From a reader…
Hello Father — your St. Expeditus piece delighted me: the saint hidden inside the Collect’s own word, ‘expediti’ — unencumbered, freed for God’s work — with his HODIE cross raised over the crow still croaking ‘cras.’ Few explain him so well, or so wittily. I’m a lifelong devotee and I’ve built a small free online shrine in his honor — https://saintexpediteblessings.org (prayers, novena, petition wall — a real candle lit for every petition — testimonies, virtual chapel; all free, nothing sold). I only wanted you to know it exists. One question: besides social media, how would you suggest getting the word out about a site like this? I’d value your advice. Hodie!
Thanks for letting my know about this.
There is something personally compelling about this saint. I’m not sure exactly what it is. Maybe I’ll think about it tomorrow.
Anyway, I think what the sender was referencing was something I posted at One Peter Five for which I write a weekly commentary on the upcoming Vetus Ordo Sunday Masses. In this case it was for the 19th Sunday of Pentecost in early October, just after I got to Rome for my rapidly dissipating sojourn. The Collect for that Sunday had the word expediti, which always makes me think of St. Expeditus. This is some of what I wrote:
The Collect [19th Sunday] is eloquent and dense:
Omnipotens et misericors Deus,
universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude:
ut mente et corpore pariter expediti,
quae tua sunt, liberis mentibus exsequamur.
Do you see those “ex-”s along the way?
LITERAL VERSION
Almighty and merciful God,
graciously shut out all things that oppose us,
so that, equally unencumbered in mind and body,
we may carry out with free minds the things that are Yours.
The Church asks for freedom because there is something to be done. The oration addresses both mind and body, since both are involved in our obedience. There is an ascending progress in those exclude… expediti… exsequamur. Exclude (“put out”) remove what opposes us is the first step. The next step is in expediti, that is, an eagerness to go after godly things (quae tua sunt). Finally, we fall into step with God’s will and follow Him in exsequamur.
Whenever this Collect comes around, I am reminded of the 4th c. martyr St. Expeditus, a Roman centurion. He is depicted in his soldier’s armor holding a martyr’s palm branch and raising high a sign with the Latin word HODIE, “today” while as his feet a black crow onomatopoetically croaks out CRAS “tomorrow”. Moreover, in Latin military terminology, the expediti were soldiers unencumbered by baggage and ready to move swiftly. That is the force of expediti in the Collect: freed from what hinders us, we are ready to carry out God’s will. That gives us an image for the Christian life, especially as the days of the liturgical year grow shorter. We must put off what holds us back and put on what aids us.
Pius Parsch observes in The Church’s Year of Grace that this Sunday opens a sequence concerned with Christian hope. Hope has its eyes on the destination. It keeps a man moving toward it. The Collect asks God to make us fit for the journey. Hence, we of the Church Militant have sins to confess, habits to amend, people to forgive, duties to perform, and so forth. A soldier who means to march forward cannot remain forever occupied with packing and unpacking his burdens.
Have you been to confession lately?
Hodie, non cras: today, rather than tomorrow. God gives us the present in which to respond in freedom to grace.
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