The other day I posted a video of the final Benediction after our Corpus Christi procession. A reader asked in a comment:
QUAERITUR:
Father why were the Divine Praises sung in Italian and not Latin?
I gave a very short answer, which, while accurate, prompts me add a little more for your benefit (even though I am sure you all are reading every single comment).
The Divine Praises, or Laudes Divinae, now so closely associated with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, began as a prayer of reparation.
Their author was Luigi Felici, S.J., born in 1736. Felici entered the Society of Jesus in 1756 and was ordained priest on 15 August 1773, the day before the suppression of the Society by Clement XIV of felicitous memory. Felici retained the apostolic spirit of the Jesuits (back when they had one) and, in 1790, founded the “Pia Unione di S. Paolo Apostolo”, a charitable association devoted to the sick, the infirm, prisoners, soldiers, and those in moral danger.
The immediate setting of the Divine Praises was Felici’s work among the sailors of the Ripa Grande in Rome, a big bend in the Tiber not too far from The Parish™. These men were often rough in speech, hostile to religion, and given to blasphemy. In response, in 1797 Felici composed a short Italian prayer, the “Lauda Divina”, beginning “Dio sia benedetto… Blessed be God.” It was intended as an act of praise and atonement whenever the Holy Name, the mysteries of the faith, or sacred persons were insulted by profane speech.
The prayer’s structure is simple and powerful: each sort of blasphemy is answered by a blessing. Against contempt for God, Christ, the Holy Name, the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Ghost, the Mother of God, and the saints, the Church places on the lips of the faithful a litany of praise. Over time, additional invocations were added, including references to the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph, and the Precious Blood.
Because Benediction culminates in adoration, that rite became their natural home. After the blessing with the monstrance, the faithful respond to the divine condescension with the solemn cry of reparation “Blessed be God.”
I know some Catholics, as I do myself, when they hear someone use the Holy Name in a blasphemous way, immediately respond “Praise His Holy Name!”
On another point, as I write this, I am thinking that in many places the “Just call me Bob” priests, perhaps with sundry head and/or attraction problems, do not have Eucharistic adoration at their parishes and, therefore, do not provide Benediction and the praying of the Divine Praises, which you know now were intended as reparation for blasphemies. Probably also 15 minutes a week for confessions, too, if that.
What a sad thing to consider: there may be, probably are some newly built churches in these USA which have never, since they were opened, rung with the faithful praying the Divine Praises.
If some of you out there have never been to Exposition and Benediction, handled in the traditional manner, I urge you to seek it and experience it.
ProfessorCover on ASK FATHER: Why did dioceses stop using the word, “the” before words like “priesthood”, “Eucharist, or “Church?: “It seems to me that the Church no longer speaks with precision, probably because it does not want to. (As…”
