WDTPRS – 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Grace before us, grace behind us

This dense Collect for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost survived the scissors and paste-pots of the Consilium during the 1960s and lived on in the post-Conciliar Missale Romanum as the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

This prayer, used for centuries, is found in the Hadrianum (No. 966), the form of the Gregorian Sacramentary sent by Pope Hadrian I to Charlemagne near the end of the 8th c.

COLLECT (1962MR):

Tua nos, quaesumus, Domine,
gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur,
ac bonis operibus iugiter praestet esse intentos.

Elegance.

This is a lovely prayer to sing. Latin’s flexibility, made possible by the inflection of the word endings, allows for amazing possibilities of word order. Latin permits rich variations in rhythm and conceptual nuances. For example, the wide separation of tua from gratia in the first line is a good example of the figure of speech called hyperbaton: unusual word order to produce a dramatic effect. It helps the prayer’s rhythm and emphasizes tua gratia. The use of conjunctions et and ac is very effective, as we shall see below.

The juxtaposition of praeveniat with sequatur reminds me of a prayer I used to hear at my home parish, greatly missed. The Tuesday night devotions there, which featured the Novena of Our Mother of Perpetual Help by St. Alphonsus Liguori (+1787), always included:

“May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you that He may defend you, within you that He may sustain you, before you that He may lead you, behind you that He may protect you, above you that He may bless you. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Let’s drill into vocabulary.

The adjective intentus means “stretched out,” “strained toward,” or “directed toward something.” Applied to the mind, it describes someone attentive, earnest, or intent upon a task. The action-packed Lewis & Short Dictionary states that intentus is also “to direct one’s thoughts or attention to.”

Looking at a word like this should convince any of you with children that they must study Latin. A firm grip on Latin will give shape to their ability to reason and provide insights into the meaning of our English words. An immense proportion of English vocabulary, especially in theology, law, medicine, and the sciences, comes directly or indirectly from Latin and Greek.

Give your children, and yourselves, this splendid tool.

The Collect uses et…et…ac. The paired et…et binds praeveniat and sequatur into a single movement: grace both precedes and follows us. The final ac then introduces the result toward which that encompassing grace is directed: our persevering attention to good works.  The change from et to ac gives the sentence a rhythmic and conceptual turn toward its culmination.

Let’s nitpick some more.

Our Collect has two adverbs, semper and iugiter. Semper is always “always”. Iugiter, however, means “always” in the sense of “continuously.” A iugum is a “yoke”, like that which yokes animals together. Iugum (English “juger”, a Roman unit for land measuring 28,800 square feet or 240 by 120 feet), is probably so named because it was plowed by yoked oxen. Moreover, Iugum was the name of the constellation Libra, the Latin for “scale, balance”. Ancient scales had a yoke-shaped bar. Thus, libra is also the Roman weight measure for “pound”. Ever wonder why the English abbreviation for plural pounds is “lbs”?

The iugum was the infamous ancient symbol of defeat. The Romans would force the vanquished to pass under a yoke to symbolize that they had been subjugated. Variously, iugum also means a connection between mountains or the beam of a weaver’s loom or even the marriage bond.

Today’s adverb iugiter means “always”, in the continuous sense, because of the concept of yoking things together, bridging them, one after another in an unending chain. We get this same word in the famous prayer written by St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) used at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which is the Collect for Corpus Christi:

“O God, who bequeathed to us a memorial of Thy Passion under a wondrous sacrament, grant, we implore, that we may venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, in such a way as to sense within us constantly (iugiter) the fruit of Thy redemption.”

LITERAL WDTPRS TRANSLATION:

We beg, O Lord,
that Your grace may always both go before us and follow after,
and continuously grant us to be intent on good works.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Lord,
our help and guide,
make your love the foundation of our lives.
May our love for you express itself
in our eagerness to do good for others.

Yes… I did a double-take too.  It is a nice little prayer for use on a grade school playground.

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.

Back to happier things: copulative particles!

It is important not to get overly picky about particles or exaggerate their nuances. Still, today these conjunctions could be important. That et…et is a classic “both…and” construction. But our Collect has et…et…ac…. The et…et joins praeveniat and sequatur. That pair of verbs is followed by an ac. The author was providing more than simply a change of pace. While ac is not a very strong conjunction, the variation leads to a logical climax of ideas. 

As you read or, better yet, listen to the prayer being sung, attend to that tua gratia (“your grace”), underscored by means of hyperbaton. First, that “tua gratia” can be an ancient form of honorific address, as used today in some countries for nobility and certain prelates: “Your Grace”. So, in speaking of the gift, we speak of God Himself. Moreover, tua gratia is the subject of all the verbs. We beg God, by His grace, always to be both before us and behind us. We pray for this in order that we may always be attentive to good works. Our good works are bound up in His grace.

Also, we can’t see that word praeveniat in relation to God’s assistance and not think also of prevenient grace, or preceding grace. 

St. Ambrose and then St. Augustine posited, and this was confirmed by the Second Council of Orange (529), that, before we believe, before we answer a calling, God gives us the grace which helps us to believe, helps us to answer.

Prevenient grace aids a preparation of the will to respond.  One way of putting it is that it frees up our free will.   In the case of those who have fallen out of grace through mortal sin, prevenient grace disposes us to turn back to God and to assent freely to God’s call.   In the CCC 2670 we read:

“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Every time we begin to pray to Jesus it is the Holy Spirit who draws us on the way of prayer by his prevenient grace. Since he teaches us to pray by recalling Christ, how could we not pray to the Spirit too? That is why the Church invites us to call upon the Holy Spirit every day, especially at the beginning and the end of every important action.

We rely on grace so as not to fail in the vocations God entrusts to us.

God gives all of us something to do in this life.

If we attend to our work with devotion He will give us every actual grace we need to accomplish our tasks. He knew us and our vocations from before the creation of the cosmos, and thus will help us to complete our part of His plan, so long as we cooperate. Living and acting in the state of grace, faithfully fulfilling our vocations, we can, through Christ and because of His merits, merit the increase of grace and the eternal life God has promised to His children.

In our prayer we recognize that all good initiatives come from God. When we embrace them and cooperate, it is He who ultimately brings them to completion. He goes before. He follows after. Our good works have merit for heaven only because God inspires them, informs them, and brings them to a good completion. He works through us, His knowing, willing, loving servants. The good deeds are truly ours, of course, and therefore the reward for them is ours. Through Christ’s merits God gives us grace, and by that grace our freely performed good works become truly meritorious.

Today’s Collect stresses how important our good works are for our salvation. They are manifestations of God’s grace, indeed, of God’s presence.

Today’s Epistle supplies an excellent scriptural expansion of the Collect. Ephesians 3:13–21 gives us the interior meaning of this encompassing grace. St. Paul bends his knees before the Father and asks that the faithful be strengthened by the Holy Ghost “in the inward man,” so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith. The grace which goes before and follows after also works within. It establishes the soul in charity and enables works whose supernatural measure surpasses our natural strength.
Today’s Gospel, shows Christ healing the man with dropsy and rebuking the struggle for places of honor. Luke 14:1–11 provides the concrete good works toward which grace directs us:

In the Gospel, Christ heals the man with dropsy while the lawyers and Pharisees watch in silence. He then warns those who grasp after the highest places. Grace makes us bonis operibus intentos by drawing us away from self-display and toward the needs of another. The Pharisees are intent upon precedence and accusation. Christ is intent upon healing. Grace reorders both our attention and our ambition.

We pray God will lavish His graces on us. In turn, we should be generous with our good works.