From Twitter….
Oratio quadragesimalis diversas formas sumere potest, sed quod vere ante oculos Domini valet, illud est ut illa in nobis fodat, ad duritiam cordis nostri scarificandam perveniens ut id ad Ipsum convertat.
— Papa Franciscus (@Pontifex_ln) March 9, 2020
“HA HA! Typo!”, you might be saying. “Don’t they know it’s sacrificandam not scarificandam?”
Nope. There is actually a Latin verb scarifico, meaning, “to scratch open, scarify”. To “scarify” in English means to cut and scratch off debris, as in a medical procedure.
Now about that fodat…. Oooops. You mean fodiat, right? Fodio… doh!
Really, it’s a bit of a clunky mess (“illud est ut illa“? Who talks like that?), but you get the drift.
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I was speaking to the gardener only this morning about scarifying the lawn, which indeed is done with a tool with spikes that ‘fodiant’ the soil. A jolly prayer, showing that the natural world and the spiritual life go hand in hand, and deserve the same care and similar treatment. As Father Z says, perhaps it has something rustic of the gardener in the syntax. But then one doubts that Cicero was much good with a hoe!
And as Our Lord reminds us about pruning plants bringing forth abundant fruit, so – dig deep! scratch hard!
God bless our Pope!
Maybe Cicero wasn’t good with a hoe, but Cato certainly was.
Leaving Latin style aside — I’m sure mine is dreadful — but I tend to give online Latin typos a pardon. Whenever I type something in Latin, spellcheck goes on an absolute Roman holiday of correcting. I have to be so careful to proofread every last letter. And even when I’ve corrected the correction, I swear spellcheck waits until my back is turned and goes at it again.
At least Pope Francis is trying!
[He certainly is trying.]