WDTPRS – 7th Sunday after Pentecost: God can neither deceive nor be deceived

In the traditional Roman calendar this Sunday is the 7th Sunday after Pentecost.

Today’s Collect survived the cutting and pasting experts of the Consilium to live on as the Collect for the 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

COLLECT (1962MR):

Deus, cuius providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur
te supplices exoramus,
ut noxia cuncta submoveas,
et omnia nobis profutura concedas.

Note the use of the trop homoioteleuton (same ending in corresponding elements) in submoveas and concedas.  The last two clauses, cola, both have preposition prefixes and the structure is the same.

Blaise/Chirat (a dictionary of Latin in French) indicates that dispositio is “disposition providentialle”. It has to do God’s plan for salvation. Fallo is an interesting word. It means basically, “to deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, disappoint” and it has as synonyms “decipio, impono, frustror, circumvenio, emungo, fraudo”. Fallo is used to indicate things like simply being mistaken or being deceived. It can apply to making a mistake because something eluded your notice or it was simply unknown. In our Latin conversation it is not uncommon to say nisi fallor, “unless I am mistaken…”. If you look for submoveo you may have to check under summoveo. Find profutura under prosum. Don’t confuse noxia with noxa.

SUPER LITERAL WDTPRS VERSION:

God, whose providence is not circumvented in its plan,
humbly we implore You,
that You clear away every harmful thing
and grant us all things beneficial.

There is no getting around or circumventing God’s plan.

Why, given who God is and who we are, would we want to try?

But we do, don’t we.

We have to make a choice about which way to go with noxia.  Does it mean “harmful things” that are outside us or that are within us, that is, our own sins, our faults?  Both?

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973 9th Sunday Ordinary Time):

Father, your love never fails. Hear our call. Keep us from danger and provide for all our needs.

ROFL! Quite simply dreadful.  This may be one of the worst I have ever seen.  But we NEVER have to HEAR IT AGAIN.

CURRENT ICEL (2011  9th Sunday Ordinary Time):

O God, whose providence never fails in its design, keep from us, we humbly beseech you, all that might harm us and grant all that works for our good.

We have to make a choice about which way to go with noxia.  Does it mean “harmful things” that are outside us or that are within us, that is, our own sins, our faults?  Both?
God knows who we are and what we need far better than we can ever know ourselves.

The petition of this Collect closely corresponds to the final petitions of the Our Father: et ne nos inducas in tentationem; sed libera nos a malo, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The expression noxia cuncta, “all harmful things,” embraces both tentationes, temptations, and mala, evils. This correspondence is entirely fitting, since the Our Father, the most perfect of all prayers, provides the fundamental pattern for the Church’s official prayer.

The opening clause establishes the horizon for everything which follows. Divine providence does not miscalculate. God does not discover unforeseen obstacles, revise His eternal wisdom, or lose control of the field. Dispositio is an arrangement, the structure of a discourse, and also the drawing up of forces for battle. Through the Logos, the Word who is divine reason and perfect discourse, all things were made and ordered. We were called into existence in a time, place, state, and network of duties. The circumstances in which fidelity must bear fruit are encompassed within providence.

Foreseeing all our sins and many faults, all that we say and do is embraced in His eternal plan.

He has disposed all things so as to make glorious things result from the evils for which we alone are responsible.

Sometimes, moreover, it is hard to understand that God actually cares are us.  Given how immeasurably vast God is and how small we are, it is easy for some, mired in earthly distractions, to lapse into sort of deism and imagine a God who created everything and then, like a clock maker, just set the pendulum to swing and stepped away.

There is an old adage that, if you want to know if God is interested in you, just make a plan.

It is good for us each day never to forget to make an Act of Faith, which is a good Trinitarian prayer.

O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I believe that Thy Divine Son became Man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.