As I posted before, Starbucks as a whole entity is backing contrary-to-nature sex and the perversion of marriage.
Decide whether or not you want to buy your coffee from Starbucks.
I suggest the alternative of buying Mystic Monk Coffee.
You help Carmelites to put food on the table and to build their monastery and I get a commission from the sales. Win – win.
Also, if you are out and around and want some coffee, start frequenting independent coffee shops.
From a clerical reader:
I was wondering about different editions of the same Liturgia Horarum; I want to get the most recent editio tipico (2000 not 1962) but which is the best edition?
I found two editions online but I cannot really find much as far as reviews on either one (OK, I found one on the more expensive version of MTF) MTF (http://www.theologicalforum.org/product.asp?ci=&pi=420)
LEV
(http://www.paxbook.com/algorithmiS/servusPrimus?iussum=monstraElenchumScriptorumEditorum&corpus=74)Based on the website the following comparisons can be made:
MTF if $450 while LEV is $302.
MTF is 6 volumes while LEV is 4 (which seem really big to be carrying around).
LEV does not currently have all volumes available (a priest friend here who has this edition told me that is probably just online).
MTF uses double columns, LEV uses single.
MTF is made by Americans, LEV by Italians (e siamo stati in Italia sufficente tempo per dire che versione durarà più).
MTF will sell a leather case for their version, while the priests I know with the LEV don’t seem to have one.So:
Do you or any of your readers have experience with either edition? Do other editions exist?
I cannot comment much about the Midwest Theological Forum edition because I have never seen it. Unlike other publishers who actually want to sell books, MTF has never sent me review copies of anything and, therefore, I never propose their books. That said, I like the two columns.
Concerning the Vatican Press editions. First, they are the official editions. Also, they are cheaper. Some LH volumes have had binding problems. In the years I used the Italian books, which are bound in the same way as the Latin, they, like the Latin, separated at the cover. I think they are case bound. Draw back to be sure.
In any event, I now say the older Office, the Breviarium Romanum. Baronius Press has put out a very nice three volume set which has Latin and English side by side. I recommend this for the cleric who wants to get into the Office in Latin, but who doesn’t have commanding skills in the language. Since Latin isn’t a problem for me, I am not using that set on a daily basis, but it is beautifully made.
I have a set of breviaries given to me by a priest friend in NJ, the two volume reprint of the Dessain edition. They are a bit thick. They just don’t make breviaries like they used to, do they! I have some old sets that are truly works of art. There are also a couple fantastic single volume editions of the older office, but, alas, they have the version of the psalms that I just can’t stomach. Too bad, since those books are wonderful.
I also use the online texts from divinumofficium, in particular when I am at my desk and also when I want to read the office and post the audio online for tired priests to use. I can also get that version on my iPhone.
Thus, I end my digression. Draw your own conclusion.
Remember the new, old altar in the chapel of the chancery of the Diocese of Madison?
That altar has now been dedicated and used, by the local bishop His Excellency Most Rev. Robert C. Morlino.
Some eye-candy.
Pontifical Low Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
WDTPRS kudos to the entire Diocese of Madison.
Today’s Collect (Ordinary Form) was not in the pre-Concilar Missale Romanum.
Deus, qui fragilitati nostrae congrua subsidia praeparasti,
concede, quaesumus, ut suae reparationis effectum
et cum exsultatione suscipiat,
et pia conversatione recenseat.
This had me scratching my head. Once I looked up all the references, I knew why. This prayer is a perfect example of a cut and paste job and it just doesn’t stick together well.
A predecessor is in the Gelasian Sacramentary: Concede, quaesumus, domine, fragilitate nostrae sufficientiam conpetentem, ut suae reparationis effectum et pia conuersatione recenseat et cum exultatione suscipiat: per. This collect is from two places in the Gelasian, Friday of the 3rd Week of Lent and Septuagesima.
The “et fragilitati nostrae congrua praeparasti subsidia” is in the Veronese in April and references to fragilitas and pia conversatio in a prayer in July.
Subsidium is, as we see so often during Lent, military language. It means, “the troops stationed in reserve in the third line of battle (behind the principes), the line of reserve, reserve-ranks, triarii“. Thus, it is “support, assistance, aid, help, protection, etc.”. A reparatio is “a restoration, renewal”. Recenseo is “to count, enumerate, number, reckon, survey” and “to go over in thought, in narration, or in critical treatment, to reckon up, recount, review, revise”. Blaise/Dumas says “recolere, rappeler, célèbrer le souvenir de…”. But there is in the entry no reference to our prayer, which I find puzzling.
Conversatio is a super-charged word in Christian literature, which has to do with “manner of life”, how one comports himself. This is often used in monastic literature. I now have also at my fingertips the helpful big dictionary of the indefatigable Albert Blaise, the Dictionnarie Latin-Francais des Auteurs Chrétiens reworked by Henri Chirat. This lexical tool is out of print, so I can’t suggest you buy it any time soon. Blaise/Chirat shows that Patristic sources handle conversatio in a moral sense of conversio as well as “genre de vie” or “way of life”.
Pius, in the mighty Lewis & Short is “honest, upright, honorable” and “benevolent, kind, gentle, gracious”. With respect to God it points to His mercy. In respect to man, in much Latin literature, it point to his interior and exterior response to duty, the exigencies he faces.
The suae refers back to something feminine, which leaves a single candidate, fragilitas nostra.
The problem with cutting and pasting a prayer together is that you don’t get much of a unified “vision” from it.
This is a good prayer, don’t get me wrong, but it is not in the same league as some of the ancient integral works we have seen, even having endured slight changes from The Redactors.
LITERAL TRANSLATION
O God, who readied suitable helps for our fragility,
grant, we beg, that it may both catch up
the effect of its own renewal in exultation,
and sum it up in upright conduct of life.
??
What on earth does this mean?
I think we need …
ANOTHER VERSION TO SPIN THIS OUT
O God, who prepared the helps proportional to our (sin induced) frailty,
grant, we beg You, that our (sin induced) frailty
may both take up in joy the effect of its own renewal
(that effect being the Passion and Resurrection)
and also critically express (our sin induced frailty) by means of a proper manner of living.
The “effect of our renewal” is the impact of the merits of Jesus’ Passion, Resurrection and subsequent Ascension to the right hand of the Father. The “congruent helps” are the mysteries of the Lord’s Death and Resurrection. These are our two hinges.
The sin of our First Parents opened a chasm between us and God which no mere human being (very limited) could bridge or repair. This reparation or renewal required a human being (because of justice) but no mere human was proportioned to the work of our salvation. So, from unfathomable love, God stepped into and over the chasm. In the fullness of time, the Second Person took our humanity into an indestructible bond with His divinity. Only the God/man could repair the rift. The Passion and Resurrection are the “congruent helps”, proportional to such an effect of reparation/renewal.
Realization of this must have a consequence for our lives. It must transform us. The effect, which is interior, must find outward expression. We feel joy interiorly and this must be expressed outwardly. The reordering of the disorder of our soul is an interior and invisible effect, but that effect must be brought to outward expression in proper conduct of life.
That is, I believe, what is going on in this very odd snipped and pasted prayer.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL:
O God, who have prepared
fitting helps for us in our weakness,
grant, we pray, that we may receive
their healing effects with joy
and reflect them in a holy way of life.
Okay. That’s better than the…
OBSOLETE ICEL VERSION:
Father, our source of life,
you know our weakness.
May we reach out with joy to grasp your hand
and walk more readily in your ways.
The Carmelite men of the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are building their monastery in Wyoming and earning their daily bread by roasting, blending, and selling you coffee and tea.
Their seasonal Pascha Java is back at Mystic Monk Coffee!
Limited time! Festive spices with white chocolate and bourbon make up this delicious treat.
And just because I like writing it, their Coffee of the Month is:
Dukundekawa Musasa
Prefer tea? Click HERE.
Go to your kitchen and check on your coffee supply. Share at work. Give as a gift. Use for a parish event. Keep a thermos handy for your spring cleaning and yard work.
And you can subscribe, which will help the monks budget and relieve you of having to remember to order!
Help some Carmelites, get great coffee.
Win – win.
Today’s Collect in the Ordinary Form was not in the 1962 or previous editions of the Missale Romanum. However, the Gelasianum Vetus provides a predecessor of this prayer.
Clementiam tuam, Domine, supplici voto deposcimus,
ut nos famulos tuos, paenitentia emendatos
et bonis operibus eruditos,
in mandatis tuis facias perseverare sinceros,
et ad paschalia festa pervenire illaesos.
How about that chain of accusatives? “emendatos… eruditos… sinceros… illaesos.” The whole thing is a little gem of tropes and sounds and parallels.
Let’s move along to what the prayer really says.
LITERAL TRANSLATION
O Lord we are beseeching Your mercy with this humble prayer,
that you cause us, Your servants,
corrected by means of penance
and polished by means of good works,
to persevere genuine in Your commands,
and to attain unscathed to the paschal celebrations.
We should remind ourselves of certain recurring questions when reviewing these ancient prayers. Again we have the possibility that clementia tua would have rung in the ears of our ancient forebears as a title, “Your Clemency”. This title points also to a divine characteristic, at least from our miserable point of view. God is merciful and kind. The words supplex, votum, deposco suggest a very lowly attitude on our part.
The overarching image is that of God as Teacher, I think. The prayer is addressed to God the Father, through Christ (Per Dominum…etc.). Yet Christ as Teacher is a common image in early Christian art. Our vocabulary also suggests this; we are corrected (emendati) and polished/instructed (eruditi).
This is a finely crafted prayer, beautifully balanced and intricate. Look at that chain of accusatives stretching through the prayer: (nos & tuos) famulos … emendatos… eruditos… sinceros… illaesos. These are all descriptions of what God has made us and will continue to make us through His mercy. Another series threads through the prayer in the ablative: paenitentia… bonis operibus… mandatis. These are the means by which God made us into the accusatives. Note also the chiastic parallel in the structure. Correction and penance connect best with perseverance and commands, which polishing and good works connect best with being attainment and soundness. A logical sequence is found as well. First, we see what we are by means of something (corrected/instructed) and then what we are for something (genuine/unscathed).
Christ is the perfect model of all that is mentioned in the prayer. He is the perfect exemplar.
St. Augustine, in his monumental City of God is a little cautious about presenting the Lord as being our model and exemplar. He knows that Christ, the perfect model, presents for us an unattainable challenge. For Augustine, the lives of the martyrs and other holy men and women are more helpful and realistic models. In their fully be merely human lives they show us that we fully human but merely human people can live the life to which Christ’s commands and perfect model calls us.
In looking at this prayer, I got the fleeting impression of the figure of David. David is the focus of much attention on the part St. Ambrose. Perhaps digging into Ambrose on David and some of the vocabulary might produce interesting results.
Also, there comes to mind the ancient way of producing written texts.
In rhetorical training orators were taught to approach topics in stages.
They would find the questions and points of interest (inventio) and then arrange things properly (dispositio) and come to a proper way to deliver the concepts (elocutio). There is a whole raft other terms applicable to this process.
In our prayer today we see something of the same process in penance, requiring introspection and examination, the proper application of things especially though the guidance of divine commands and teaching, and finally the outward expression of the proper content through fulfillment of God’s commands and the festive joy that we attain.
Also, in writing out texts, there would be a process of drafting and correction (emendatio or castigatio, words we have seen in the prayers for Lent) and also the polishing of the text, sometimes even literally.
To prepare a sheet of vellum or a scroll, it needed to be polished, mistakes were scraped off and the site repolished.
We are works in progress. God’s works. God writes his law into our being as His images. The Father through the Holy Spirit writes His Word upon our hearts.
In this last phase of Lent let us ask Mary, the great Mother of God who is Mother of the Church and Queen of Martyrs, to accompany us in a special way by her intercession, that we may persevere in our resolve to be conformed to all that Christ and Holy Church enjoins on us.
On Friday 23 March at 12 Noon there will be “Stand Up for Religious Liberty” rallies all over the USA.
For rally locations click HERE.
From a reader:
I am planning on taking my children to the rally for religious liberty tomorrow, in San Diego, along with many other families in our homeschooling group. I hope many of your readers plan on attending, in their cities. My daughter is preparing for confirmation at Pentecost and I feel this is a great way for her to participate in professing her Faith courageously and publicly. Might you or your readers have suggestions for pithy quotes we could put on our signs? I’m sure the media will completely ignore the event or focus on the few counter-protesters, but we would sure like to represent our side in a thoughtful, classy way. Any help would be appreciated.
Okay you bright and classy readers…. put on your cogitation chapeaus … chapeaux!
I am reminded of the brilliant sign one classy protester had during Pope Benedict’s state visit to England. I chuckle even now.
My iTunes is updating the LENTCAzTs. However, my statistics are all screwed up. The Podpress stats show me that 12 people listened to yesterday’s entry, through the average has been closer to 1000.
How is the player working for you? Problems? No problems?
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
Emilio on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “+Timothy Broglio has been seriously considered for Archbishop of Washington three times, and three times he has been passed over…”
on 10 November – St Andrew Avellino (Vetus Ordo). Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Be proactive. Investigate and purchase the appropriate safety devices BEFORE you think you need them. By the time you need…”
on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “Thanks for posting the Prof. Thomas Pink interview. I never would have knoww about it otherwise.”
on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “Please continue the posts of the beauty of Rome. It helps me remember that city as the heart of Catholicism,…”
on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “With all due respect to the Archbishop, T.C. is not a “solution in search of a problem”; it is actually…”
on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “Regarding “Andrea Gagliarducci’s Monday offering,” it seems to me the Pope is acting more like a man who does not…” on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: “Quite right…easy: 1. Qxg7+ BxQ 2. RxR+ Ne8 3. RxN+ Bf8 4. RxB#” on Continue the Rome shot posts? I dunno.: ““Just cotton briefs. Look this is basic theology. . .” Finally, one I understand”
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