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

Today is the 1st anniversary of the first entry on this blog.

What a year!  I might finally be getting the hang of things.

Thank you all for helping to make this blog a success.

Thanks to all of you for making a donation to help keep it running (Deo volente).

On the first day, 8 December 2005, I posted this photo taken the night Pope Benedict was elected.  I was pretty tired, after all the stuff from the previous days with Fox News and writing and all.  But when I got home, this is what I saw.  It might be the only time you will see a photo of both the Basilica and the Apostolic Palace illuminated!  I posted it at 10:29 am (Rome time).

This seems a good way to observe the occation of the 1st anniversary.

Here is shot from the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in Rome, where there is a famous Novena before the Immacolata.  A bishop is about to celebrate Mass.

While today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, for the sake of being complete let us look at the Collect for Friday of the 1st Week of Advent:

This prayer was in the 1962 Missale Romanum and is taken from the ancient Gregorian Sacramentary.

COLLECT:
Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni,
ut, ab imminentibus peccatorum nostrorum periculis,
te mereamur protegente eripi,
te liberante salvari.

LITERAL VERSION:
Rouse up Your might, we beseech You, O Lord, and come,
that, as You are protecting us, we may merit to be snatched away
from the menacing dangers of our sins
and, as You are freeing us, be saved.