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

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The blogmeister of Hermeneutic of Continuity has provided what the old incarnaton of ICEL might have done with a Latin inscription in marble at the Lateran University (one of me alme matres) for the dedication of the new library. Too funny. I tip my biretta: o{]:¬)

The Latin original:

SEMPER MEMORIA SERVETUR
FAUSTI DIEI XII ANTE KAL NOVEMBRIS MMVI
QUO
BENEDICTUS XVI PONTIFEX MAXIMUS
DECESSORUM SUORUM VESTIGIA SECUTUS
ACADEMICA COMMUNITATE SUMMA LAETITIA RECEPTUS
PONTIFICIAM UNIVERSITATEM LATERANENSEM INVISIT
NOVAM BIBLIOTHECAM
UTI STUDIORUM ET INVESTIGATIONIS SEDEM
AD SACRAM TRADITIONEM ALENDAM BENEDIXIT
AULAM MAGNAM SIBI DICATAM INAUGURAVIT
COMITANTIBUS
CAMILLO S.R.E. CARDINALE RUINI MAGNO CANCELLARIO
ET RINO FISICHELLA
EPISCOPO TIT VICOHABENTINO MAGNIFICO RECTORE
QUI OPUS SUSCIPIENDUM AC PERFICIENDUM CURAVIT

The faux-ICEL version:

One day last year, the Pope came to our school. He made us all very happy when he said a prayer for the new bookcases and a big room with his name on it. Cardinal Ruini (who is very important) was there and so was Bishop Rino who got it all done.

Too funny. Thanks for the laugh and the reminder that we are not as stupid as they thought us to be.

One of the WDTPRS articles I posted today has a paragraph on the issue of ministry.  This paragraph aroused a comment from an attentive reader.  It is worth our time to tease out that exchange and give it some focus:

During my seminary days the more radical of the faculty forbade us from using the “‘p’-word” (“priest”).  They insisted we were being formed to be “ordained ministers”.   This had the purpose of deemphasizing the distinction between the priest… er um… “ordained minister” and all people… er um…  “non-ordained ministers”, all of whom exercise “ministry” in some vague way.   In essence, “ministry” was pretty much anything people might do.  I have no problem with all people being virtuous and holy, integrating prayer and contemplation together with their daily tasks, raising all their words and deeds to the Father in self-oblation, but not everything is “ministry” and not everyone is a “minister”, in the sense the Church understands the term. Priest and minister are radically different ideas.  Ministers do good things within a community but priests offer sacrifice and are themselves set apart.  Ministers are characterized mostly by their tasks and the priests is distinguished by what the sacrament of Holy Orders has made him ontologically, at the level of his being.   In those days of seminary, they were trying to strip the Mass and the priest of their sacral character.  The same applies to architecture.  Churches had sanctuaries but very often we hear now about “worship spaces”.  The architecture reflects the differences of views.   The general effect of this squishy 60’s-80’s language about Mass and the priest is something like this: “People are gathered together to celebration of Christ’s memory during which one of their number, who happens to be designated by that community, retells the story of the night before He died, when He established the custom about to be reenacted.” 

Here is the comment:

Your remarks about the use of the term “ministry” rang true to my experience. I believe the problem stems from a reductionist and ultimately protestant ecclesiology which sees the Church in terms of being a club of the like-minded. In this model, reinforced by so much that we now do liturgically, everybody has to have a job. I think it is crucial that we recover the proper sense of our activity (that is the activity of the lay faithful) in Church life as being primarily a preparation for our eternal life with God and that we see our “ministry” in the terms of Lumen Gentium 31, in terms of our secularity. The new Compendium (at para 188) sums this up elegantly in the following terms, “The lay faithful have as their own vocation to seek the Kingdom of God by illuminating and ordering temporal affairs according to the plan of God. They carry out in this way their call to holiness and to the apostolate, a call given to all the baptised.”
Comment by Stephen Morgan — 14 January 2007 @ 12:08 pm

Here is my response:

Stephen: This question of ministry may be the most pressing problem to resolve as we start cleaning up the devastation of the last forty years and strive to understand new directions through a "hermeneutic of continuity" rather than of rupture.  Who is the minister?  What is ministry?  We must make distinctions.  I have an anecdote about this.  A couple years ago I went to visit my old friend Card. Mayer (who is still living here in Rome).  As I came to the door for our appointment, I was met by the sister who told me that he was still with his previous guest and could a wait a moment in the chapel.  After a few minutes, I was called and there was met with Card. Mayer and his previous guest Card. Ratzinger.  As we knew each other, it was a rather cordial meeting.  They told me they had been talking about which pressing issues in the Church’s life required attention and they asked me my opinion.  I responded that we had to clarify who a minister is and what ministry means, because today they are so confused as to strip priests and laypeople of their proper identity.  It happens, they told me, that that was preciously the topic they had been talking about during their meeting.   

It is terribly dangerous to the life of the Church, and a horrible act of condescension, to fall into an attitude that lay people do not have dignity in the Church unless they are doing what is proper to the clergy.  In abdicating their proper roles in order to give lay people more to do, clerics actually fall into a subtle but corrosive clericalism: "You aren’t good enough on your own, so I will permit you be like me."

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2007

With the close of the Advent/Christmas cycle, we move into what was once called the Season of Epiphany, which we now call the Tempus per annum or “time through the year”, otherwise called Ordinary Time. This season does not have a penitential/festal character, as the Lent/Easter cycle which Ordinary Time embraces like bookends. Pre-Conciliar liturgical books called the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost the Tempus per annum… and this terminology was retained in the Novus Ordo.

The root of the term “ordinary” is the Latin ordo which the orderly The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary indicates is “a regular row, line, or series, methodical arrangement, order”. We use this concept in many ways in our Catholic way of thinking. For example, I am right now looking at a book on my desk called the Ordo Missae Celebrandae et Divini Officii Persolvendi secundum Calendarium Romanum Generale pro anno liturgico 2006-2007 ... The Order of Masses to be celebrated and of the Divine Office to be discharged according to the General Roman Calendar for the liturgical year 2006-2007. This handy book indicates what feasts must be observed or what optional or votive Masses can be chosen. It lists the particulars such as colors of vestments or certain things that are permitted or forbidden, such as the prohibition against musical instruments during Lent except only to sustain congregational singing (p. 59). A local Ordo or that of a religious order might also include the names of deceased priests or members. Speaking of clergy, Holy Church “ordains” chosen men by the sacrament of Holy Orders in three grades of deacons, priests and bishops. Through these Holy Orders spiritual power is handed on and grace is conferred for the celebration of the sacraments and proper orderly life of the Church. Orders should bring order, the proper disposition of a multitude of things and persons in some kind of unity. Some clerics, such as diocesan bishops, are called “ordinaries”, because they exercise jurisdiction. We also speak of religious orders, which are institutes in which members take vows to live according to certain rules. There are, moreover, orders of chivalry or knighthood, which sought to blend in some way the monastic life with the military life. A vestige of these orders is found in honors given by the Holy See to people who give distinguished service to the Church. We also talk about the Ordinary of Mass which consists mainly of the parts of Mass that are for the most part unchanging. Usually we say that the 1970 Missale Romanum contains the “new order” of Mass, or Novus Ordo.

By calling this time of the liturgical year “Ordinary” we are not thereby saying that it is commonplace or characterless. With this Sunday we enter the liturgical span stretching from the preparation of the birth of the Infant King all the way to the last Sunday of the year, Christ the King, celebration the King of fearful majesty who will come as judge to usher in the unending reign of peace.

The “prayer after Communion” for this Sunday was in the 1962MR on Friday after Ash Wednesday. Long before the Roman Missal was put together it was in the ancient Veronese, Gregorian and also Gelasian Sacramentaries.

POST COMMUNIONEM (2002 Missale Romanum):
Spiritum nobis, Domine, tuae caritatis infunde,
ut, quos uno caelesti pane satiasti,
una facias pietate concordes.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
you have nourished us with bread from heaven.
Fill us with your Spirit,
and make us one in peace and love.

The aforementioned L&S can take us beyond the surface meanings of the words. Pietas is not just a nice feeling. Outward conduct reflects interior pietas. Our outward conduct as Catholics manifests our recognition of the different relationships we have with the objects of our pietas. Who am I before God? Before parents? Before benefactors and or superiors? What is my authentic part to play in these relationships? How are they bound in pietas to behave toward me? We also speak of God having pietas though He is not bound by any duty. Pietas applied to God in liturgical prayer refers mostly to His mercy towards us. Our times are rife with informality and egalitarianism. On the other hand, the original Latin prayers, now being retranslated, are expressed in courtly language pointing to an ordering of the cosmos. We must get words like pietas straight if we are to have any hope of knowing what the prayer really says.

At the end of our prayer we find concordes, from concors, “of the same mind, united, agreeing, concordant, harmonious.” Concors is a fusion of the preposition cvm with cor, cordis, “heart”. This word leads us to consider the very makeup of man. In the theology of man’s make up teased out from the writings of the blessed Apostle Paul, we find distinctions about what man is, though Paul does not provide a clear theological anthropology. Rather, Paul hints at what man is through man’s relationships with God and the world around him. He uses terms such as “body” (Greek soma), “soul” (psyche), “spirit” (pneuma), “mind” (nous), “heart” (kardia), “flesh” (sarx), which all point to different aspects of a whole person, not just the parts he is made up of. For example, psyche “soul” is not simply the vital life force making the biological flesh live but also a whole person, particularly identified in his consciousness, his intellect and his power of willing things. For Paul, psyche is a natural rather than supernatural life principle. Thus, someone living without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a psychikos, a materially spiritual person rather than a supernaturally spiritual person. Paul uses pneuma “spirit” both for the Holy Spirit and also for man. In the case of man, when pneuma is joined to soma “body” and psyche “soul” it designates that dimension of man capable of receiving the Holy Spirit, a pneumatikos man. Nous or “mind” is for Paul the knowing powers, the intellect which understands and makes judgments. There is a close tie between nous and kardia, or “heart”, the more affective dimension of man. “Heart” is like one’s interior emotional landscape, the part of us that loves and grieves and fears and suffers and dreams. This is the “heart” that can be “hardened” (cf. 2 Cor 3:14) or “strengthened” (cf. 2 Cor 1:20-22). Thus, in trying to render concordes in our prayer today, I say “one in heart and mind” because I want to blend the different interior landscapes of a baptized person.

Much of our Catholic technical or theological language sounds strange to people today because they don’t grasp meaning of Latin roots behind the vocabulary. We saw the impact of ordo and concors above. Here is another case. Infundo is “to pour in, upon, or into” and in the construction infundere alicui aliquid, it has the impact of administering a medicine to someone. Infundo is also “to pour into, spread over, communicate, impart.” The sacrament of baptism is conferred by “infusion”, that is, water is poured onto (not into) the person, made to flow across the skin. On the other hand, we speak of the theological graces of faith, hope and charity being “infused” into someone at baptism (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1813). Think of the English word “infusion” for tea or coffee, made by pouring water over them and then letting them permeate the water with their oils and essences.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Infuse in us the Spirit of Your charity, O Lord,
so that those whom You have filled with the one heavenly bread,
You may cause to be one of heart and mind in one sense of dutiful conduct.

Our prayer has a Trinitarian character, since we are praying to the Father about receiving the infusion of grace by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our reception of the Son in the Communion just made.

In today’s prayer there is for me a powerful image of the pouring and the infusing of the grace charity into us by the Holy Spirit. Charity is not simply “love”. “Love” today is an equal opportunity word, applied evenly to spaghetti, Fluffy the cat, a new movie, or your God, spouse and children. The love which is charity, as Pope Benedict reminds us in his first encyclical Deus caritas est, is simultaneously oriented to God and to our neighbor, as prescribed in Christ’s command. Charity describes a two-fold bond. Charity is sacrificial love, exemplified most perfectly by Christ upon His Cross. This kind of love always considers the good of the other. It is a choice, not a sentiment.

Without this bidirectional love of charity, our “prayer after communion” is just a still life rather than a living landscape. It is like a painting of a glorious bowl of fruit beginning to rot, rather than a vista in which life thrives. The Italian term for a still life is “natura morta”, a “dead nature”. It is a beautiful, but dead. All our prayers can have a lovely ring to them, but without charity and the proper sense of order the ring is that of the struck brass of St. Paul’s gong in 1 Cor 13: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Charity calls us to act outwardly as we ought according to our interior disposition and vocation.

SMOOTHER VERSION:
Pour into us, O Lord, the Spirit of Your love,
so that as You satisfied us by the one bread of heaven,
You may make us of one heart in devout life.

The word pietas can help us focus properly at this moment in Mass. Does not pietas, with its concept of duty, drive us to a deep examination of conscience? We must be honest about who we are and who we aren’t. Placed with concors and caritas, pietas challenges us to be real, vital, well-integrated images of God in our words and actions. We are to be like a beautiful portrait rather than a mere still life. This is true for every aspect of our active participation in the liturgy. Holy Mass is not so much about us and what we do, but about who God is and what He does for us.

Our participation at Mass during Ordinary Time can help us to see and to seek order in our lives. We have a duty to act according to the truth of who we are (and who we are not), who our neighbor is, who God is, and what is really going on in the Mass of Holy Mother Church. Let our outward celebration of Mass reflect its inward reality just as our conduct in life should reflect the beauty of a holy member of Christ’s Mystical Body.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

On Sunday 8 January we celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord, a day traditionally associated with three events in the Lord’s earthly life: the coming of the Magi, His baptism by John in the Jordan, and the changing of water to wine at Cana during the wedding feast.  We observed the Baptism of the Lord on Monday the 9th since Epiphany supplanted it from the Sunday.

We have moved into what is called “Ordinary Time”, the Sundays of the Church’s liturgical year that do not have a specific penitential or festal meaning as in the case of Advent/Christmastide and Lent/Eastertide.  Our white and gold vestments will be stored again until Easter.  Until Ash Wednesday we see green in our churches.  

Before the conciliar reform of the Roman calendar, this period before Ash Wednesday was called the Season of Epiphany and the Sundays were called the Sundays after Epiphany.  It was a time of transition including those beautiful Sundays called Septuagesima (“70th”), Sexagesima (“60th”) and Quinquagesima (“50th”), all before the beginning of Quadragesima (“40th”) otherwise known as Lent.  Liturgical books once called the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost the tempus per annum… the time through the year.  This terminology has remained even though both these non-festal seasons form two parts of “Ordinary Time”.  So, we enter into that period of the Church’s calendar stretching from the adoration of kings and shepherds at the feet of the infant King to the end of the year and the solemn feast of Christ the King, the King of fearful majesty who will come as judge and who will separate the goats from the sheep before ushering in the unending reign of peace.

Today’s Super oblata or what ICEL calls the “Prayer over the gifts” comes to you by way of the 1962MR where it made its cameo appearance as the Secret for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost.  However, it was also in the ancient sacramentaries: in the Veronese during the month of April and in the Gelasian for the 2nd Sunday of Lent.  

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR)
Concede nobis, quaesumus, Domine,
haec digne frequentare mysteria,
quia, quoties huius hostiae commemoratio celebratur,
opus nostrae redemptionis exercetur.

There is a good deal of assonance in this prayer, on the vowel “e” and quite a bit of alliteration on “s” and sibilants in the last part.   Were the soft “c” of liturgical Latin hardened back into its more ancient “k”, the whole prayer would be even spiffier.  I like the parallels in the “tur” endings, helping us to make the conceptual link between the two clauses.

The Lewis & Short Dictionary, that astounding tome of turgid Latinity, affirms for us that the verb frequento means “to visit or resort to frequently, to frequent; to do or make use of frequently, to repeat.”  It also means, “to celebrate or keep in great numbers” as in the observance of public festivals.  That same meaning is reflected in the interesting dictionary of liturgical Latin which we call Blaise.  Exerceo is “to drive on, keep busy, keep at work; to oversee, superintend” and also, by extension, “to follow up, follow out, prosecute, carry into effect….”   Do not forget that the relationship between mysteria and sacramenta is close enough to make them almost interchangeable.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father,
may we celebrate the eucharist
with reverence and love,
for when we proclaim the death of the Lord
you continue the work of his redemption.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Grant to us, we beg, O Lord,
to make frequent use of these sacramental mysteries worthily,
for, as often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is celebrated,
the work of our redemption is carried on.

Compare the Latin and the ICEL version.  In the Latin we pray “as often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is celebrated” while in the lame-duck ICEL version we have “when we proclaim the death of the Lord.”  It is quite true that during Mass we proclaim the death of the Lord, but there is a huge difference between these two statements!   Part of the difference can be found in looking at different understandings of the Latin word commemoratio and its English cognate.  

We Catholic Christians believe that Holy Mass is a sacrificial memorial of Christ and of His Body and Blood (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1356 ff.).  The celebration of Mass is a “memorial”, a “commemoration” (Greek anamnesis) of His Sacrifice.  During Mass, by means of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we praise the Father and we remember what Christ did for our salvation.  

This is far more than a mere remembrance or simple commemoration of a long past event which hade lasting effects, as if we were at a war memorial listening to a reenactment of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  In the sacred action of the liturgy the mysteries of our salvation (mysteria) are truly present to us.   Christ’s Sacrifice is made present again in a way that is different from, and yet no less real than, what we see physically around us.  Holy Mass and the Divine Liturgy of Eastern Churches is therefore simultaneously both a remembrance of the Sacrifice Christ effected for our salvation and also that same saving Sacrifice made present to us who participate actively in the sacred liturgical action.  In fact, the memorial action of Mass is the Sacrifice of Christ re-presented to us, the Church.  Historically, Christ’s Sacrifice was carried out in a bloody way, at a one specific time and in one specific place.  Sacramentally, however, that same historic Sacrifice is being continued, re-presented, re-effected in an unbloody way in many places and at many times.  “The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice, in the liturgy of the Church which is his Body” (CCC 1362).   The sacramental way of effecting the Sacrifice is no less real than the actual event of Christ’s self-oblation outside the walls of Jerusalem two millennia ago.   This should not cause us wonder.  Christ said that this would be the case.  

I therefore quibble with ICEL’s version: “when we proclaim the death of the Lord
you continue the work of his redemption.”   First, this is not what the Latin really says.  Also, our “proclamation of the death of the Lord” is not what effects the saving work of our redemption.   The consecration and consumption of the Eucharist by the priest constitutes the Sacrifice which is at the heart of each celebration of Holy Mass, which, sacramentally, is a commemoration making the past truly present and extending it toward the future.

For a long time the sacrificial language describing the Mass was being diluted or abandoned altogether.  I think this came from a tendency either to emphasize the horizontal (human, immanent) dimension over the vertical (divine, transcendent) or else to reduce what happens at Mass to something much more like a Protestant understanding of the Eucharist.  Thus, sometimes instead of “Mass” many use merely “liturgy”.   Both are fine, but both are needed.  Let us speak more about “Holy Mass” and not just “liturgy”, which might mean a baptism, the singing of Vespers, or sacramental confession.  Today some folks still refer to an “ordained minister” rather than a “priest”, or how during “liturgy” he says the words of “institution”, rather than the words of “consecration” (the root of which is sacer, “sacred”).   

During my seminary days the more radical of the faculty forbade us from using the “‘p’-word” (“priest”).  They insisted we were being formed to be “ordained ministers”.   This had the purpose of deemphasizing the distinction between the priest… er um… “ordained minister” and all people… er um…  “non-ordained ministers”, all of whom exercise “ministry” in some vague way.   In essence, “ministry” was pretty much anything people might do.  I have no problem with all people being virtuous and holy, integrating prayer and contemplation together with their daily tasks, raising all their words and deeds to the Father in self-oblation, but not everything is “ministry” and not everyone is a “minister”, in the sense the Church understands the term. Priest and minister are radically different ideas.  Ministers do good things within a community but priests offer sacrifice and are themselves set apart.  Ministers are characterized mostly by their tasks and the priests is distinguished by what the sacrament of Holy Orders has made him ontologically, at the level of his being.   In those days of seminary, they were trying to strip the Mass and the priest of their sacral character.  The same applies to architecture.  Churches had sanctuaries but very often we hear now about “worship spaces”.  The architecture reflects the differences of views.   The general effect of this squishy 60’s-80’s language about Mass and the priest is something like this: “People are gathered together to celebration of Christ’s memory during which one of their number, who happens to be designated by that community, retells the story of the night before He died, when He established the custom about to be reenacted.”  We are therefore grateful that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has begun to instill anew a greater sense of the sacred when speaking about all things touching upon the Church’s celebration of the sacred mysteries.

The gloriously risen Christ, who transcends time and space, is always the principal actor in the Church’s liturgies.  Thus, what we Catholics say about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being truly the Christ’s Sacrifice of Calvary and the Last Supper institution of the Eucharist in no way contradicts what many Protestants and Evangelicals emphasize, namely, that there is one, once-for-all, unrepeatable Sacrifice for our salvation.  Yes, there was!  And by Christ’s own command and His own personal action in the Church, continuing to the end of time, that once-for-all-time Sacrifice is continued, extended, re-presented really and truly whenever Holy Mass is celebrated.  By our baptism we sons and daughters of our heavenly Father are enabled to participate actively in that saving action in a way that by far surpasses the sort of relationship claimed by those who have “been saved” by “accepting Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.”   Holy Mass is all about what Christ does for us, not what we do for Him.   If someone asks you if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you can say truly and with perfect confidence something they cannot: “Yes, I accept Jesus as my Savior in every Holy Communion at Mass.”

Each week the Church gives us wonderful prayers which can be the source of personal reflection and the stepping stone in the catechesis of young people or people interested in the Catholic faith.   A prayer from Mass can be used like a crowbar to pry open a dogma of the Church, a flashlight to illuminate an obscure point.  You could organize weekly parish classes just to pore over these prayers.  We should be ready to explain our Faith when called upon and know what the prayers really say.   Perhaps one day we will be given translations of the prayers which are beautiful and faithful to the Latin original.  In the meantime, WDTPRS is at your service.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005

I am glad to have received a note via snail-mail from Fr. VY, OFM who has corrected an error I made about the pre-Conciliar liturgical calendar.  I had said that in the 1962MR 1 January was the Feast of the Circumcision when, as Fr. VY points out, by 1962 it was simply Sunday in the Octave Christmas.   While 1 January had been still the Feast of the Circumcision in 1959 I gratefully stand corrected about the 1962MR.   I received an undated letter from Fr. BF, OSB who included some a copy of an article in The Tablet (22 May 2004) called “The Draft Order of the Mass”.  Apparently he shared his thoughts about the draft with Fr. Bruce Harbert, the Executive Secretary of ICEL but didn’t hear back from him at the time of his writing.  I note that The Tablet’s article says of the new draft that some people may be “alarmed” at the “hieratic, archaic nature of God’s relationship with humanity implicit in some of the prayers”.  I respond saying, “Goodie!” and “It’s not implicit in the Latin so why should it be in the English?  Let’s just make it all explicit for the sake of accuracy and honesty.”  I want to acknowledge also kind written notes from CC of IL and EL of AZ and others.  Your feedback is valuable.

We have into the Sundays “Ordinary Time” (once called the Season of Epiphany) during which we wear the green vestments that some say symbolize of hope.  Even though these Sundays are not part of a sacral cycle such as Advent/Christmas with a focus on specific mysteries of Our Lord’s life and saving work, each Sunday is always an echo of Easter.  Pre-Conciliar liturgical books called the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost the tempus per annum… “the time through the year” and this terminology has remained in the Novus Ordo.   We are entering the liturgical span stretching from the adoration of kings and shepherds at the feet of the infant King to the end of the year and the solemn feast of Christ the King, the King of fearful majesty who will come as judge and will separate the goats from the sheep and usher in the unending reign of peace.

COLLECT - LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
qui caelestia simul et terrena moderaris,
supplicationibus populi tui clementer exaudi,
et pacem tuam nostris concede temporibus.

This prayer was the Collect for the Second Sunday after Epiphany in the 1962MR.    We should look at some words before getting at what the prayer really says.  The unrivaled Lewis & Short Dictionary says that simul et connects two or more co-ordinate terms or facts and represents them as simultaneous and is the equivalent of simul etiam meaning “and at the same time, and also”.  The deponent verb moderor means “to manage, regulate, rule, guide, govern, direct”.  The word moderator is what we use in Latin for people like the state governor or the president of the United States: governing officials.  A gubernator was the steersman or pilot of a sailing ship.  

When we pray in Latin we often ask God to pay attention in some way, usually by “hearing” us.  Exaudio signifies “listen to” in the sense of “harken, perceive clearly.”  The imperative exaudi is more urgent than a simple audi (the imperative from audio, not the car).   I like “harken.”  Different words are used for this in Latin and though they mean subtly different things, they are all pretty much the same thing.  A good example is the beginning of one of the Litanies in Latin: Christe audi nos… Christe exaudi nos... which is often translated as “Christ hear us… Christ graciously hear us.”  

Clementer is an adverb from clemens, means among other things, “mild in respect to the faults and failures of others, i.e. forbearing, indulgent, compassionate, merciful.”  We have seen this many times in the last four years.  In the religious language of the ancient Romans a supplicatio was a public prayer or supplication, a solemn religious ceremony in consequence of certain public events, good or ill.  So, what we have here is a phrase something like, “in an indulgent manner graciously pay close attention to the humble petitions of your people, bent down in prayer.”  Tempus means many things but primarily, “time in general, or a season of time; the state of the times, position, state, condition; circumstances.”  It can also be “the appointed time, the right season, an opportunity (Greek kairos)”.   In the plural tempora gives us the word for the “temples” of the sides of your head.  The word “temporal” ultimately derives from tempus and it often indicates worldly or earthly things, material things, as opposed to sacred, eternal or spiritual.   

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Almighty eternal God,
who at the same time does govern things heavenly and earthly,
mercifully harken to the supplications of Your people,
and grant Your peace in our temporal affairs.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father of heaven and earth,
hear our prayers, and show us the way
to peace in the world.

In the past we discovered in the course of this WDTPRS series that the ICEL versions of the prayers for the festal seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter were marginally better than those of Ordinary Time.  Now that we are in Ordinary Time again you will see a change in the quality of the “translations”.  They must have had a different committee work on the prayers of Ordinary Time.  First take note that the ICEL prayer is shorter than the Latin version, which set off flares and rings claxons.  Normally when you render a Latin text in English, the English will be considerably longer than the Latin.  This is a superficial but solid clue that not all is well.

To my mind the ICEL prayer is sterile, not just terse.  We can all agree that God is the “Father of heaven and earth”, but the Latin addresses “Almighty eternal God.”  “Father of heaven and earth” makes God smaller than He is, it seems to me, and is not what the Latin prayer really says.  “Hear our prayers”, indicates little of our humble posture before God which the Latin clearly proposes with “mercifully give ear to the supplications of your people”.  I suppose this is what The Tablet article mentioned above was referring to, namely, the “hieratic, archaic nature of God’s relationship with humanity implicit in some of the prayers”.  In the Latin, we are cast down, bent in prayer, asking the almighty God, indulgently to spare us a little attention.  I am perfectly content to grovel with penitentially confident joy before God even if the translators of the lame-duck ICEL version were not.   From what I have seen of the draft of the Ordinary we will be pleased in the future when a new translations finally comes forth.

The old ICEL version of the first Collect we see in Ordinary Time isn’t terribly successful when compared to the Latin, is it?  The bishops’ conferences, the Vox Clara Committee, the restructured, restaffed ICEL and the Holy See have their work cut out for them.  If the draft of the Ordinary of Mass is well under way, where are we with the Proper (i.e., the prayers which change according to the day).  Translating prayers is a daunting task and thus these people need our prayerful support and, may I say it, incessant positive urging and input.  I have provided addresses for the major figures involved on the internet (http://www.wdtprs.com/blog) or you can write e-mail to me for or snail-mail to The Wanderer.  Never forget when reading this column to say a prayer for our bishops and ask the Holy Spirit to guide them in their challenging mandate.  Also, be kind and respectful when writing.  Bishops are peculiar creatures to be sure, but they are still human beings.  They have more than enough to do in their busy days to deal with all the negative things which besiege them without getting some snippy letter from a disgruntled critic.  You can make your points and observations without being rude or demanding.  Look at it this way: if you want a cardinal or bishop or priest to read your thoughts and take them to heart, be nice, otherwise your note will probably wind up in the garbage can.

Getting back to our Collect we are begging God as omnipotent disposer of all things for peace in our temporal affairs now, not just later in heaven.  And we want not just any peace man can cobble together, but rather the peace which comes from Him.  During Holy Mass (before the entirely optional “sign of peace”) the priest repeats Christ’s words in John 14:27: “Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis... Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”  Catholic Christians are confident.  Christ said He was going to give it to us.  

There is a great difference between the peace the world can offer and the peace that God offers.  This world of temporal goods (and ills) is passing and fragile, always susceptible to loss.  The goods of heaven are lasting, enduring, solid and dependable.   We must never fall into the sin of putting any created thing or person in the place which only eternal God may properly have.  No infinite and passing thing can provide lasting joy or eternal peace.  Any created thing can be lost through theft, wear and time.  The vicissitudes of this passing world roar over us like an inexorable wave and can sweep away any material thing to which we have clung, perhaps even in idolatry.  Our wealth, our family, our health, our appearance and our reputation can be taken in the blink of an eye.  God alone endures.

God knew each one of us outside of time, before the creation of both the visible and invisible universe.  He called us into existence at a precise moment in His eternal plan.  We have something to do in God’s plan.  He gives us work to fulfill and the talents and graces to fulfill it.  We must cooperate with Him, making His plan for us our own so that He can then make us strong enough to carry it out.  God knows our needs and in turn we confidently come to Him in prayer asking humbly in our trials during this earthly journey for peace only He can give, the peace which alone can make sense of what we experience in life.  Our sins lost this peace for us but it has been restored through the merits of Christ’s Sacrifice which we renewal and remember with each Holy Mass.  We ask God to bless us in this new year of salvation.  We beseech Him to give aid to all who suffer.  With bended knee and foreheads to the ground, bodies and wills both bent in supplication, we beg His patient indulgence and His peace.

Attitudes are shifting.

Tridentine Mass returns to San Jose Diocese

From the Free Republic site:

Not just a Tridentine indult Mass, but a full-fledged oratory authorized to administer all the sacraments according to the traditional Latin Rite has been established in Santa Clara.

... at the Oratory of the Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, located at 1298 Homestead Road in Santa Clara, telephone (408) 248-4330.

...

The oratory will function under the supervision of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, a worldwide foundation of priests founded in 1990 exclusively to celebrate the Mass and sacraments according to the 1962 Missale Romanum.
...