was wrong about that.  Sorry.  It was in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary during the month of October.  

We should take a look some of the words in detail so that we can get at what the prayer really says.

The Lewis & Short Dictionary says that the verb profiteor (which is the lemma form; the infinitive is profiteri and the participle professus, a, um) means basically “to declare publicly, to own freely, to acknowledge, avow, confess openly, profess”.  In different constructions it means different things.  For example we find profiteri se aliquem (“to declare one’s self or profess to be something”), profiteri aliquid, (“to profess an art, science, etc. think of a “profession””), profiteri indicium (“to give evidence, make a deposition”).  Also, profiteor signifies things like “to offer freely, propose voluntarily, to promise” and “to disclose, show, display, make a show of”.  So, it is also, “to make a public statement or return of any thing (as of one’s name, property, business, etc.)”  

Apprehendo is “to lay hold upon, to seize, take hold of” and then also “to grasp with the mind, to understand, comprehend” as in the Vulgate’s a(d)prehende vitam aeternam (1 Timothy 6:12).  That chapter of 1 Timothy makes a good review for you before going to Mass this Sunday.  Think about how we say the Creed, the “Profession of Faith” in which we once would all genuflect at the words et incarnatus est (the rubrics still direct us to bow).  Exhorting his flock to avoid love and pursuit of material things as an end in themselves, because they lead to ruin and destruction, Paul writes,

“But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.  Fight the good fight for the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.  In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot of blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time – he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords.  It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”  (vv. 11-16, RSV)

The phrase sacramentis caelestibus apprehendant is a little tricky.  It could mean “may grasp the by heavenly sacraments (or) sacred mysteries” or maybe “grasp in the heavenly sacraments”.  It all depends on how you feel that sacramentis caelestibus, as dative or ablative.   Either way, “heavenly sacraments” refer to the Eucharist and Its celebration.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We beseech You, O Lord, having been appeased accept the gifts of your people,
so that the things they profess by the dutiful conduct of faith,
they may grasp hold of in the heavenly mysterious sacraments.

Think of the nuances making a public “profession of faith” can have.   Certainly we are harkening back to the profession of faith made both by catechumens when they are to be baptized and also the renewal of baptismal vows each year especially at Easter.  We make our profession in reciting the Creed too.  But we can get a sense also from this phrase in the prayer that this profession is more than a recitation of words.  Isn’t it true that we sometimes interchange the words “profession” (professio) and “vocation” (vocatio) even in common parlance?  In Latin we might say profiteor medicinam if I am a medical physician.  In an absolute sense, just saying profiteor can in later Latin mean you are a teacher or “professor.”  Yet both have religious meanings as well.  

While in secular use we might call our profession our “vocation”, in the deeper, spiritual, sense, our vocation is more profound.  Vocation, in the Christian sense, gets more to who we really are, whom God created us to be.  Each one of us, called into existence as part of God’s plan, have a role to play.  Put this in connection with the phrase fidei pietas “the dutiful conduct of faith”.  Pietas means “dutiful conduct towards the gods, one’s parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc., sense of duty”.  When seeing the word “piety” in Christian contexts, it would be a good idea to avoid thinking right away of the swooning, eye’s turned upward pale faced saints of some Italian baroque paintings.  The legendary warrior founder of Rome, Aeneas, is called pius because of how diligently he carries out all his responsibilities before the gods and men, for the sake of the memory and love of his lost country Troy and dead father Anchises.  

Pietas means also “gentleness, tenderness”.  But there is hardened steel inherent in the gentleness of true Christian piety.  The knees of the pious have always been calloused, not the hearts.  Will this be reversed in the future?   Will the knees of Christian Catholic “professors” soon be soft and their hearts hard?  This might be a good question for those involved in the profession of Catholic educator, or a “professor” in an institution which has been less than diligent in implementing the 1990 Apostolic Constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae.

This age we live in requires urgently a real fidei pietas from those who make their fidei professio.  

A SMOOTHER WDTPRS VERSION
O Lord, we beseech You, graciously to accept the gifts of Your people,
so that they may grasp in the heavenly mysteries
what they profess in upright faith.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
may these gifts which we now offer
to show our belief and our love
be pleasing to you.
May they become for us
the eucharist of Jesus Christ your Son,…

In Latin prayer there is a strong link between reception of the Eucharist and the proper practice of the faith we profess.  We are to grasp in the heavenly sacraments (sacramentis caelestibus) what we are professing in "dutiful conduct of faith" (quae fidei pietate profitentur).  That word pietas, when it refers to God, describes something of His goodness and His mercy towards us.  When pietas is applied to us, it concerns the duty which we owe to God and neighbor.  In other words, pietas brings our interior sentiments and the words we use to express them into the realm of the concrete.  What we profess must be expressed in our actions and not just our words.  You might remember the famous phrase of St. Francis of Assisi that we must preach the Gospel always and sometimes even use words.

There must be a consistency between our Faith and our outward bearing. I think this same concept is found in a very strong address made by our Holy Father Pope Benedict to a group of Canadian bishops from Ontario who recently made their ad limina visit.  While the Holy Father was speaking to the situation in Canada, I believe his words can be applied to most of Western countries.  Here are a couple paragraphs of his speech on 8 September from L’Osservatore Romano:

Today, the impediments to the spread of Christ’s Kingdom are experienced most dramatically in the split between the Gospel and culture, with the exclusion of God from the public sphere. Canada has a well-earned reputation for a generous and practical commitment to justice and peace, and there is an enticing sense of vibrancy and opportunity in your multicultural cities. At the same time, however, certain values detached from their moral roots and full significance found in Christ have evolved in the most disturbing of ways. In the name of ‘tolerance’ your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of ‘freedom of choice’ it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children. When the Creator’s divine plan is ignored the truth of human nature is lost.

False dichotomies are not unknown within the Christian community itself. They are particularly damaging when Christian civic leaders sacrifice the unity of faith and sanction the disintegration of reason and the principles of natural ethics, by yielding to ephemeral social trends and the spurious demands of opinion polls. Democracy succeeds only to the extent that it is based on truth and a correct understanding of the human person. Catholic involvement in political life cannot compromise on this principle; otherwise Christian witness to the splendour of truth in the public sphere would be silenced and an autonomy from morality proclaimed (cf. Doctrinal Note The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, 2-3; 6). In your discussions with politicians and civic leaders I encourage you to demonstrate that our Christian faith, far from being an impediment to dialogue, is a bridge, precisely because it brings together reason and culture.

These clear and hard hitting teachings of the Holy Father serve as an opportunity for all of us to take stock of how we are receiving the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion, whether we are much in the public eye or we are nearly invisible.  For those who are in the public sphere, what they do should indeed be a “profession” of Faith, in all the senses that might bear.

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005

Four year’s ago, in our column about the Collect of this same Sunday, I wrote comments on the terror attacks of 9/11 interspersing lines from an eerily prescient poem by Thomas Merton about the apocalyptic destruction of New York City. In the aftermath of the devastation of the Gulf Coast of the United States, Merton’s haunting epitaph for NYC returns to me. It could have been for New Orleans:

“This was a city
That dressed herself in paper money.
She lived four hundred years
With nickels running in her veins.
She loved the waters of the seven purple seas,
And burned on her own green harbor
Higher and whiter than ever any Tyre.
She was as callous as a taxi;
Her high-heeled eyes were sometimes blue as gin,
And she nailed them, all the days of her life,
Through the hearts of her six million poor.
Now she has died in the terrors of a sudden contemplation
- Drowned in the waters of her own, her poisoned well.”
…
But now the moon is paler than a statue.
She reaches out and hangs her lamp
In the iron trees of this destroyed Hesperides.
And by that light, under the caves that once were banks and theaters,
The hairy ones come out to play….

(Excerpted from Figures For An Apocalypse: VI – In the Ruins of New York (1947))

COLLECT - (2002MR):
Deus, qui sacrae legis omnia constituta
in tua et proximi dilectione posuisti,
da nobis, ut, tua praecepta servantes,
ad vitam mereamur pervenire perpetuam.

This week’s Collect was introduced into the Missale Romanum with the Novus Ordo but it had a predecessor in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary during the month of July (Deus, qui sacra legis omnia constituta in tua et proximi dilectione posuisti: da nobis horum propitius efficientiam mandatorum: quia inpossibile sibi nullus excusat, quod tanta brevitate concluditur, tanta aequitate percipitur: per.) and seems to have had a representation of some kind in the Mozarabic Rite.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father,
guide us, as you guide creation
according to your law of love.
May we love one another
and come to perfection
in the eternal life prepared for us.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O God, who placed all things of the sacred law which were constituted
in the love of you and of neighbor,
grant us that, observing your precepts,
we may merit to attain to eternal life.

This Collect seems to be founded on the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer: “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets’” (Matthew 22:34 40 RSV).

All of the Law is summed up in Jesus’ two-fold command of love of God and neighbor. The first part of the two-fold law is about unconditional love of God. The second follows as its consequence. St. Thomas Aquinas glossed this verse in his Commentary on Saint Matthew: when man is loved God is loved, since man is the image of God. In 1 John 4:21 there is a good explanation of this double precept: “This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.” We must be sure to keep these different loves in their proper logical order. God comes first, always. Always. Even a married person must love God more than a spouse. We must never put any creature, no matter how proximate to us in our hearts, closer than the God in whose image and likeness we are made. When this logical priority is properly in place, love of God and neighbor will not conflict or compete for they are simultaneous. Each love fuels the other, provided that love of God is logically prior. We must never love any creature more than God or put something, or even someone, in His place.

Our Collect for today reestablishes for us that we have a very special relationship with each person who lives, and not merely with God. Since people are made in God’s image, they are our neighbors, in a sense… some closer to us than others, of course. But there is no person on earth who is not our neighbor in some way. This reciprocal relationship reminds me of another act of reciprocity that the Lord prescribes for us: forgive or you will not be forgiven. The only thing that the Lord went back to explain when He taught us how to pray (what we now call the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew 6:9-13) is the obligation of forgiveness: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (vv 14-15).

Reflect on what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. The second section of the fourth part of the CCC explains the Lord’s Prayer. When we get to the examination of the petition “...as we forgive those who trespass against us” we read (2842): “This ‘as’ is not unique in Jesus’ teaching: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’; ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’; ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.’ It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandment by imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God. Only the Spirit by whom we live can make ‘ours’ the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. Then the unity of forgiveness becomes possible and we find ourselves ‘forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave us.’”

Consider well the Lord’s own words to His disciples after He taught them to pray: “…if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”. Death and judgment comes to us all. Are you ready? It will come, and maybe suddenly, unexpected. We pray that our deaths not be unprovided, that is, that we will not die without the final solace and strengthening of the sacraments. When it is time, will you be reconciled with the neighbors you leave behind? Will you be the sort of person for whom your neighbor will willingly pray? Will you have unfinished business?

Where are the merchants and the money-lenders
Whose love sang in the wires between the seaports and the inland granaries?
...

Where are the generals who sacked sunny cities
And burned the cattle and the grain?
Or is the politician any safer in his offices
Than a soldier shot in the eye?

Take time to tremble lest you come without reflection
To feel the furious mercies of my friendship,
(Says death) because I come as quick as intuition.

...
Flesh cannot wrestle with the waters that are in the earth,
Nor spirit rest in icy clay!

More than the momentary night of faith, to the lost dead,
Shall be their never-ending midnight:

Yet all my power is conquered by a child’s “Hail Mary”
And all my night forever lightened by one waxen candle!

(Excerpted from Death by Thomas Merton (1944))