In these final days of Advent preparation, the Church prays with great intensity. It is one of the "greater feria" of Advent, the home stretch, as it were.
Here is today’s
COLLECT (2002MR):
Concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus,
ut, qui sub peccati iugo ex vetusta servitute deprimimur,
expectata Unigeniti tui nova nativitate liberemur.
This was in the 1962MR on Ember Saturday of Advent. It was before that in the Veronese, Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries. These advent prayers often refer to the "state of oldness", which pertains to the "old man" afflicted by the sin of our First Parents.
LITERAL VERSION:
Grant, we beseech You, Almighty God,
that we who are oppressed under the yoke of sin from the servitude of the old man,
may be freed bu the long awaited new Nativity of Your Only-Begotten.
A PROPOSED (DRAFT) VERSION:
Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that, weighed down by ancient slavery
beneath the yoke of sin,
we may be set free by the long-awaited new birth
of your Only-begotten Son.
As I log in, just in time for use at Sext today. The lame duck ICEL version I heard in church at morning prayer and Mass this morning:
All-powerful God,
renew us by the coming feast of your Son
and free us from our slavery to sin.
Which for ICEL 1973 is notable in at least two ways. The s-word appears explicitly — I don’t mean “slavery”– and the single sentence of a Latin collect is not chopped into two English sentences.
Plus, notice Henry, the over-used “love” does not appear!
Right, Mila, I missed entirely the most prominent single exception to the general ICEL rule.
In fact, the ICEL translations in these last days of Advent aren’t too bad compared to the rest of the year.
On Tuesday morning I prayed the following oration at Officium Lectionis:
“Deus, qui novam creaturam per Unigenitum tuum nos esse fecisti, in opera misericordiae tuae propitius intuere, et in adventu Filii tui ab omnibus nos maculis vetustatis emunda. Per Dominum.”
I nearly howled that night when praying Vespers in English with my wife when I read in the Mundalein Psalter:
“O God, through your only-begotten Son you made a new creation. Look down on what your loving kindness has accomplished and cleanse us from all stain by the coming of your Son. Through…”
I howled not because it was so bad, but because it was so *close*. It could have nearly been perfect if they had just added the word “us” before “new creation”! Usually when I read these collects, I see no relation to what I had read in the morning in Latin, but this time that unique Latin phraseology came rushing back while reading the English. It actually reminded me of the Latin! (That almost never happens.)
Today, I googled it and found a version at Universalis that had the “us”. Maybe it was just a misprint in our Psalter: http://www.universalis.com/20081216/readings.htm
I also see today that they had failed to translate Fr. Z.’s favored word “vetustas”.
My slightly tweaked ICEL version: “O God, through your only-begotten Son you made [us be] a new creation. Look down on what your loving kindness has accomplished and cleanse us from all stain [of old age] by the coming of your Son. Through…”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church encourages regular Confession but says that Catholics are only required to confess once a year.
In my own life I have found that so-called regular Confession, whether motivated by a delicate conscience, or by our frail human nature, is a special gift from God, just as regular reception of the sacrament of Holy Communion is a gift from God.
Naturally, some may be scrupulous, and undoubtedly, these types can be problematic. However, “regular Confession” doesn’t specify, since this is left to the individual. So personally, notwithstanding the opinion of the good bishop, I would advise “frequent confession” as needed.
The whole prayer seems to play off two senses of “Savior” (salus/soter): a) liberator, b) healer. The latter is the very Name of “Jesus”.
The “new nativity” of the last line aligns with the “oldness” of the second, which is an “aging” brought on by our “servitude”, healed by the “re-creation” of human nature in Christ, while resonating with an oft-repeated couplet from St. Augustine (certainly others as well?) about the two nativities of the Son of God, the one before all ages from the Father (without a divine “mother”), the other on “this day” (i.e., Christmas) from His Mother, the Virgin Mary (without a human father).
Very “traditional” indeed!