A great new feature of the 2002 Missale Romanum in Latin is that for Lent the "Prayer over the people" or Oratio super populum has been revived as an option.
Priests can use this prayer NOW at the end of Mass, but still only in the Latin.
Let’s have a look at today’s:
ORATIO SUPER POPULUM (2002MR):
Da, quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo
salutem mentis et corporis,
ut, bonis operibus inhaerendo,
tua semper mereatur protectione defendi.
This seems to have been a Prayer over the people in a number of ancient sacramentaries including the Liber sacramentorum Gellonensis, for this very day, Friday of the 2nd Week of Lent, Station, San Vitale.
Yesterday we also heard about protectio in the Prayer over the people.
SLAVISHLY LITERAL VERSION:
Grant, we implore, O Lord, to Your people
health of mind and body,
so that, by sticking to good works,
it (we) may always merit to be defended by Your protection.
We are not angels. We are both soul and body. We are not merely souls riding in meat machines.
We are our bodies and we are our souls together.
When they separate, we die.
But so mighty is the bond of body and soul that they will be reunited in the resurrection to experience, together, whatever fate we will have merited by our judgment: eternal bliss in the presence of God… eternal torment in His exclusion.
I always think of the magnificent rendering of the resurrection by Luca Signorelli in Orvieto, wherein perfect 33 year olds are drawing themselves up out of a white featureless plain of prime matter, soul informing matter once more.
In this vale of tears we need to see to both body and soul.
Because we are both body and soul, we dispose ourselves to receive Communion with our body (by fasting) and penance (absolution).
By Christ’s twofold command of love of God and neighbor (who have bodies) we must attend, for example, to works of mercy, spiritual and corporal.
Good works are the other side of the coin of faith that wins us entrance to heaven.
We do not "work" our way into heaven, as the less than enlightened protestant might claim.
We believe that our works are necessary, but that they are not merely ours. They are truly ours, but not merely ours.
Christ begins all good initiatives in us. He places our work before us. He makes our hands strong enough for it. He helps bring good work to completion. In our good works, He is at work. His hands cover our hands as we work, guiding them, strengthening them
So we ask for the protection, "covering" protectio, of God’s grace not just from the world, the flesh and the devil, but also in this sense: to keep from us whatever will prevent us from doing His will for us in our particular vocations and to guide us surely in right actions.
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Gratias sapientiae et bibliothecae RP Moderatoris agamus. Facilis instrumenta exegetis Bibliae emere aut invenire est. Sed, exempli gratia, “Liber sacramentorum” apud “Alibris” carus et rarus est. Sapientia sine pretio manet.
Salutationes omnibus.
Haec instrumenta theologicas apud bibliotechas aliquas inveniuntur, adhibentur. Ars longa.
There is a poem about this painter, Fr. Z, by Jorie Graham, “On Luca Signorelli’s Resurrection of the Dead” that is quite good. Much of her stuff is a bit autistic, in my view, but this poem is amazing. It gives you a sense of the mystery of the soul after it departs the body in death.
Mike: There is a poem about this painter, Fr. Z, by Jorie Graham, “On Luca Signorelli’s Resurrection of the Dead”
As Jack Aubrey might say, “You astonish me! The things you tell me, Michael.”
And Killick would mutter, “Which you can google it any time, it being know by its title.”
Even Killick, however, would have trouble finding that poem on Google. It’s from her first collection, “Erosion”, and as far as I know, not on the web.
I should type it into my literature blog, but first I will check w. my attorney-librarian friend about copyright.
It’s on the web, from her SECOND book of poetry:
At Luca Signorelli’s Resurrection of the Body
by Jorie Graham
See how they hurry
to enter
their bodies,
these spirits.
Is it better, flesh,
that they
should hurry so?
From above
the green-winged angels
blare down
trumpets and light. But
they don’t care,
they hurry to congregate,
they hurry
into speech, until
it’s a marketplace,
it is humanity. But still
we wonder
in the chancel
of the dark cathedral,
is it better, back?
The artist
has tried to make it so: each tendon
they press
to re-enter
is perfect. But is it
perfection
they’re after,
pulling themselves up
through the soil
into the weightedness, the color,
into the eye
of the painter? Outside
it is 1500,
all round the cathedral
streets hurry to open
through the wild
silver grasses…
The men and women
on the cathedral wall
do not know how,
having come this far,
to stop their
hurrying. They amble off
in groups, in
couples. Soon
some are clothed, there is
distance, there is
perspective. Standing below them
in the church
in Orvieto, how can we
tell them
to be stern and brazen
and slow,
that there is no
entrance,
only entering. They keep on
arriving,
wanting names,
wanting
happiness. In his studio
Luca Signorelli
in the name of God
and Science
and the believable
broke into the body
studying arrival.
But the wall
of the flesh
opens endlessly,
its vanishing point so deep
and receding
we have yet to find it,
to have it
stop us. So he cut
deeper,
graduating slowly
from the symbolic
to the beautiful. How far
is true?
When one son
died violently,
he had the body brought to him
and laid it
on the drawing-table,
and stood
at a certain distance
awaiting the best
possible light, the best depth
of day,
then with beauty and care
and technique
and judgment, cut into
shadow, cut
into bone and sinew and every
pocket
in which the cold light
pooled.
It took him days,
that deep
caress, cutting,
unfastening,
until his mind
could climb into
the open flesh and
mend itself.
From EROSION (Princeton University Press, 1983)
Gratias consultus RP Moderatoris ago.
Emendum et “Sac. Gelasianum” et “Sac. Leoninum” ~$60 sine pretio mittendi necessit. Etiam Google illos libros illustrissimos exhibet.
Salutationes omnibus.
Yes the green winged demons are on the opposite side of the chapel. An amazing piece indeed!
There are two flies in the ointment. Resurrection bodies do not emerge from prime matter, nor is prime matter a kind of independent “stuff.” St. Thomas weeps!