For reasons I have yet to fathom, I have had several emails this morning with questions about the Post Communion prayer for the 1st Sunday of Advent. We will soon hear it in our churches (27 November!). [UPDATE: Someone wrote about the translation of this prayer at The Tablet. Thus, the questions.]
In any event, some years ago I looked at this prayer in some detail, so I can oblige without too much effort.
This prayer is of new composition for the Novus Ordo, but it is rooted in two prayers in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary. Cut and paste time.
POST COMMUNIONEM (2002MR):
Prosint nobis, quaesumus, Domine, frequentata mysteria,
quibus nos, inter praetereuntia ambulantes,
iam nunc instituis amare caelestia et inhaerere mansuris.
This is a great prayer to sing, which is as it should be. The alliteration of frequentata mysteria gives it a powerful staccato balanced by the assonance of “ah” and “a” sounds. The phrase ínter praétereúnti(a_á)mbulántes is glorious, as is the final cadence, inhaerére mansúris. We have some ancient writer to thank for those.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father,
may our communion
teach us to love heaven.
May its promise and hope guide our way on earth.
Is this what the prayer really says?
When the English is shorter than the Latin, friends, you know there’s trouble.
The lame-duck ICEL prayers of the sacral cycles of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter are generally more accurate than those of Ordinary Time. Nevertheless, this is so bad I was tempted when first writing about it to triple check that I got the right prayer from the correct Sunday.
Thus, here we have a great example, on the first Sunday of the new liturgical year, of why we needed a new, corrected translation. Instutuo is basically, to put or place into, to plant, fix, set” and a range of many other meanings. In this context it means “to teach, instruct, train up, educate”.
The Dictionary, the mighty Lewis & Short, helps us to understand that prosint is the third person plural present active subjunctive form of prosum, profui, prodesse , “to be useful or of use, to do good, benefit, profit”. There is a custom in Roman sacristies after Mass. Servers and sacred ministers line up in two rows and wait for the celebrant to enter and bow to the Cross. As he removes his biretta and bows to the Lord, they all say “Prosit!”, that is, “May what you have just done be of benefit for you!” The celebrant responds with a range of expressions, such as “Vobis quoque!” (singular “Tibi quoque!”), “And to you!”, (this is about the only time Catholics accurately say something like, “And also with you!”) or perhaps “Omnibus et singulis!”.
Iam paired with nunc goes beyond the simple “now” to the more intense “just now, at this very time, as things now are”.
Frequento is “to visit or resort to frequently, to frequent; to do or make use of frequently, to repeat” and also “to celebrate or keep in great numbers” as in the observance of public festivals. There is a phrase which pops up from time to time: “mysteriorum frequentatio“, for participation in the “sacred mysteries”. Praetereuntia, the present active participle of praeter-eo, “to go by or past, to pass by; “to be lost, disregarded, perish, pass away, pass without attention or fulfillment (late Lat.)” Mansuris is a plural future participle of maneo, “to remain, last, endure, continue”, and thus means “things that are going to endure”.
SLAVISHLY LITERAL RENDERING:
We beg You, O Lord, may they be profitable for us, these oft celebrated sacramental mysteries,
by which You instruct that we, walking amidst the things that are passing away,
would now in this very moment love heavenly things and cleave to the things that will endure.
When the priest intones this Post Communion, the Eucharistic Christ is within you. A church’s tabernacle is no more a dwelling of the Real Presence than you are at that moment.
What will we hear in the new translation?
NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
May these mysteries, O Lord,
in which we have participated,
profit us, we pray,
for even now, as we walk amid passing things,
you teach us by them to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what endures.
You decide.
To my ear that simple “participated”, which rendering a sense of frequento, has lost the sense of repetition, which could be good to retain on the 1st day of a new cycle of the liturgical year.
They got the “even now” part from the iam nunc right, it seems.
The new prayer is basically correct and it sticks to the Latin fairly closely. That said, one of my emails asked me if I thought the new version was saying that we are to learn to love heavenly things because we have learned from the “passing things” or the “mysteries” in the first line. While the “passing things” are closer to that “teach us by them to love” I thought that the “them” referred to the “mysteries”. We do, however, learn through our senses in this passing world… though that is not the point of the prayer in Latin. In my “slavishly literal” rendering, above, I added a couple words in the first lines so as to be able to position more closely the elements I figured should connect. Perhaps we could use…
A SMOOTHER VERSION:
May these mysteries we so often celebrate
redound to our benefit, O Lord, we entreat You,
since by them You instruct us to love even now
the things of heaven and cling to what endures
as we journey in the midst of this world which is passing away.
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And this is the best reason to frequent this blog!
Thank you for the detailed explication.
And now I understand that when we lift up our pints of Spatenbräu and exclaim “Prosit!” we’re saying, “May it do you good!”
“For reasons I have yet to fathom, I have had several emails this morning with questions about the Post Communion prayer for the 1st Sunday of Advent.”
Probably because of the following comment regarding that “for them” in a long letter attacking the corrected translation in this week’s edition of The Tablet:
“What can explain such a glaring howler? Why was it not spotted early on, rather than left to appear in a lavishly produced final text? Are priests expected to read the prayer as printed? . . . . This prayer comes right at the beginning of the liturgical cycle. What a way to start.”
And the whiners over at the PrayTell blog are really piling on!
One needn’t be a whiner to question the quality of this particular prayer. When I read it to my wife, she thought it was saying that we learn from the passing things of this earth.
And if you haven’t been following the discussion on Pray Tell, this incorrect reading of this prayer is being endorsed on the USCCB web site:
===
The prayer after communion looks back to offer a reflection on the communion we have just shared, and it looks forward to tell us how to conduct our daily lives in light of the Eucharist we have just celebrated.
This prayer was newly composed for the 1970 Latin edition of the Roman Missal and is based on two sixth-century Roman prayers that were subsequently lost to the liturgical tradition.
This prayer turns to the language of commercial exchange to indicate that in commerce with our Lord we derive the profit. Simple participation in the mysteries, however, does not bring about automatic profit. Participation needs personal reflection, which, accompanied with the ongoing gift of our Lord, is profitable to us.
As we prepare to return to our daily lives, our journey is described as a walk among passing things. Even passing things, however, are useful for divine instruction by which we learn to distinguish between the passing things and what endures. Once we have learned to distinguish between them, we learn to love the things of heaven and to hold fast to what endures.
The prayer does not say that we reject passing things nor does it describe things of this world in a negative light. Rather, the Eucharistic bread and wine we share, these are the enduring things of heaven, the body and blood of Christ. By sharing our daily bread in communion we learn as a community to value, hold fast and even to love the enduring things of heaven.
The communion we share informs our daily conduct as we learn to value even passing things as bearers of the enduring things of heaven.
===
That’s not “what the prayer really says”!
When I was a server in the mid to late 90s, my pastor would always end mass by having the (all boy) servers bow to the cross in the sacristy and say “Prosit!”.
Jeffrey,
Although the corrected translation of this prayer perhaps could be made clearer to less literate readers, this episode suggests that neither the folks at PrayTell nor at the USCCB web site are in the habit of diagramming complex sentences. For in this case, if we strip out the modifying clauses “in which we have participated” and “as we walk amid passing things” that would dangle off the main line of the diagram, we are left with
May these mysteries, O Lord, profit us, we pray, for even now, you teach us by them to love the things of heaven and hold fast to what endures.
So it is plain that “by them” refers to “these mysteries”. So, once again, this alleged grammatical problem turns out to disguise what I suspect is a more fundamental underlying ecclesiological difficulty with the new translation.
Henry, which priests and lay-faithful are typically in the habit of diagramming the post-communion prayer, let alone any sentence, during the Mass?
I do not think the grumbling over this particular prayer’s translation need be construed as “ecclesiological difficulty”. This trouble could have been easily remedied had the 2008 version of this prayer remained untouched, or if final revision had paid more attention to aural reception rather than sentence diagramming.
Here are two easy revisions which would have avoided the problem, and it is a problem.
May these mysteries, O Lord,
in which we have participated,
profit us, we pray,
for you teach us by them,
even now, as we walk amid passing things,
to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what endures.
or:
May these mysteries, O Lord,
in which we have participated,
profit us, we pray,
for even now, as we walk in the midst of this passing world,
you teach us by them to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what endures.
Either get “them” closer to the noun it stands for, or get rid of the interfering plural noun. Save the suspicion for another day.
I’m with Jeffrey on this one: yes, there is a problem with this post-communion prayer, and yes, it could easily have been avoided (the first of his examples is better to my mind).
However, we have what we have. The possible confusion between “mysteries”/”passing things” can be easily dispelled by study and catechesis. And it’s still a lot better than the horrifically reductionist claptrap we’ve had for the last forty years.
Jeffrey: in response to your question about diagramming, my opinion is that more priests ought to be in the habit to start off with–perhaps then we’d be begin to be better catechised by them!! :-) I think, however, we can all agree that if priests are immersed in the texts of the liturgy, both in Latin and the vernacular, the people of God can only benefit from that.
Even if the priest does his homework and understands the prayer properly, no one hearing the prayer is going to get it. These are prayers meant primarily to be heard (“proclaimed”), so I’d have to say that the translators tripped up here.
Then again it’s an excellent opportunity for the priest to preach on the liturgical prayers (gasp!)
Apart from the merit (or lack) of this particular “corrected” translation . . . I wonder whether a goal of ready understanding upon merely hearing these prayers was not partly responsibility for the reductionism–and banality–in the original English translation that has been lamented so much by so many.
It can be argued that the theological depth and complexity of the proper orations of the Roman Missal is what makes them a pride of the Latin rite and source of its particular genius, but also renders them incapable of any such transparency of proclamation. Indeed, one may question whether such “accessibility” is appropriate to liturgical expression, or is attainable without the kind of doctrinal and linguistic dilution with which we are all now too familiar.
For me to comprehend these prayers acceptably it is necessary–to analyze before use (in Divine Office or Mass) each proper oration in both Latin and English, at the level and depth that would be required to actually diagram it. So my question might be how many priests or laymen can penetrate at first sight or sound such concise and profound jewels of liturgical expression. Of course, most will gain what they do from these prayers neither by one-time hearing or by preparation in advance, but rather by absorption upon repetition year after year.
At any rate, as I analyze afresh each year these propers, Sunday by Sunday and feast by feast, I comprehend more layers of complex meaning and allusion like those Father Z has expounded in such illuminating detail in a decade of WDTPRS columns. Should we not be thankful that these wonderful prayers are so many-faceted that they may never–this side of the heavenly liturgy–be fully transparent to us?
I think that we can safely say that the translation of this prayer is problematic and yet still be in favor of the new Missal in general. The people over at PrayTell have really been talking about this prayer ad nauseam because it is an easy example of flaws in the new translation. I think that the 2008 Missal translation should have been left alone. Then we wouldn’t have this problem.
But, from my perspective, the people at PrayTell are actually arguing something different. As Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, says at one point, the real problem is not the translation so much as the process that brought it about. He is traveling around with Call to Action complaining about the lack of “consultation” in the Church’s hierarchy. That is the real issue here. The complaints about this particular post-communion prayer are just an opportunity for them to argue their ecclesiological agenda.
If in a couple of years the “corrected” translation needs to be “corrected”, I’d be happy with that; however, this new Missal translation has far fewer problems than the current translation and is more accurate than the 1998 translation about which the PrayTell people often write.
The slavishly accurate translation is the most beautiful. “walking amidst the things that are passing away” “now, in this very moment”
I don’t mind the new ICEL translation for this one. I think it’s obvious what “by them” refers to.
The fact that I just ended a sentence with a preposition should give you some idea of how I feel about “rules” for English grammar that don’t reflect the way people actually use the language. The new translation is fine. Could it have been better? Maybe. Still beats the old one by a mile.
@Sam Schmitt: I got what the prayer meant as soon as I read it. I don’t think I’d understand it any differently just by hearing it. Maybe I’m in the minority, though.
Phillip, you may get the prayer — it may be obvious to you — but I do not think it will be obvious to the average hearer (or even reader).
And Henry, the problem is not that the hearer will not fully absorb the spiritual richness of this prayer on his first hearing of it, or even his second or third. The problem is that he’s likely to absorb the wrong riches from it!
There’s nothing wrong with the grammar of the corrected text. The problem is that people aren’t used to longer sentences because everything is so ridiculously dumbed-down now and most people only understand gut-speech (I wanna, grunt) or advertising-speech (tomato’s for sale, grrr). Many people don’t “get” conditionals (if/then statements) either. Both of these classes of things go completely over the heads of most people. That said, the answer to the quandary in either case isn’t to stay dumbed-down; rather, the answer is to get people to slow down and listen long enough to hear the entire thought (in this case, prayer) that is the sentence. It’ll do them good spiritually, and incidentally it will do their brains good in all other ways too! How can that be bad?
I’m with Jeffrey on this one, as I think most readers or hearers will think the referent for “them” is “passing things”. Another easy fix in addition to those he proposed would be to replace the ambiguous “them” with the words “such mysteries”. With regard to the process, Sacrosanctum Concilium and all subsequent documents provide that, while the bishops’ conferences are to take the lead in preparing liturgical translations, it was always contemplated that the Holy See would have an oversight regulatory role in the liturgy generally, and from the very beginning of the implementation of the liturgical reform it has always been required that any liturgical translation obtain a recognitio from the Holy See. So I have no ecclesiological objection to the Holy See requiring certain changes to translations produced by the bishops through their instrument, ICEL. However, as a practical matter, I would have thought that CDWDS/Vox Clara would have discussed with those responsible for the texts at ICEL any changes they are thinking of requiring with the goal of making a better text and benefitting from the feedback of experts who have worked on the text. Perhaps if there had been more such dialogue, the problem with this ambiguous “them” might have been caught in advance. After all, I would think all parties would want the text to be the best possible within the guidelines of Liturgiam Authenticam. I do hope that someone at CDWDS will keep track of any minor issues like this with the new translation, and perhaps after a few years, produce some emendations, as indeed the third typical edition of the Latin Missale Romanum was emended to correct some minor problems with the Latin text.
I can’t say the grammar of this new translation is wrong, but it’s not as clear as it was in 2008:
May the mysteries we have celebrated profit us, we pray, O Lord,
for even now, as we journey through this passing world,
you teach us by them
to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what will endure.
In 2008, the new ICEL translated praetereuntia as a singular noun (perish the thought!), avoiding the confusion present in the 2010/2011 text. Why Vox Clara thought it was imperative to translate praetereuntia in the plural without consideration for the pronoun.
catholicmidwest, I’d like to think that I’m not too much a victim of the dumbing-down, nor my wife. She is far more widely-read than I, but when I showed this new translation to her a few months ago, she understood “them” as referring back to the passing things of the world.
I grant that the opening of the prayer asks that the mysteries profit us, so it should be the mysteries which teach us, but it could also be inferred that the mysteries profit us by enabling us to learn from the passing things.
CharlesG, that would work as well, although the repetition of “mysteries” might be a bit unseemly.
I’m curious… how would one write this prayer (in English) in such a way as to convey properly that it IS by the passing things of the world that we learn to love the things of heaven?
I must remind people who don’t like either the new, corrected translation or the process which produced it that they can always just use Latin.
I prefer the word “cleave”, which is stronger than cling, but I am grateful for the new translation.
Father Z: “I must remind people who don’t like either the new, corrected translation or the process which produced it that they can always just use Latin.”
And you could add that, in this regard, the lay have an advantage over the clergy–a layman can read every prayer in Latin at every Mass, whatever language the celebrant is using, be it English, Spanish, Vietnamese, or whatever.
Indeed, that’s why for the last eight years or so–since you finished the first WDTPRS cycle of propers–I’ve carried with me a card listing the Latin of the Collect, Prayer over the Offerings, and Postcommunion side-by-side with your slavishly literal English translations–though beginning this past Lent I began changing the English column over to the 2011 corrected version–reading the Latin myself with the aid with one eye on your translation and (sometimes) one ear cocked to the priest’s ICEL version. [My work here is done.]
Yes, Jeffrey is correct on two points: 1) that the USCCB doesn’t understand the Latin text (no surprise there) and 2) that there is a problem with the English text, though it’s not strictly one of grammar, as he observes.
There is much more to effective communication than subject-verb agreement, and one of the more difficult aspects of English to convey (especially to English learners) is the idea of the readerly conventions of English. If a writer fails to understand the nuances of these conventions, he or she will fail in the task of effective communication. One of these conventions is that readers expect pronouns to refer back to the closest prior noun, so in this case readers expect “them” to refer back to “passing things,” which is clearly not the sense of the Latin text being translated. One can argue that such conventions are silly or “dumbed down” but there is absolutely no winning this debate–for good or ill, this is simply the way contemporary English works–and if you care about your message you will care about understanding these conventions.
Having graded literally thousands of undergraduate essays, this particular problem of understanding the conventions of pronouns is especially acute among non-native English speakers. My guess is that such a person was at work here in the final product. [That, sir, is at the root of one of the theories about why the changes were made. And it doesn't concern an individual.]
Well, I have to disagree with both Jeffrey and Dave N.
Dave seems to say that there is a problem with the English translation, which problem is a “convention” to “expect pronouns to refer back to the closest prior noun.” However, he goes on to concede that one could argue that the convention is “silly” or “dumbed down”. (To say that it is both “silly” and simply the way contemporary English works indicates the problem is elsewhere than in the translation.)
Again, both Dave and Jeffrey assert that the commentary on the page from the USCCB’s website presents a misinterpretation of the prayer. I think that it does not. Notice that there are two things that we learn: “to distinguish between the passing things and what endures” and “to love the things of heaven and to hold fast to what endures.” The former we learn from passing things (“Even passing things, however, are useful for divine instruction by which we learn to distinguish…”). The latter we learn “by sharing our daily bread in communion [i.e., the mysteries].” So I don’t see how it can be reasonably claimed that the page from USCCB website is saying that we are taught by passing things to love the enduring things, which is what Jeffrey says, and with which Dave agrees.
I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the people praying their rosaries while the entire mass is done silently and in latin by the priest. 500 years of wisdom can’t be easily overlooked
At any rate, it’s a good thing that the Roman custom to say Prosit (laughing out loud…) after Holy Mass is not copied here in Germany (we say Deo gratias or the translation).
Cheers.