WDTPRS: Pentecost Tuesday – the protection of our hearts

According to the older, traditional Roman calendar, today is Tuesday in the Octave of Pentecost.

The octave of Pentecost was lamentably killed off by the cutters and snippers of the Consilium in the post-Conciliar reform of the Roman liturgy.

And Paul VI wept.  HERE

On this day is the traditional “Dancing Procession” in Echternach, Luxembourg, founded by St. Willibrord.   As bands play, the people move forward slowly in lines, holding white handkerchiefs.  They “dance” with little kicks to the left and right and thus make slow progress.

The Collect for Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form is a bit more solemn than the procession.

COLLECT (1962MR):

Adsit nobis, quaesumus, Domine, virtus Spiritus Sancti: quae et corda nostra clementer expurget, et ab omnibus tueatur adversis.

This prayer struck me as having an ancient pedigree.  Thus, I opened my copy of the critical edition of the Liber sacramentorum Gellonensis, and scanned the index of incipits.   There were very many prayers which begin with the “comic/legal” imperative adesto, from the same verb adsum, but very few with adsit.

Sure enough, I found today’s prayer in the days after Pentecost: CXLVIIII FER III. AD SCA ANASTASIAM.  Today.  The Roman Station today is at St. Anastasia.   Thus, this is an ancient Roman oration.

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That verb adsum means “to be present”.  When ordinands are called by name… the technically precise moment of a man’s “vocation” or “calling”… he responds “Adsum … I am present”.   The form here is in the subjunctive, and it functions as a mild imperative.  Along the way it looks as if we have a characteristic result clause, which needs the subjunctive as well.  Note the et…et… construction, to say “both…and…”.  There is a nice stylish division of omnibus… adversis, giving us an elegant rhythm.  I also like the assonance in the first two lines with “u”.

LITERAL VERSION:

May there be present to us, O Lord, we beseech You, the power of the Holy Spirit: with the result that it both mercifully cleanses our hearts, and protects (them) from every adverse thing.

When we are baptized the Holy Spirit begins to inhabit our hearts, abiding with us, remaining in us in a habitual manner.  The Holy Spirit imparts the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity together with the fruits and gifts.  The Holy Spirit abiding in us gives us sanctifying grace, the grace we call “habitual” grace.  There are also “actual” graces, given for this or that purpose.

By our baptism we are justified before God and also sanctified.

We can lose the state of grace, sanctifying grace.

Usually this happens when our choice to love some created thing moves us to act out of accord with God’s law and in disharmony with the image of God in us and in others.  We in effect drive the Holy Spirit from us.  Indeed, since all the Persons of the Trinity act together, we push the God, Three and One, from our souls.

Through actual graces God urges us to be reconciled.

The way in which God Himself desires that we be reconciled is by means of the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation through the ministry of the Church He instituted.  Before His Ascension, Christ breathed His SPIRIT on the Apostles and gave them His own power and authority to forgive sins.

This is the way Christ wants us to seek forgiveness: otherwise He would not have given us this sacrament.

In the Collect, we ask God to cleanse from our hearts anything that would be an obstacle to the indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity.  Then we beg that the power of the Holy Spirit protect our hearts from anything which might be bad for us.  This need not be merely the aggressive attacks of the Enemy of the soul.  It might also be our own disordered passions and appetites which, fixing on some created thing, begins to love it or use it in a disordered way, placing that created thing in the place God alone should be entitled to possess.

The bottom line: The way to salvation has been opened to us.  We can lose that way by our choices.  We must never supplant God from His rightful place in our souls by choosing to enthrone there any creature… person, thing or state.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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

  1. benedetta says:

    I wonder sometimes whether the inability to comprehend and welcome meaningfully the Holy Spirit is a bit of a classically American 21st century heresy at work. It’s a less obvious one than others but still quite damaging. We can become so hardened in our mission that we must have what we feel we must have for ourselves that we lose the ability to identify, much less welcome into our relationships the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I daresay that if I were running a Catholic school or community in these times I would feel that to equip my charges with the ability to locate the fruits of the Holy Spirit and put them into practice with one’s peers for whom one is a brother’s keeper to be a much more essential work given the times we are living in than even memorization of catechism, celebrating certain rite, etc., participating in political or polemic debates. These are all essential, however, if we do these at the cost of personal holiness then no matter our “results” on any of these it just is not going to be strong enough for individual or community resistance of what is happening I’m afraid. The Holy Spirit obviously is strong enough, and stronger. A pity that some cannot see Him.

  2. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    For some more Echternach, here is a documentary, “Le Ville des Saints dansants”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzrdqT0MMH8

    I don’t speak French and I also can’t tell how much Letzeburgesch (or even Cardinal Maradiaga’s [!] German) I might be able to puzzle out because of the French voice-over, but I skimmed through this and the bits I found worth watching were the first minute, from seven minutes for a while, from 16:50 for a while, from 27:30 for a while, and from 45:35 to the end.

  3. Tony Phillips says:

    I find that story about Paul VI weeping hard to swallow. Really, it’s pure hear-say, isn’t it? And this is the man who was directly responsible for the near-destruction of the calendar and the liturgy (=’the work of the people‘), the apotheosis of monarchical papalism. There have been plenty of terrible popes through history, but no one else ever dared to do anything like that before.

    What I’m trying to say is: maybe it was just his allergies.

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