This week’s Collect, for the 25th Ordinary Sunday, was introduced into the Missale Romanum with the Novus Ordo but it is influenced by a prayer in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary.
Deus, qui sacrae legis omnia constituta in tua et proximi dilectione posuisti, da nobis, ut, tua praecepta servantes, ad vitam mereamur pervenire perpetuam.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, guide us, as you guide creation according to your law of love. May we love one another and come to perfection in the eternal life prepared for us.
LITERAL ATTEMPT:
O God, who placed all things of the sacred law which were constituted in the love of You and of neighbor, grant us that we, observing Your precepts, may merit to attain to eternal life.
This Collect seems to be founded on the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer:
“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On
these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets’” (Matthew 22:3440).
St Thomas Aquinas (+1274) glossed this verse in his Commentary on Saint Matthew: when man is loved, God is loved, since man is the image of God.
In 1 John 4:21 there is a good explanation of this double precept: “This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
All of the Law is summed up in Jesus’ two-fold command of love of God and neighbor. The
first part of the two-fold law is about unconditional love of God. The second follows as its
consequence.
We must cultivate our different loves in their proper order. God comes first, always. Always.
A married person must love God more even than a spouse. We must never put any creature,
no matter how proximate to us in our hearts, closer than the God in whose image and likeness we are made. When this logical priority is properly in place, love of God and neighbor will not conflict or compete. Each love fuels the other, when love of God is first.
Today’s Collect reestablishes that we have a special relationship with each person who lives,
and not merely with God alone. People are made in God’s image. They are our neighbors,
though some are closer to us than others. But there is no person on earth who is not in some way our neighbor.
This reciprocal relationship calls to mind another act of reciprocity which the Lord teaches us: forgive or you will not be forgiven.
When our Saviour taught us how to pray what we now call the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-
13), the first thing he then explained and stressed was forgiveness: “For if you forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (vv 14-15).
It is often hard to forgive.
The second section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church digs into the Lord’s Prayer. When we get to the examination of “…as we forgive those who trespass against us” we read (2842):
“This ‘as’ is not unique in Jesus’ teaching: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect’; ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’; ‘A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another.’ It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandment by
imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming
from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God.
Only the Spirit by whom we live can make ‘ours’ the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Then the unity of forgiveness becomes possible and we find ourselves ‘forgiving one
another, as God in Christ forgave us.’”
When it is your time to go to Your Lord, will you be well-reconciled with the neighbors you
leave behind? Our time will come. Let us pray daily that we will not die without the solace and strengthening of the sacraments and an opportunity to make peace with our neighbor.
Do you have unfinished business?
CURRENT ICEL (2011):
O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law upon love of you and of our
neighbor, grant that, by keeping your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life.
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That lawyer (νομικος) heard back the verses in Deuteronomy after the shema, which he should have prayed daily. He also should have understood a verse from Leviticus, the second Great Commandment.
Some things don’t change.
Salutationes omnibus.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”
I was meditating on the Our Father once when I got caught up on this line. Normally I recite it so quickly that I pay no attention to what i’m reciting. It’s possibly my least favorite line in a prayer, as it’s pretty sobering if you spend any amount of time reflecting upon it. Even when I think I forgave someone, something will re-spark the grudge.
Fr. Z said:
“Let us pray daily that we will not die without the solace and strengthening of the sacraments and an opportunity to make peace with our neighbor”
The DAILY Sacrifice confected by our priests and me assisting at the Traditional Latin Mass in the little Chapel of our Catholic grade school helps with this and helps me as a Catholic mother everyday and especially on Sundays at dinner…
THE
ROAST BEEF
HOUR
Cloth of cream
China plate
Crystal vases
Decorate.
Blossoms orange
Mums of yellow
Autumn eve
A Sunday mellow.
Sterling silver
Piney vapor
Scents the air
From brass held taper.
Dad and mom
Sipping wine
Roasting beef
Upon we’ll dine.
Chilly children
Crunch on leaves
Runny noses
Wiped on sleeves.
Whipped potatoes
In glass bowl
Salad broccoli
Dinner roll.
Children sit
Carving begins
Under the table
They kick their shins.
Dinner music,
Harpsichord
Say the grace
To thank Our Lord.
Acorn scented
Breezes tame
Swirl around
The candle flame.
Soon to yield
To winter’s power…
But we’ll stay warm
In the roast beef hour!
What a Coincidence! 17 Sunday after Pentecost that has the Reading above is also Today the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
How to make “peace” yet to keep said “neighbor” who is a force of pain and strife – truly a poison – out of ones life ?
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”
I ever there were a time that that line in the “Our Father” has caused me to struggle, it is now.
My “neighbor” is my sister, whom I had trusted deeply. She’s manipulated our parents’ estate to benefit her son, allowing him to live with his fiancee and her child by a previous relationship in our parents’ house (partially mine), which grieves me, but no matter to Sis, who’s executrix and is going to accommodate her son, period. She’s previously let them sleep together under her roof, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. (Yes, she receives the Eucharist.) They are now expecting a child together; I feel sorry for this baby and his/her half-sibling. (They’ve been engaged for 2+ years, no mention of a wedding, and if they do marry, it won’t be in the Church; they’re lefty/atheist/agnostic “science over all else” types.) She’s also allowing them (both healthy, well-educated and employed) to live in our parents’ house almost rent-free while having repairs paid out of the dwindling cash my parents left behind.
Meanwhile, I’m the most vulnerable of three siblings, have no husband, no children, am struggling financially and facing a possible layoff in this terrible economy, yet she will not manage and settle the estate properly, choosing to enable her son. I don’t have the money to take this to court, either. There is so much more that I won’t share publicly, except to say I am in extreme despair; the uncertainty of my future, and no longer having any family to trust, are causing anxiety that frequently brings me to tears.
I was going to go to confession next weekend for the first time in a while, but I’m so upset – this situation just keeps going on – that I don’t think I can go now. The best I can do with regards to forgiveness is wish her peace and walk away permanently from our relationship – I simply will never trust her again nor feel the same way I had about her – but I don’t know if that’s going to be enough for God’s mercy when my judgement comes.
Dear Sicilian Woman: Oh, I’m so sorry for you! But don’t let your sister rob you of your relationship with God! Please go to confession and open your heart to Christ. You are being wronged and you have the right to be upset.
I will certainly pray for you. Saint Ives, the advocate of the poor, will have a lot to do now!
Unfinished business can be something good as well, can it not?
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/goodbye-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html
Supertradmum: God speed! We will miss you on here.
Dear Supertradmum,
Good luck in trying you vocation. I can’t find the announcement on you site, but I read about it in the comments. Having been a blogger gives you the responsibility from time-to-time to remember Catholic bloggers in your prayers as we must keep you in ours. Hopefully, your son will keep us updated.
The Chicken
Dear Sacilian Woman,
It is probably true that you will have resentment for a long time and it doesn’t get any easier over the years. Do not let this stop you from going to confession, I beg you. It is damn near impossible to forgive in some situations and the more personally the situation is aimed at us, the harder it is, but God does not ask the impossible. Forgiveness is a decision, the emotions be damned. God does not require you not to be in anguish. That would be inhuman, but that anguish you can offer up to him for your sister’s conversion. It worked for St. Monica. What he only requires is the disposition, should the occasion arise, to do whatever is a good for your sister, no matter how much it tears you up because of past hurts. Find a good and consistent confessor. In these situations, most confessors will understand that you have a hard road ahead and try to help you, little by little. Some types of anger are just, after all. Only disproportionate malicious anger is sinful.
As for trust, trust in God. All others will fail. If at all possible, find some good Catholic friends who can act as release valves when things become too much. God never leaves someone in anguish to bear it, alone. We will pray.
The Chicken
Dear VexillaRegis and Masked Chicken,
Thank you both for your prayers and guidance. I’ve had my struggles in the past, but nothing beats these current dark days, and I expect many darker ones to come. I’m painfully shy and hate asking anyone for their time, especially our acting pastor (and lone priest) who most certainly has his hands full, but I’m going to try to get the nerve up to ask to meet him for some counseling.
Thank you both again. I’ll pray for you both as well.
Dear Sicilian Woman: I will ask all WDTPRS’ers to pray for you at YOUR URGENT PRAYER REQUESTS! [Good. Because that is where this belongs.]
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