Thursday of the 2nd Week of Advent

We continue our Advent project.

Here is the Collect for Thursday of the 2nd Week of Advent

COLLECT:

Excita, Domine, corda nostra
ad praeparandas Unigeniti tui vias,
ut, per eius adventum,
purificatis tibi mentibus servire mereamur.

This was in the 1962 Missale for the 2nd Sunday of Advent.

Centuries before, the "Tridentine" Missal it was in the Gelasian Sacramentary, as well as the Gregorian.

LITERAL VERSION:
Stir up our hearts, O Lord,
to make ready the paths for Your Only-Begotten,
so that through His Coming
we may be worthy to serve Your with minds made pure.

ANOTHER VERSION BEING KICKED AROUND:
Stir up our hearts, O Lord,
to prepare the paths of your Only-begotten Son,
that through his coming
we may be found worthy to serve you
with minds made pure.

Hmmm… sounds familiar.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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5 Comments

  1. danphunter1 says:

    Father,
    The second version’s third line reads:”that we may be FOUND worthy to serve Thee”
    This gives the prayer a sense of unexpectedness, which in this case and I suppose in any case of keeping ones soul in a state of sanctifying grace is apropriate.
    We must always be ready to serve Christ at any given moment.
    Christ must “come upon us” in that state of purity which is always atuned to His service.
    Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

  2. danphunter1 says:

    That is the fourth line.

  3. Berolinensis says:

    Dan,

    you may find the “found worthy” more appropriate, but it’s not in the original Latin, which actuallay says “that … we may merit/deserve”.

  4. Mary Jane says:

    And of course, this collect relates to “Stir-up Sunday,” the date to kick off preparations of your Christmas puddings when it was used by the Anglicans on the Sunday before Advent
    began.

    Unfortunately, it appears to have been displaced in the BCP revisions by those who changed in the last Sunday before Advent to conform to the Feast of Christ the King, although it appears that it still can be used during that week. Thank goodness, otherwise the puddings wouldn’t have a chance to ripen properly.

  5. Renzo di Lorenzo says:

    In the tradtion of WDTPRS, Fr Z does well to translate the ancient, time-tested Latin just as it is. Opening the window to the fresh air of additional content can let the smoke of Satan enter in an attempt to suffocate the Holy Spirit of the Liturgy. What is the kicked around version really saying? Are we merely “found” to be good as an external consequence of the coming of the Lord, having made our own minds pure even though the Lord has stirred us up? I don’t know. But I do know that the old ICEL version went WAY OUT ITS WAY to bring in, at the least, semi-pelagian renderings to very many of prayers, the collects, for instance. While Vox Clara seems to have assisted ICEL in finding the Latin texts, I would hate to see the coming translation turn out to be a mere reincarnation of its earlier work, whose coming finds us purifying our own minds of Catholic worship. All I want to know, as a priest, is this: What does the prayer really say? And then I want to pray that prayer, preferably in Latin. There is NEVER a shred of any kind of pelagianism in the Latin. But there is in many English renderings; so frequent is this, in fact, that it makes one suspect even a rather innocuous translation like the one being kicked around. I’ve come to the point of saying: Enough is enough. Just give me the real prayer, and let the grace of God take us, priest and people, into the heavenly Liturgy!

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