This 20th Sunday after Pentecost’s ancient Collect is found without variation in the Liber Sacramentorum Gellonensis, written perhaps in Meaux, near Paris, between 790-800. The Gellone Sacramentary, which has Frankish influences, is a strand in the complicated web of manuscripts descending from what we called the Gelasian Sacramentary, the source of so many of our ancient prayers found in the Roman Missal. The Gellone seems to have been an attempt at a complete book for liturgical services.
COLLECT (1962MR):
Largire, quaesumus, Domine, fidelibus tuis indulgentiam placatus et pacem: ut pariter ab omnibus mundentur offensis, et secura tibi mente deserviant.
The pattern indulgentiam [X] et pacem reminds me of the post-Conciliar formula for absolution of sins spoken by the priest in regular auricular confession: Deus, Pater misericoridiarum… indulgentiam tribuat et pacem. I found the same pattern in ancient prayers with various verbs inserted in the X spot, such as tribuas and also consequatur as well as largiatur or largiaris.
Our prayers very often include requests for pardon, that God forgive our sins. We ask for absolutio, remissio, indulgentia (technical terms for different ways of being unbound and reconciled) and in liturgical language we use verbs like largiri, tribuere, conferre, and as the priest speaks to God, he describes Him in terms of propitius, propitiatus, and placatus.
Largire looks like an infinitive but is really an imperative form of the deponent largior, “to give bountifully, to lavish, bestow, dispense, distribute, impart… to confer, bestow, grant, yield”.
The adjective securus, –a, –um, which the mighty Lewis & Short Dictionary says means first and foremost “free from care, careless, unconcerned, untroubled, fearless, quiet, easy, composed” is understandably found in conjunction with the Last Judgment. We wish to be “free from anxiety” when see the Just Judge coming. Think of the line in the great sequence Dies irae used during Requiem Masses… coming up in a couple weeks:
“Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? Quem patronum rogaturus? Cum vix iustus sit securus. … What am I, a wretch, to say then? what patron am I to beseech? When the just man is scarcely free from care [about his salvation – ]”.
Remember also from the Ordinary of the Mass after the Lord’s Prayer (my emphases):
Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ab omnibus malis, da propitius pacem in diebus nostris, ut, ope misericordiae tuae adiuti, et a peccato simus semper liberi et ab omni perturbatione securi: exspectantes beatam spem et adventum Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi…
Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Placo is “to appease, render favorable”, and is also connected with gifts (munera, dona) or sacrifice (immolatio). Deservio is not simply “to serve”, but “to serve zealously, be devoted to, subject to”. This takes a dative “object”. Par, paris, n., means “a pair”, which logically gives us the adverb pariter, “equally, in an equal degree, in like manner, as well”.
In the first place, indulgentia indicates an attitude: “indulgence, gentleness, complaisance, tenderness, fondness”, and then what flows from that attitude, namely, “a remission” of something like punishment or taxation. In the French language dictionary of liturgical Latin, we find the same idea, an attitude which brings a result: “abandon de sa sévérité”, or “a giving up of severity”.
It doesn’t take much thought to see why “security”, in the sense of being without anxiety, and “peace” are closely tied to God’s forgiveness, His indulgence.
If God were to judge us truly according to our own fruits, and not mercifully see us through the merits of Christ’s Sacrifice, life would become unbearable and each day would bring us closer to unspeakable terror as we awaited either death or Christ’s return.
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
Having been appeased, impart to Your faithful, O Lord, we beseech You, remission and peace: so that in an equal measure they may be cleansed from all sins, and may zealously serve You with a mind free from anxiety.
It is nice to look at old translations from old hand missals on occasion, just to see something smoother, language that doesn’t stick slavishly to the text. Here is a version prepared by J. O’Connell and H.P.R. Finberg, the editors of …
The Latin Missal In Latin and English (1957):
Relent, Lord, we pray thee, and grant thy faithful pardon and peace, so that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind.
I like that “with a quiet mind”.
What a grace it is to live with a mind and conscience quiet about the course of our lives and our coming judgment.
Isn’t it true that when you are aware of your unconfessed sins, or when you – through your fault – are out of step or in conflict with others that your mind is not quiet?
Quiet is a hallmark of the holy.
Even the ringing, thunderous song of HOLY HOLY HOLY before the throne of God in heaven is quiet, because it is in perfect accord.
Hell and sin are discordant. When Hell and sin are in us, we are out of harmony, disquieted. God’s grace in the sacrament of penance washes out our disrupting sins and pours calming sweet balm on our minds and hearts. We need quiet, outside as well as inside. Put aside the noise makers, sins of course, but also clattering screens and caterwauling distractions.
Maybe you have done a wave experiment in a physics class using a table full of water, set to vibrate at different rates and from different directions. When the waves, crossing each other, are in sync and harmony, it looks as if they are standing still in perfect patterns. The more they get out of harmony with each other, the greater the chaos on the surface of the water.
Remember too that in the spaces between sensible signs is where God is to be found. That is one of the reasons why the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite is so helpful. It has elements such as silence which are now so hard for modern people. We have to grow out of the noise and distraction and into the still and the quiet.
And speaking of “silence”…
Robert Card Sarah’s The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Must have!
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“with a quiet mind”
Stuck out to me today. I like it too.
I haven’t yet completed a full year attending the TLM so I relish these phrases and words you point out because I’m seeing them first hand.
Dear Fr. Z,
Your thought-provoking comment that “even the ringing, thunderous song of HOLY HOLY HOLY before the throne of God in heaven is quiet, because it is in perfect accord. Hell and sin are discordant. When Hell and sin are in us, we are out of harmony, disquieted” is also said poetically in Milton’s ode “At a solemn Musick” (in its second half):
“That we on earth, with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise [Holy Holy Holy];
As once we did, till disproportion’d sin
Jarr’d against nature’s chime and with harsh din
Broke the fair musick that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with heaven, till God ere long
To His celestial concert us unite,
To live with Him, and sing in endless morn of light!”
It might be my musician’s bias :), but it seems to me that keeping in tune with heaven is another way of saying what you are saying about a quiet mind.
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry gave Milton’s ode an incomparable musical setting in his “Blest pair of Sirens”. A fine recording is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh4H8xXHKMA
Best wishes for your Roman sojourn, David
“The pattern indulgentiam [X] et pacem reminds me of the post-Conciliar formula for absolution of sins spoken by the priest in regular auricular confession: Deus, Pater misericoridiarum… indulgentiam tribuat et pacem. I found the same pattern in ancient prayers with various verbs inserted in the X spot, such as tribuas and also consequatur as well as largiatur or largiaris.”
It seems to me that the devil ruined the Liturgical Movement with the “Spirit of V2” the same way he ruined the Renaissance with the “Reformation.”
All of this incredible antiquarian work, which could have greatly enriched our lives, was driven out by a whole horde of barbaric, diabolical nonsense.
Speaking of antiquarian scholarship, I once had a Latin professor, a real character and caricature of a Classicist, who insisted that the so-called “deponent” was actually a remnant of the “middle voice” which still existed in Ancient Greek.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/middle_voice
While some of the deponent verbs have doubtless lost this original signification and become “chrystalized,” as it were, I have often found this point of philology helpful for distinguishing the depth of meaning for words which have non-deponent synonyms.
[Your comments here and elsewhere have been splendid. Thank you.]
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