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

In the Sunday Angelus address today, His Holiness lauded St. Thomas Aquinas and spoke of the necessity of reason for the sake of modern society.

He mentioned his speech in Regensburg. Benedict spoke of the way St. Thomas was able to harmonize "Arab and Hebrew thought of his day" with Christianity. Thus he can be considered a good model for modern times of dialogue between cultures and religions.

I am sure you will be reading the translation of the address when it is released. However, when Benedict mentioned his controversial speech at Regensburg I thought of something I posted in another entry, about Fr. Foster’s negative view of an eventual Motu Proprio to derestrict the older form of Mass. 

Fr. Foster thought the problems caused in Regensburg with Arabs were part of a weight of difficulties making such an indult impossible. Foster said that Benedict wants to avoid negative reactions.

If Benedict was really afraid of negative reactions why would be mention his Regensburg Address and Arabs so often in public?

In the Sunday Telegraph there is an article by Malcolm Moore about famed Fr. Reginald Foster, OCD, long-time Latinist for the Holy See. In the article Moore quotes Foster about the so-called "Tridentine" indult. Foster is not positive (emphasis mine).

He said reports that Pope Benedict will reintroduce the Tridentine Mass, which dates from 1570 and is largely conducted in Latin, were wrong – not least because of the Pope’s desire to avoid more controversies. A speech last year offended Muslims and more recently he gave initial support to a Polish archbishop who was eventually forced to resign, after admitting that he had collaborated with the communist-era secret police.

"He is not going to do it," Fr Foster said. "He had trouble with Regensberg, and then trouble in Warsaw, and if he does this, all hell will break loose." In any case, he added: "It is a useless mass and the whole mentality is stupid. The idea of it is that things were better in the old days. It makes the Vatican look medieval."

I have great respect for Fr. Foster, whom I studied with for many years. My Latin experiences with him changed my life. I know him to be a very kind and generous soul. I consider him a friend.

I also know that he rarely speaks in moderate terms. Hyperbole characterizes nearly everything about him. Fr. Foster often makes very strong statements to make sure he is understood and, perhaps above all, to provoke reactions. I have heard him say entirely crazy things and observe the looks of disbelief on faces around him. I do not think that he is insincere. I believe this is the way a man with 200ghz more brain speed than anyone else in the room copes with what he sees going on in the Church and the world.

That said… I think Fr. Foster is wrong about this. But may be right in one respect.

I think the indult is going to happen. However, recent controversies may have made the Holy Father decide to wait for a good moment.

Right now in Rome (with the exception Foster, obviously) there is sepulchral silence about this document. Fr. Foster, though in the Secretariate of State, may not be in the best position to know the status of the Motu Proprio. He is a translator, not a policy maker. It may be that he will be the one to make sure the Latin text of the document is clean. Perhaps he hasn’t seen it, and so he thinks it won’t happen. Maybe his statement is motivated by wishful thinking.

If Fr. Foster doesn’t want to see a return of the use of the older form of Missale he is perfectly within his rights. Good men and differ on this matter. It is entirely okay that he voice his opinions. There is room for discussion. don’t want… don’t like the "Tridentine" Mass? Okay, fine!

What needs to be done to help Holy Church find her liturgical bearings for the future?

Biretta tip to Catholic Church Conservation for the heads up on a comment made by the director of the German section of Vatican Radio, Fr. Eberhard von Gemmingen SJ. (Emphasis mine)

In all probability Pope Benedict will give the permission to celebrate again the traditional or Tridentine Rite. It would however be completely wrong if Catholics started to quarrel over this, some of them full of joy about this reversal, the others full of anger. It is to be noted that the Pope will not on any account reintroduce the old liturgy or even make it compulsory. He is only of the opinion that the prohibition of the classical Rite after the Council is in contradiction to Church tradition, because according to his conviction, Rites can be further developed but cannot be abrogated.

Notwithstanding the above, Rome is pretty quiet about any forthcoming Motu Proprio. My usual suspects are hearing nothing. This brings me to conclude that the Pope has the document now. He will make the decision when it seems opportune.

What Does The Prayer Really Say?  4th Sunday In Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2007

    I had a lovely experience. I went for supper with a priest and 13 sisters visiting Rome. The Sister Servants of the Eternal Word told me they pray every day in their community for accurate translations of the liturgy. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

    You will remember last week’s report about the meeting of liturgists in Toronto where His Excellency Donald W. Trautman, chair of the USCCB’s Committee on the Liturgy (BCL), lamented in his keynote speech that the new translations being prepared will be too hard for people to understand and that everyone should raise their prophetic voices in protest. Bishop Trautman says that if the priest says Christ died “for you and for many” (pro vobis et pro multis) during the consecration of the Precious Blood, people will become confused and maybe even LEAVE THE CHURCH! In his words, “the new texts will contribute to a greater number of departures from the Catholic Church.” This is because the new translations are going to be reeeeally harrrrrd. He thinks priests are not capable of explaining what really hard things mean.

    As His Excellency put it during an interview last June with John L. Allen Jr. of the lefty National Catholic Reporter, “I don’t think we’ll convince people that ‘consubstantial,’ for example, is better than ‘one in being,’ which has been used for 35 years. People say that England has been using it for all these years, but I think our priests are stretched too thin already.” Translating this, American priests just aren’t up to the task. They have neither the time nor ability to explain hard words, like “consubstantial.” Apparently we should get some English priests to cross the pond to shed some light on the language for the backward Americans.

    I checked with a few English priests about what they say in the Creed. On their scepter’d isle they proclaim Christ to be “of one being with the Father,” not “consubstantial.” Anyhow, Brits know English. But if they can’t come, we can take a page from the troops in Iraq and write to the chair of the BCL: Pleeze help us biship troutman! We need eezee tra…transz…tranzayshins…tr…eezeur wurdz!

    Folks, “one in being with the Father” isn’t merely theologically wrong; it’s boring. Everything that exists is “one in being” with the Father, since they are all in being. An ashtray is one in being with the Father: They both have being, granted in different ways, but both have being. Only a divine Person can be of one “substance with” the Father (“con-substantial”). The Second Person was of one substance with the First Person, the Father, from all eternity. After the Annunciation and Incarnation the Son has been of one substance also with His Mother, and therefore with all humanity. So, “one in being” is easy and wrong. Worse yet, it’s boring, provoking nothing interesting in the mind. It will not fire up a person’s passion to learn more about what it might possibly mean in its strangeness. One English priest told me how when he was a child the word “consubstantial” in a hymn fascinated him. In the hymn Christ Was Made the Sure Foundation we sing:

Laud and honor to the Father,
laud and honor to the Son,
laud and honor to the Spirit,
ever Three, and ever One,
consubstantial, coeternal,
while unending ages run.

    Child abuse! How on earth did people, a child, sing that hymn?

    “Laud…consubstantial…coeternal….” Look at the hard words! Is it possible that precisely because they sang hymns like that, with engaging lyrics, and followed Holy Mass in their hand missals, by slavish but accurate translations, they came to understand words like “consubstantial” and phrases like “for you and for many” quite well?

    The Holy See got it right with the proper translation of pro multis (after over 30 years). I think we will see a proper translation of consubstantialis Patri in the Creed. In the meantime, we must raise our voices in support of accurate translations and the norms expressed in Liturgiam authenticam (LA). I like in particular this paragraph:

    53. Whenever a particular Latin term has a rich meaning that is difficult to render into a modern language (such as the words munus, famulus, consubstantialis, propitius, etc.) various solutions may be employed in the translations, whether the term be translated by a single vernacular word or by several, or by the coining of a new word, or perhaps by the adaptation or transcription of the same term into a language or alphabet that is different from the original text (cf. above, n. 21), or the use of an already existing word which may bear various meanings.

    Nota bene: LA 53 speaks not only of munus but also of consubstantialis. During the USCCB meeting in June 2006, His Excellency Bishop Trautman tried to argue from LA 53 that “one in being with the Father” ought to be retained in the new translation. I read LA 53 to mean that whatever solution is chosen to render difficult terms into English, the solution should aim at something accurate rather than something merely convenient, even if that means choosing a Latin cognate (read: hard word). LA 21 says (my emphasis):

    Especially in the translations intended for peoples recently brought to the Christian Faith, fidelity and exactness with respect to the original texts may themselves sometimes require that words already in current usage be employed in new ways, that new words or expressions be coined, that terms in the original text be transliterated or adapted to the pronunciation of the vernacular language,…

    That sounds like “consubstantial” to me. Or am I wrong?

Post Communionem (2002 Missale Romanum):
Redemptionis nostrae munere vegetati, quaesumus, Domine,
ut hoc perpetuae salutis auxilio
fides semper vera proficiat.

    This was the Postcommunio for “Sabbato in albis,” the Saturday during the Octave of Easter. It is also in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary in the month of July, though slightly different:…fides semper vera perficiat. Here we read perficio rather than proficio. The pre-Conciliar Missale Romanum has proficio, just like the Novus Ordo.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
you invigorate us with this help to our salvation.
By this eucharist give the true faith continued growth
throughout the world.

    Lewis & Short, great resource that it is, tells us the late-Latin verb vegeto means “to arouse, enliven, quicken, animate, invigorate.” Albert Blaise produced a very useful work revised by Antoine Dumas, OSB, called Le vocabulaire latin des principaux thèmes liturgiques….The Latin Vocabulary of the Principal Themes of the Liturgy. This is what we call Blaise/Dumas in these articles. Blaise/Dumas examines vegeto, giving it the meaning “fortify” or “strengthen” when it is associated with the Eucharist. It provides examples of liturgical texts having also forms of munus and the verb auxilior. This is similar to today’s prayer.

    Proficio has a range of meanings. Basically, it is “to go forward, advance, gain ground, make progress.” In different contexts it is also, “to grow, increase” and “to be useful, serviceable, advantageous, etc., to effect, accomplish; to help, tend, contribute, conduce.” Think of the English “proficient.” We could say in our prayer “that the true faith may always grow,” which would be in keeping with the imagery invoked in vegetati (“quickened, enlivened, strengthened”) or perhaps we might say “that the true faith may always advance,” which would hark to how we are pilgrims in this world. Perhaps “gain ground” captures both. I am reminded of how my (vegetative) oregano and thyme plants “gain ground” over their neighbors. They creep and spread and take more and more surface as they grow.

    We frequently see munus in our Latin prayers. There is the munus which refers to the “duty” or “office,” and also the munus which is “gift.” In liturgical language it is often God’s gift of the Eucharist received. Munus was singled out in Liturgiam authenticam, as we saw above.

Literal Translation:
Having been quickened by the gift of our redemption,
we beseech You, O Lord, that true faith may always gain ground
by means of this support for eternal salvation.

    We have in this prayer two closely related words, redemptio (redemption) and salus (salvation). God created man in a state of original justice. By the sin of our first parents, the entire human race fell into enslavement to the Enemy of the soul, the Devil. By His Sacrifice on the Cross, Christ, both Priest and Victim, took our place and bought us back. His Sacrifice satisfied the justice due to God for our sins. The Redeemer won back for us the friendship of God. The concept of redemption, therefore, includes both our initial fall and then the price Christ paid to restore us.

    Salvation goes somewhat beyond redemption. Salvation is the freeing of the soul from sin and, in consequences, the attaining of Heaven as our proper end. For our salvation we must cooperate with God and depend on His love and the mercy. God will give light and graces sufficient for every soul, but the ordinary path to our salvation is through membership in the Church Christ founded, the Catholic Church.

    Formal membership in the Catholic Church gives us so much more help for our salvation (salutis auxilium) than we would otherwise have in this perilous world, for now so much the dominion of the Enemy. Of such value is our visible membership in the Church that She teaches “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus…outside the Church there is no salvation.” Properly understood, this means that all whom God saves are saved through His Church. He who recognizes what (Who) the Church is, but refuses to become a member, chooses the path to perdition. Someone who, through no fault of his own, does not belong to the Church will not be damned to eternal Hell on account of his ignorance, unless his ignorance is willed and culpable. Those who are ignorant of the true Faith, as Blessed Pius IX taught (Allocutio of December 9, 1854), will not be held guilty in the eyes of God provided their ignorance is invincible (oops, hard word: can’t be won over by correct information, good arguments, examples of charity, etc.).

    The Eucharist is for our redemption and for our salvation. It is simultaneously our freedom and our hope. It is the source and the summit of our entire Christian identity. And yet many receive the Eucharist improperly. Many do not receive because they are not in unity with the Catholic Church. What shall we do about this?

    Our prayer today asks that vera fides, true Faith, advance by the Eucharist. It advances within us by our good reception of Communion. Nourished and strengthened with the Eucharist, we then go directly out of Mass to live our vocations in the world. The Eucharist then advances the true Faith not only within us, but also in the world we influence by and for true Faith.

    St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) regularly attaches the adjective vera to terms like iustitia (justice), pietas (devotion), and of course fides so as to differentiate what Christians have and do from the ways of the world. Our faith must be true Faith, rooted in the Eucharist, shaped by the Church, manifested in action.

Smoother Version:
Strengthened by the gift of our redemption, O Lord,
we entreat You that, by this assistance for our eternal salvation,
the true faith may always flourish.

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

Some indirect and somewhat dated feedback:  In December there was an interesting conference in Rome sponsored by The Becket Fund.   The events director, MD, told me that her grandfather is quite the fan of WDTPRS.  So, to him I send kind greetings and thanks for his indirect kudos.   

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR)
Altaribus tuis, Domine, munera nostrae servitutis inferimus,
quae, placatus assumens,
sacramentum nostrae redemptionis efficias.

Right away you will be struck by the alliterative ‘s’ sounds.  Today’s so-called “Prayer over the gifts” is also in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary.

The densely printed pages of your very own copy of that paragon of Latin lemmas, the The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary, divulge that servitus is (despite its us ending) a feminine noun.  It means, “the condition of a servus; slavery, serfdom, service, servitude.”   Infero is “to carry, bring, put, or throw into or to a place”.  This verb also can mean “to conclude, infer, draw an inference.”   

Latin, like all of us, has moods but not good moods or bad moods.  Getting Latin moods into English can be a chore.  Latin has the subjunctive mood, the bane of many a Latin student.  In Latin, the subjunctive mood represents the predicate as an idea, as something conceived in the mind, abstracted from reality.  Often people translate subjunctives into English with the auxiliary verbs “may, can, must, might, could, should, would” and indeed the subjunctive can be used to express views and wishes.  However, the subjunctive is also applied to things that are in fact very concrete but in the sentence are somewhat logically remote from the subject and verb of the main sentence and are therefore considered to be abstract.  This is the case in many relative sentences.  In relative sentences the thing being treated can be very concrete and real but, because it is in a relative sentence, the subjunctive is used.  It is very tempting for Latin students always to use those abovementioned auxiliary verbs automatically upon spotting any subjunctive.  However, very often it is more accurate to make Latin subjunctives sound indicative when putting them into English.  We must do that with our prayer today.   Efficias is a subjunctive and some will be tempted to say something like “which you may make into the sacrament of our redemption.”   It is actually more accurate to give efficias an indicative sound.   So, let’s give this our best shot.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We are bringing in to place upon your altars, O Lord, the gifts of our service,
which, having been appeased as you take them up,
you make into the sacrament of our redemption.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
be pleased with the gifts we bring to your altar,
and make them the sacrament of our salvation.

What did the ICEL translator really do to the Latin prayer?  Obvious he (she?  they?) changed plural altaribus to a singular.  Does this mean anything?  Is there anything sinister here?  Theologically spooky?   Probably not, but we can use this as an opportunity to discuss Catholic things.  

I try to give the ICEL versions the benefit of the doubt, but they obviously veer, sharply, nay rather careen away from the Latin original.  Why?  Anyone with a little Latin can see this.  We are justifiably suspicious of anything offered by ICEL, even the present, ongoing project.  In the past the translators had reasons for their choices to distort the originals.  It is not possible to believe that the bishops purposely employed translators so fantastically incompetent that they botched the prayers out lack of skill.   In those days bishops would have still had a little background in Latin.  They must have picked people with at least a minimum competency in Latin.  Let’s leave aside their agenda of composing prayers not in the Missale Romanum.  The translators therefore must have seen that, in today’s prayer, the Latin had a plural.  Therefore, they wanted to change the Latin into something else.  As Sherlock Holmes observed, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Now, all in all today’s ICEL version isn’t completely off base.  But why would the translators change Latin “altars” into “altar”?  Was there a theological reason for making the change?  

We need a lens to view the question more closely.  Consider a first point:  Catholics (which word in its roots means “universal”) have never historically been interested in making things or people “smaller”, in the sense of placing unreasonable or unrealistic restrictions on them.  Our Church, despite what the media say or some sour-grapes fringe progressives claim, is not into placing unreasonable limits.   For example, there is a famous principle of interpretation of the Church’s law whereby the advantages people have as expressed in law are to be amplified while the things that place restrictions on them must be interpreted as strictly or narrowly as possible so as to favor the rights of the individual (odiosa restringenda sunt, favorabilia amplianda).  Consider also a second point: as members of the Church we belong to something not only spread throughout the whole world but also transcending even the grave.   No, Catholics are not into making people or things “small”.

Turn now to the ICEL prayer.   The translator, by using a singular “altar” rather than the accurate “altars” repressed the fact that Catholics all over the world are this Sunday presenting their gifts on myriads of altars (altaribus), grand or small, simple or ornate, fixed to a wall or free-standing, marble with gilt reredos or on the hood of a sand-pocked armored humvee.   People of many cultures focus on their hugely varying altars every day.  Every day the one and same Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered for both the living and the dead of every age and in every place.  

Please understand: it is a good thing to help a congregation to recognize its particular identity as it is gathered at its particular altar in its particular parish.   It is not a good thing to do this at the expense of the Church’s universality, its catholicity.  Moreover, altars are a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ, who is not to be limited to one place and time alone.  Christ is not to be made “small”, nor is the unity of the Catholic People of God through time, space and even the passage of the grave.

We can shift gears and come at this from another direction.  Does the change to singular “altar” have anything to do with the attempt on the part of some to constrain all celebrations of Mass to be “facing the people”?   This is a big jump.  Consider the following points.  In the ancient Church, churches had usually one altar.  As the Church grew and her understanding of the Blessed Sacrament and efficacy of Mass and role of priests evolved, churches were built with more than one altar especially under the influence of Western monasticism.  There was clearly a main altar, a principal altar, which was the architectural, the visible, logical focus of the whole building.  That special place within the sanctuary, itself set apart from the rest of the sacred building – like the ancient Jewish Holy of Holies within the Temple – was where the sacred mysteries were celebrated.  Other altars in the church might be used at different times, particularly when many priests were in residence near the church who all needed to say Mass each day.  This was certainly the case at a monastery, seminary or, once upon a time, parish.   This was also during the time before “concelebration” was revived in the West.

For a long time there has been a movement to emphasize, in an exaggerated way, the importance of one unique altar in the sacred space of the church.  This principle of the unicity of the altar is a theological concern not to be trifled with.  Much serious ink has been spilled over this issue. However, an otherwise good principle can be applied with so heavy a hand that damage is done.  This was certainly the case with the use of the vernacular versus Latin.  For decades a maniacal effort to tear “extra” altars out of churches, even historic churches, has resulted in destruction that might have shocked the Visigoths.  At the very best some main altars at the wall were converted into shelves for plants.  But once the one altar principle was coupled with the goofy idea that the priest must face the people for the Eucharistic Prayer, the door was opened to jack-hammer and crowbar toting reformers.  As it happens, the historical foundation for Mass facing the people has been debunked with real scholarship, but the damage has been done far and wide in older churches. The “experts” have had their way in most places.  The “high altars” of our churches have been torn out in favor of a table, sometimes not even placed in the center of the eye’s focus.  In some places altar are absurdly juxtaposed to and counterbalancing the ambo where the Scriptures are read.   My comments here are more than a mere laus temporis acti… a praise of times gone by.   The orientation of an altar is truly significant.  People glean something very important from the layout of a church and the way the altar is placed and treated. By turning altars around we have, in my opinion, lost as a Church far more than we imagine we have gained.   By forcing priest and people to face each other, in closed circle, we have made ourselves “small”.

Here in Rome and elsewhere you find churches with the main altar intact.  However, in nearly every case a table altar has been set up in front of it.  When I see a huge and magnificent high altar with a silly little ironing board set up also, I shake my head in incredulous disbelief.  Many people have been duped into thinking that saying Mass versus populum is of such overriding value that they justify what looks like a picnic table compared to what stands behind it.  Many of the same people will then harp on liturgical “diversity” to the point where virtually any liturgical abuse is tolerated, while clamping down in draconian ferocity on anyone who suggests that it is okay to have Mass also… get this… also oriented so that priest and congregation together face the liturgical “East”, whence the Church traditionally believed the Lord would return.   

The discussion above is not irrelevant to the issue of liturgical translations, which is what WDTPRS is about.  For example, the document of the USCCB called Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture, and Worship (BLS), when treating the position of altars, in footnote 73 (once note 75) in its online version mistranslates the Latin of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) par. 299.  The English mistranslation in BLS of the Latin description of the placement of the altar is skewed so as to impose versus populum celebrations of Mass, which the Latin does not say.  The mistranslation was published in November 2000 and remains online now despite the fact that the Latin of that very paragraph 299 in the GIRM had been specifically explained and clarified by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS – Prot. No. 2036/00/L – 25 September 2000) before the American bishops promulgated BLS.  Those who wrote BLS and submitted it to the bishops for approval had to have known about that clarification by the CDWDS and so they must have submitted the mistranslation on purpose.  Again, exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  It is not naïve to suppose that presuppositions drive translation choices.  They sure do in these columns!   

Dear reader, include our bishops in your prayers.  Ask their angel guardians to guide them in their duty to develop an accurate new English translation according to the norms.  

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2001

This prayer comes in a time when we see in the newsworthy activities being covered by the media that love of God and neighbor should be prayed for with great and intense fervor. The season of the liturgical year called “Ordinary Time” is particularly helpful in guiding us into a proper Christian approach to the nitty-gritty details of the routine of daily living through the year. It might not be an exaggeration to suggest that the two-fold great command of Jesus is to be found at the foundation of daily life.

COLLECT:
LATIN (1970 Missale Romanum)
Concede nobis, Domine Deus noster,
ut te tota mente veneremur,
et omnes homines rationabili diligamus affectu.

A probably not very significant detail: the phrase Domine Deus noster is used in only three collects of Ordinary Time, this week, the 5th and 33rd.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Grant us, O Lord our God,
that we may venerate you with our whole mind,
and may love all men with rational good-will.

We are asking God to permit us, to allow us as a great gift and favor granted, to “venerate” God with our whole mind. This veneror, as the great The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary provides, has a deeply religious connotation and means, “to reverence with religious awe, to worship, adore, revere, venerate… to do homage.” Think of its use in the well-known Tantum Ergo, which describes us as cernui, “heads bowed to the ground.” To “venerate” as we should, it will be necessary to seek to know Him for we are to do this with our “whole mind.” But there is a close link between knowing and loving. More on this below.

What we are hearing in this collect is clearly an echo of the two-fold command of Jesus, teaching and expanding the repeated command in Deuteronomy (cf. especially 6:5, the Shema – “Hear, O Israel…”), to love God and neighbor (cf. Matthew 22:36-38; Mark 12:2-31; Luke 10:26-28 – which has omni mente rather than tota). In the three Synoptic Gospels where a version of the two-fold command appears we have the Greek word dianoia for “mind.” Jerome in the Vulgate used mens to translate the Greek dianoia. Dianoia is used in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint (usually abbreviated LXX). But looking at the Deuteronomy passage, we find in English translations “heart.” Dianoia translates the Hebrew lebab: heart…. and a lot more besides. Furthermore, in the Latin Vulgate for the Deuteronomy, we find for dianoia the word cor - “heart”. Like the English “heart”, Hebrew lebab can mean very many things, including “inner man, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding, mind, knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory, inclination, resolution, determination (of will), conscience. “Heart” can mean the seat of moral character or courage. Biblical anthropology and the relationship of “mind, heart, soul” is a complicated study, and we do not have time and space for it here. By looking into that mens of our prayer we are digging for a road map to avoid the pitfalls and traps that the word “love” carries around today like so much baggage. “Mind” and “heart” are closely related faculties in man and cannot be separated from each other.

We are commanded by the Savior to love. Mother Church remembers this in this week’s prayer. But “love” can mean so many things today. Many of you reading this will remember C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves. Commonly used, “love” today usually refers not to the kind of love which is really Christian “charity”, that sacrificial love which in seeking always the good of the other resembles the sacrificial love of Christ, the theological virtue that permits us to love as images of God. Bob can “love” his Ferrari, Susie can “love” her kitty, and without doubt we all “love” baseball and spaghetti. We can talk about the different tenors of love, such as the love of benevolence, or of complacence, of enemies, concupiscence. But we are called to a special sort of love in this prayer… true charity: the infused virtue which makes it possible for us to love God for His own sake and love all those who are made in His image. This is more than benevolence or tolerance, more than appetitive desire. Love is not merely a response to some appetite, like seeing a beautiful member of the opposite sex, a well-turned double-play, or a plate of spaghetti all’amatriciana. It isn’t the sloppy gazing of passion drunk sweethearts or what we see on TV primetime. I call that luv. Real love is the adhesion of the will to an object which is grasped by the intellect to be good. Real love, the sort of love invoked in our prayer, is an act of will. This love delights in the other and is informed by a longing for the good of the other. It makes two resound with one spirit. Love, in the sense this prayer offers, is an act of will based on the work of a discerning intellect that is reshaped and informed by grace. This why we find in our prayer that phrase rationabilis affectus. Rationabilis is an adjective meaning: rational, reasonable. Our stupendous Lewis & Short Dictionary shows us that affectus indicates “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.” Rationabilis affectus reflects what it is to be truly human, made in God’s image and likeness, with faculties of willing and knowing and, therefore, loving.

We come back to the connection of knowledge and love, mentioned above. It seems to me that these two are so closely related that they cannot be easily distinguished at times. I am willing to bet that all of us have had the experience of getting to know something or someone and then, “falling in love.” Billy might be fascinated by bugs. From this love for bugs he simply must come to know everything there is to know about them, thus setting the stage for a brilliant career in entomology. On the other hand, we get to know a person or a city and, the more we learn about this complex object of our intellectual effort, we slowly come to appreciate their beauty and come even to a genuine love. Simply put, when we love someone, we want to know everything about him or her and the more we learn the more we love. This is how we must be with God: constantly seeking to understand Him more and more so as to love Him more and more, and by that very love coming to understand things about God that, without love, would not be possible for us to learn. The desire for both love and knowledge are built into who we are and we have a relationship with the objects of both love and knowledge. The great 13th century saint and doctor of the Church Bonaventure described “ecstatic knowledge.” This kind of knowledge is merely the product of abstract investigation. Rather, it starts first from standing back and contemplating. By contemplation, the knower becomes engaged with the object, becomes fascinated by it and wants to know it more deeply. This longing draws the knower into the object. Consider: we can study about God and our faith. But really the object of study is a living Person, not a set of abstractions. We need the sort of knowledge of God that draws us into Him. This is a “knowledge” which reaches into us, seizes us, pulls us into itself and transforms us. To experience God’s love is to have certain knowledge, more certain than any knowledge which can be arrived at by means of merely rational examination (but not in opposition to it).

And we are commanded to love our neighbor, all made in God’s image and all individually intriguing – fascinating, in a way that resembles the way we love God and ourselves. This we are to do with our minds, hearts, and our strength.

ICEL:
Lord our God,
help us to love you with all our hearts
and to love all men as you love them.

This version of the collect we examine this week leaves me a bit disappointed. The sound of it is really quite flat and uninteresting, repetitive, rather like the 1967 John Lennon/Beatles song: “Love… love… love… all you need is luv”. I wholeheartedly embrace the sentiment it expresses: “Help us to… love all men as you love them”, is a fine thing if we consider with what sort of love God loves. Also, there is a profound difference between concede (“grant”) and “help.” Concede indicates our dependance on God, whereas “help” indicates a much more limited role for God. God does more than “help” us and we fallen human beings need more than “help.” When I hear “help” over and over again in ICEL prayers, I get a whiff (imagined or not) of Pelgaianism. That said, I don’t see how this really translates the Latin original.