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

His Eminence Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos read the text of the Holy Father’s Urbi et Orbi address aloud in Latin. 

One might think that the Dean of the College of Cardinals would have read the message, if the Pope himself did not.  The Dean is Cardinal Sodano. 

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos is President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

Hmmm…

This is sheer speculation on my part, but I wonder if this is not part of Pope Benedict’s making sure that His Eminence has a little additional face time, especially in the realm of all things Latin.

We should notice too that His Eminence is in a dalmatic, which is entirely appropriate, since he is a Cardinal Deacon of the title SS. Nome di Maria al Foro Traiano.  Most curial cardinals, unless they were previously Cardinals as diocesan ordinaries, are Cardinal Deacons.  Ordinaries of dioceses are Cardinal Priests.  There are only a handleful of Cardinal Bishops, whose titles are the little suburbicarian dioceses surrounding Rome.

In any event, we have not yet seen the Latin text of the Urbi et Orbi released to the City and the World, except via voce, of course.   I am curious to hear the style.

Many years ago I had "hotwired" the phone of the office I working in in Rome so that I could dial out past the Vatican operator and get on Compuserve (Oh… how we thought that was cutting edge at the time), where I was moderator of the ur-Catholic Online Forum.  That forum software had chat room functions.   Each time I would try to leave the site to go home, some other soul would enter the "room" and it rapidly became obvious that many people were either shut in or alone.  After all, why else would they have been there?  I wound up spending over 12 hours in that office that Christmas, talking to people all over the world who were alone and providing the chat room for their safe clean chat. 

It occurred to me in the middle of Mass number 3 today (Puer natus est) that that might indeed be the case with people using blogs today.

I don’t have chat enabled in this blog but I do want to greet those of you who are along or shut in, perhaps ill or unable otherwise to go out, without people to be with.

I remembered you at Mass today and I give you my special Christmas greeting.

Sometimes you have to wonder how the translations of major texts are coordinated between the different offices that cover language groups.

Here are the headers for the langauge texts of the Holy Father’s Christmas sermon.

ITALIAN:"Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Missale Romanum).  Italian language but the book title is Latin

FRENCH: «Salvator noster natus est in mundo» (Missel romain).

ENGLISH: "Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Roman Missal)

GERMAN: „Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Missale Romanum)  German language but the book title is Latin

SPANISH: "Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Misal Romano).

PORTUGESE: « Salvator noster natus est in mundo» (Missal Romano)

POLISH: Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Mszał Rzymski)

It is interesting to see differences in punctuation, of course.   What I find fascinating in that in places where the study of Latin has remained somewhat stronger, the title of the Missale is in Latin.

I want to make a brief visit back to 23 December for a moment and give you what I think is a fascinating entry in the Roman Martyrology for the day.  I was pretty busy and didn’t get it posted.   Here is the first entry of Christmas Eve.

1. Commemoratio omnium sanctorum avorum Iesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham, filii Adam, patrum scilicet, qui Deo placuerunt et iusti inventi sunt et iuxta fidem defuncti, nullis acceptis promissionibus, sed longe eas aspicientes et salutantes, ex quibus natus est Christus secundum carnem, qui est super omnia Deus benedictus in saecula.

The commemoration of all the holy forefathers of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam, namely of the fathers, who pleased God and were found to be just also according to the faith of the dead, having received none of the promises fulfilled, but regarding them and greeting them from afar, from which the Christ was born according to the flesh, who is blessed God above all things forever.

Keep in mind that the Gospel reading for the Vigil Mass was the geneology of the Lord from the Gospel of Matthew.

In that Gospel geneology, Christ is shown to by the Lord of the history of our salvation.  And Matthew takes pains to teach us some subtle things.  Take note of the four women he mentions.  He does not mention the great women we usually think of in the Old Testament, like Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel.  Instead we get Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the women who had been "the wife of Uriah."  So, we see pagans in the geneology who are women of less than perfect background in the eyes of the ancient Jews.  

God choses those whom it pleases Him to choose.

Here is an excerpt from the Holy Father’s message for the blessing Urbi et Orbi.  He is speaking directly to us, I think.  My emphasis:

[D]oes a "Saviour" still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium? Is a "Saviour" still needed by a humanity which has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in its pursuit of nature’s secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome? Is a Saviour needed by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the Earth, our great common home, a global village? This humanity of the twenty-first century appears as a sure and self-sufficient master of its own destiny, the avid proponent of uncontested triumphs.

So it would seem, yet this is not the case. People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism. Some people remain enslaved, exploited and stripped of their dignity; others are victims of racial and religious hatred, hampered by intolerance and discrimination, and by political interference and physical or moral coercion with regard to the free profession of their faith. Others see their own bodies and those of their dear ones, particularly their children, maimed by weaponry, by terrorism and by all sorts of violence, at a time when everyone invokes and acclaims progress, solidarity and peace for all. And what of those who, bereft of hope, are forced to leave their homes and countries in order to find humane living conditions elsewhere? How can we help those who are misled by facile prophets of happiness, those who struggle with relationships and are incapable of accepting responsibility for their present and future, those who are trapped in the tunnel of loneliness and who often end up enslaved to alcohol or drugs? What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?

I have been back in my home town of St. Paul and Minneapolis.  Christmas Eve has been busy.  There were no confessions here last tonight, but last night there were hoards.  This morning I drove over to a nearby parish to help a priest who is alone in his place and had four Masses to say and took one for the 4th Sunday of Advent.  Back at St. Agnes, for solemn 1st Vespers. I had the Vigil Mass, which was a sung Mass in Latin (deacons, Gregorian chant, etc.).  The deacon pretty much blew my sermon away by reading the wrong Gospel so I simply put my notes aside, dug my heals into the floor, and let rip.

At 9:30 pm Matins were sung in Gregorian chant.  Then came midnight Mass.  After listening to the 45 minutes or so of Christmas carols before Mass and watching the procession to the crib with il Bambino, I slid down to the chapel and celebrated the first Mass of Christmas with the 1962 Missale. 

I thought of the participants here on this blog.  

I was many years ago received into the Church on the 4th Sunday of Advent and my first Communion was at midnight Mass of Christmas, so this night is rather distingushised in my own liturgical year.

Tomorrow we get up and do it again with four Masses and then Benediction with Vespers in the afternoon. 

Merry Christmas to you all, from a very tired Fr. Z. 

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Christmas Day – Roman Station: 1st and 3rd Masses – Basilica of St. Mary Major, 2nd Mass – St. Anastasia

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005

The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, Christmas, has a Vigil and Masses on the day itself: in nocte or “during night” (the legendary “Midnight Mass”), in aurora or “during daybreak”, and in die or “during daylight”. WDTPRS examined already the Christmas Day prayers for the “Midnight Mass” but never have we looked at Mass “during the day”. Ad ramos!

COLLECT “in die” – (2002MR)
Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem
et mirabiliter condidisti, et mirabilius reformasti,
da, quaesumus, nobis eius divinitatis esse consortes,
qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.

Our prayer was in the Veronese and Gelasian, ancient sacramentaries both, and the pre-Conciliar Missale Romanum. That source of precious Latin knowledge, the Lewis & Short Dictionary, reveals that reformo is “to shape again, remould, transform, metamorphose, change”. The theological baggage borne by substantia is complex far beyond the scope of this column, but the helpful dictionary of liturgical Latin by Blaise cuts to the chase with “nature”, which works for me. The adjective consors , sortis, is “sharing property with one (as brother, sister, relative), living in community of goods, partaking of in common”, or a noun meaning “a sharer, partner”. The Latin word is formed from cvm and sors (“fate”). When you are a consors you have a common fate or destiny. The word dignitas, “dignity”, adds to the prayer a strong moral content.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
O God, who in a wondrous way created the dignity of human nature,
and yet more wondrously shaped it anew,
grant us, we beg, to be partakers of the Godhead of Him
who deigned to become a participant of our humanity.

St. Pope Leo I “the Great” (+441) said in his Christmas sermon of 440: “O Christian, recognize your dignity (dignitatem), and made a partaker (consors) of the divine nature, do not dare by degenerate conduct to return to former baseness. Remember of whose Head and whose body you are a member. Call to mind that you were snatched from the power of the shadows and borne over into the light and kingdom of God. By means of the sacrament of baptism you were made a temple of the Holy Spirit: do not by evil actions drive away from you such a great indweller and to subject yourself once again to the devil’s thralldom: for the blood of Christ is your ransom because he will judge you in truth who has redeemed you in mercy, Christ our Lord. “(s. 1 in Nativitate, 3 – my trans.).

We were made for God and for His glory. In creating us God intended to share with us something of His transforming glory. Our Collect makes a reference to the “divinization” of man by God. There is a twofold way we can see this. First, from the point of view of Christ, is the mystery of the Second Person’s self-emptying: He stooped infinitely below Himself to take up flesh and human soul and become a man, like us in all ways but sin. Next, from our point of view, our human nature created in God’s image, which had a dignity we wounded, is now by the indestructible bond with Christ’s divinity, by the “wondrous exchange”, elevated to an even greater dignity. In Christ our humanity has been taken up already to the right hand of the Father. The Eucharist is our “pledge of future glory”.

The mystery of the Incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas points to the kenosis or self-emptying of the Second Person. We embrace now the humble servitude of Jesus, and look to the magnificent destiny that awaits us won by the wood of Crib and Cross. In every Mass this mystery of the Incarnation must be held closely to our hearts and minds. The Christmas Collect was adapted for the preparation of the chalice by the priest during every Mass. Before the priest raises the chalice upwards in offering, he mingles with the wine a very small quantity of water, just drops. The mingling of water and wine underscores three things. First, it reveals how the Divine Son humbly accepted human nature. Second, it shows how we will be transformed by Him in the life to come. Indeed, we who are baptized into Christ and who receive the Eucharist are already being transformed, like drops of water in His wine. In the mingling of the water and wine, the water loses itself, becoming what the wine is. “O admirabile commercium! O marvelous exchange!”, as the Church sings at Vespers and Lauds on Christmas Octave. As Fathers of the Church expressed it the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we might become the sons of God. This “holy exchange” is the heart of Holy Mass. Bread and wine are given to us by God and we, in turn, collect them, work them, give them back to God who transforms them through the power of the Holy Spirit into the Real Presence of Christ (Body, Blood, soul and divinity). In turn the species of the Eucharist transform us, making us also into acceptable offerings to God. In this marvelous exchange earthly and temporal things mysteriously, sacramentally, become vehicles of the eternal. Third, the mixing of those few (human) drops into the (divine) wine in the chalice (an image of sacrifice and oblation) reveals how lay people must unite their prayers and sacrifices to what the priest offers at the altar: “Pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours be acceptable to God the almighty Father.” There is a distinction made regarding the way in which the priest and the people offer their sacrifices. The people offer good and acceptable sacrifice to God from their “baptismal priesthood”, as members of Christ, who is High Priest. But the priest makes a very different kind of sacrifice, as alter Christus… another Christ. So, the people at Mass must unite their good offerings to those of the priest. The mingling of the water and wine is a good moment to make a conscious effort to do precisely that.

We all have difficulties and sufferings. Like you I have burdens, for myself and for others. If Christ can transform our human nature through a touch of His divinity, He can transform our sorrows and cares. In the confessional I often suggest to people that when the chalice is being prepared, they should pour their troubles into that chalice with the little bit of water which will be taken in by the wine and then be transformed with the wine in the consecration. Give it all back to God through the Sacrifice of the Cross, through Holy Mass.

The core of today’s Collect prayer leads us seamlessly into the…

SUPER OBLATA “in die”- (2002MR)
Oblatio tibi sit, Domine, hodiernae sollemnitatis accepta,
qua et nostrae reconciliationis processit perfecta placatio,
et divini cultus nobis est indita plenitudo.

Remember that in these “Prayers over the gifts” of bread and wine God will transubstantiate through the priest are couched in the language of propitiation: we must placate the God against whom we have so grievously sinned in both the Original Sin of our first parents and in our own actual sins.

That qua is really an adverb meaning, “on which side, at or in which place, in what direction, where, by what way”. Both Blaise and Souter are without comment about indo but dependable L&S says it is, “to put, set, or place into or upon” and also “to impart or give to, apply to, impose on, attach to”. Cultus, us (from colo) refers to the worship and honor due to divinity. My sense of perfecta, from perficio, is “having been brought to completion”, rather than simply “perfect”. This super elegant prayer, filled with rhetorical flourishes, was in both the Veronese and Gelasian Sacramentary among the Christmas texts, but absent from the Missale Romanum until the Novus Ordo.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
O Lord, let the sacrificial offering of today’s solemnity be acceptable to You,
from whence issued forth the completed appeasing of our reconciliation,
and also was imparted to us the fullness of divine worship.

This prayer is quoted in the Council’s document Sacrosanctum Concilium 5, in the section examining “The Nature of the Sacred Liturgy and Its Importance in the Church’s Life”. Read this aloud and hear how Christmassy it is: “5. God who ‘wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2:4), ‘who in many and various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets’ (Heb. 1:1), when the fullness of time had come sent His Son, the Word made flesh, anointed by the Holy Spirit, to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to be a ‘bodily and spiritual medicine’, the Mediator between God and man. For His humanity, united with the person of the Word, was the instrument of our salvation. Therefore in Christ ‘the perfect achievement of our reconciliation came forth, and the fullness of divine worship was given to us’.”

Our “Prayer after Communion”, from the Gelasian and Veronese, was in the pre-Conciliar Missale Romanum. As is the case of the Collect and Super oblata, there is a deep stylistic elegance which delights the ear.

POST COMMUNION “in die” – (2002MR)
Praesta, misericors Deus, ut natus hodie Salvator mundi,
sicut divinae nobis generationis est auctor,
ita et immortalitatis sit ipse largitor.

The first prayer of the Mass set the stage for our active participation in Communion. Though expressed in exalted language, it conveyed an attitude of humility before the creation of man in God’s image, the Eternal Word’s self-emptying in the Incarnation, and the possibility of our transformation both in the Eucharist to be received in the course of the sacred mysteries this day and in the happiness of heaven to come. In the second prayer, before the Eucharistic Prayer and consecration, we recognized how we sinners have need to appease God and how the God made Man, Jesus Christ was the source both of reconciliation and also of the very Mass we are participating in, the perfect form of worship renewing our completed reconciliation. In this final prayer we put book ends around our grasp of today’s meaning. We were able to partake of Communion and actively participate in Mass first and foremost because of our divine regeneration in baptism, deepened in a good reception of the Blessed Sacrament in Mass. At the same time, we see how our rebirth in the life of the Trinity in baptism aims ultimately at eternal life and our ongoing transformation in heaven. The “just as… so too” structure of the prayer shows us how the “Savior of the world born today” is the fulcrum both of all the ages of the world, born as He was in the “fullness of time”, but also of our own lives as individuals. All of the prayers today are connected by the theme of the transformation of man’s human nature from his sinful state to a state of glory in the transforming assumption of our human nature by Second Person of the Trinity who, once born, is Jesus Christ – our brother in our humanity while remaining our God in His divinity.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Grant, O merciful God, that just as the Savior of the world born today
is for us the author of divine generation,
so too may He be the bestower of immortality.

With Leo the Great, I extend to you and yours for a Merry and Holy Christmas: “Peace was the first thing proclaimed by the angelic choir and the Lord’s Nativity. It is peace which gives birth to children of God. Peace nurses love, engenders unity, gives repose to the blessed, and provides a home to eternity.” (s. 26.3)