ASK FATHER: Is the will really “fixed” at death or do we get another chance?

Posted on 18 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Is death truly definitive in terms of divine judgement? There is a priest who spoke on the Patrick Coffin show (Fr. Chris Alar) that says that after we die we are given a chance to choose God or reject him, so that someone who took their life wouldn’t be damned. Is this true? But I thought that the will was fixed at death. I know you are very busy, Father, but I would be very grateful for a response.

Hell, which is not-God and un-bliss, is something chosen by the one who is damned and that choice is irrevocable.

To understand why it is irrevocable, it helps to understand why angels cannot change their minds.   With extreme brevity, angels have no bodies and, therefore, they have no passions which can lead them into errors.  Angels don’t have appetites which pull them now here and now there, as ours do.  Angels don’t learn through senses.  They know directly.  There is no process for them.  Angels can make mistakes, but when they make errors, they stay wrong.  They can’t change their minds because they have no passions or appetites to draw them to another good.

We can change our minds now because we have bodies.  When our soul separates from our body we will no longer have the appetites and passions which can draw the will to change.  In life, the habits that form from following appetites and passions can be corrected.  Not so after death.

The precise moment of total separation of the soul and body is hard to latch onto.  I am reminded of the first part of St. John Henry Newman’s Dream of Gerontius.  The soul of the dying man, soon dead, describes the separation of soul from body.  It is deeply moving.

Nevertheless…

At death, our soul and body separate. Our soul continues to operate, as it should do, but without the influences of the body and without bodily senses.  We will be much like angels in that state.  Just as angels cannot change their minds, and are locked into their state, so too it will be with us.

We will be locked into our state at the time of the separation of our soul from our body.  We will either be locked onto God or onto not-God, onto bliss or un-bliss.  There will be no competing appetites to draw us from one to the other and no new information coming in through the senses.  Death is like the kiln that bakes the clay into its final form.  Now, we can shape the clay.  Once it goes through the kiln, we can’t reshape it.   Hence, after the resurrection of the flesh, we will remain locked in to God or to not-God.  That won’t change even when our souls get bodies again.

After the separation of the soul from the body, we don’t get another chance to change our minds.  We are locked in.

This is why it is important to stress certain things in our preaching and catechism.

First, people tend to die the way they lived.  Yes, there are deathbed conversions.  That is a grace that we cannot, must not, presume that we will receive.  We form life-long habits.  That is why it is important to PRACTICE DYING every day.  If you want to be a good piano player, you have to practice.  If you want to die well, and you ARE going to die, you should practice dying.  Dying to self, dying to the world, even to the good things of the world, is preparation for a good death.  Mortifications are good for us. They are called “mortifications” for a reason: they make us die a little, to self and the earthbound.

Next, sometimes loons gripe at the Church with the idiot accusation that we are obsessed with sex.  No, we are obsessed with keeping people out of Hell.  While it is true that carnal sins are not as serious as sins of pride and so forth, carnal mortal sins nevertheless are sufficient to damn us for eternity.  If we talk about sexual issues a lot, its because these urges are so strong and the pleasures so great that they can easily lead the soul to lock onto not-God, lock onto excluding ourselves from God.  Not so many people are intensely locked into those terrible sins of the spirit, but many are indeed locked into the pleasures of the flesh, sins now so common and pervasive that they are hardly considered any longer.  But, those sins are enough to damn us.  I repeat: they are enough.

Finally, we should take death and sin seriously to the point that we often pray, as the Litany expresses and forms in us, that God will preserve us from a sudden and unprovided death, a death without access to the last sacraments.  And here I return to my constant theme these days: we are our rites.  We are our rites.   We are our rites, when we pray the Litany with its petitions and those petitions in turn form us and shape our desires to stay close to the sacraments and use them well.

When we finally get serious about doing something about the state of the Church, that’s when we will get serious about our sacred liturgical worship of God.  That’s where we are formed and shaped and instructed about dying and the promise of Heaven.   Thanks to the love and mercy of God, we have a Church because we are going to die.  We have our sacred liturgical worship precisely because we are going to die.  This is the overarching reason for all that we do: passing through the mysterious gate of death and entering into the bliss of Heaven and into the sight of God, not through a glass, darkly, but face to face in an eternal transformation in His glory ever more and ever more to be the images He created us to be.

Let nothing endanger that.

GO TO CONFESSION.

Also, check out

The Human Soul by Abbot Anscar Vonier

US HERE – UK HERE

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Four Last Things, GO TO CONFESSION | Tagged , , ,
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“We can’t deny Communion! We mustn’t ‘politicize’ the Eucharist!” False argument.

Posted on 18 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There is a good piece today at The Catholic Thing which looks at denial of Holy Communion to obstinate public supporters of abortion.  The writer brings up the example of the late Archbp. Rummel of New Orleans who, in the early 60’s, desegregated all Catholic schools.  Segregationists were furious, loudly protested that God wanted segregation, and threatened blowback.  The Archbishop excommunicated them.   Today, no one – NO BISHOP says, “I wouldn’t have done what Rummel did because I can’t read the soul of those segregationists.”   Today, no one – NO BISHOP – says, “I wouldn’t have condemned members of the Nazi party in the 1930s because I can’t see their souls.  Von Gallen was wrong.”

Get this…

[…]

Plenty of people at the time seem to have been convinced that Rummel’s excommunications would be “pointless,” that he was just “making things worse” and “exacerbating the tensions in New Orleans.”  Perhaps he did.  But no one dares say it now. No one condemns Rummel in retrospect with the claim that “there were other equally important priorities in the Church – not just that one issue alone.”  [That’s what the Left, the Fishwrap types, always do.  They reduce the right to be born into a minestra of other social issues.  But before all other issues, the right to be born in the first place must take precedence.  It is patently unfair to accuse those to emphasize the right to be born of not caring about other issues.]

People do say how, however, rather vehemently, that the Catholic bishops of Germany should have “done more,” been “less accommodating,” and excommunicated more people during the Holocaust.  But wasn’t excommunicating the entire Nazi leadership in 1931 and banning Catholics from joining the party “politicizing the Eucharist”? [Exactly.] They banned Catholics from joining a political party!  How could they “look into the souls” of each of those German citizens to judge why they were joining the National Socialists?  Perhaps they just believed in the “worker’s movement” (the Nazis were, after all, as their name indicated, national socialists)?

I sometimes ask my students, “Did the German bishops violate the ‘separation of Church and state’ when they excommunicated members of the Nazi Party?”  No, they all agree.  “Would an American bishop be violating the ‘separation of Church and state’ if he dared to excommunicate a Catholic politician who had repeatedly and publicly supported access to abortion up to the moment of birth – including late-term, ‘partial-birth’ abortions?”  Most don’t like this. “Why one and not the other?” “It’s different,” they claim.

[…]

It’s not.

Virtually every bishop says, “I can’t read the soul of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, so I won’t apply can. 915 if they come to my diocese.”

The criterion for denial of Communion rests NOT being able to “see the soul” of another person.  The criterion is the open, known, obstinate, public words and actions of that person.   If a person has committed public scandal in a grave matter, that scandal has to be publicly addressed by the Church’s shepherds.  That’s why we have cann. 915 and 916.

These days the spine-challenged wring their hands and croon that we have to all get along and be nice and not upset anyone.  We have to tone down the rhetoric.  We can’t deny Communion to anyone because that will make people sad.

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece, still pinned in the list of pages at the bottom of this blog’s main page, wherein I state that we cannot “tone down the rhetoric” and “just get along” when it comes to a critically important issue: abortion.  I made a connection to the civil rights movement.  HERE

I suggest that you read the whole piece over at The Catholic Thing.  Remember it when someone says that we shouldn’t politicize the Eucharist.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Canon Law, Emanations from Penumbras, The Drill | Tagged ,
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Support for Fr. Joseph Illo. Fr. Z rants about denial of Communion

Posted on 17 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

CLICK

I want to offer my public support for Fr. Joseph Illo in San Francisco at Star of the Sea (beautiful title).  He wrote about a tough call he had to make as pastor.  HERE

The basics: A women took her elderly mother with Alzheimer’s to Mass.  The old mother took the Host out of her mouth and dropped it on the paten.  The priest at the parish suggested that it was no longer a good idea for her mother to receive Communion since she didn’t seem to understand what she was receiving.  The daughter, a product of Catholic schools but poorly catechized (as usual) got mad at the pastor when he called her to explain.

Let’s pick up Fr. Illo’s post… my emphases:

[…]

I’m sorry that I must be blunt, but most Catholics don’t believe in the Eucharist for the simple reason that most clergy don’t believe in the Eucharist. At least, we don’t believe in the Sacrament enough to impart this faith to our parishioners. “Communicating the Eucharist” requires a lifelong commitment to hard work, sacrifice, misunderstandings, and marginalization. And so most of us priests don’t teach and administer the Holy Eucharist with consistency and conviction. If we did, more Catholics would believe in it. Jesus Christ taught the Holy Eucharist with conviction, fully knowing it would get Him crucified. In fact, most of his disciples left him when he insisted on it, as you can read in John 6:35-69. How many bishops today would insist on any Catholic teaching that would turn 90% of their friends into enemies? But that is what the great High Priest Jesus did. Thank God we have a High Priest!
?
I made another enemy today, and it ruined my day. The woman I talked with will no longer bring her mother to my church, and she will tell all her friends that the priests at Star of the Sea are doctrinaire, intolerant, perhaps even hateful. I knew it was a lose-lose before I returned the call, and perhaps I should not have even called her back. But on the other hand, she deserved a return call, and she deserved the truth. A priest’s job is to deliver the truth, even if he cannot do it very well. I tried the best I could, but my gifts of intellect and empathy are limited. May it not be held against me!

I support Fr. Illo.   It is NOT fun to tell people hard truths which upset them.  We don’t relish it.  We don’t like having to do it.  But tell the truth we must, because we are going to face the Just Judge one day.  It’s our job to keep you out of Hell.   If we don’t attend to that, we are going to be in serious trouble.  As Augustine preached to his people so long ago, I will preach whether you believe or not because I want to save my soul.  But, “Nolo esse salus sine vobis…. I don’t want to be saved without you.”  We will hold your hand if you need that, but we won’t go to Hell for you by lying or telling half-truths or ignoring our doctrines and disciplines.

CLICK

It is right to underscore that so many Catholics today have blurred or completely false notions about the Eucharist.

For many, Communion or Eucharist means “that’s the white thing they put in my hand before we sing a song”.  It is, for them, a token of affirmation: you are nice, we are nice together.  That’s about it.   Then when they encounter The Truth about the Eucharist they become angry.  That’s reasonable: they are being confronted with something they sense really is important and they get their back up because deep down they know they’ve been doing something wrong.

I don’t blame them.   It’s not their fault.

I, like Fr. Illo, point my finger directly at bishops and priests, especially of the older stripe who have so screwed up our Church in these USA that I doubt our institutions can survive the tumble into the sink-hole how opening up beneath us.

Something positive is emerging from the stark divisions and polarization now taking place in The Present Crisis™.

Quite a few people are beginning to make real choices about their Faith.  When they hear something strange, they are checking out the Church’s authentic teachings.  They are opening long closed books.  They are asking questions.

Also, younger priests are taking a stand and even denying Communion when warranted.

The situation above is NOT the same as denial of Communion to a manifestly scandalous and unrepentant pro-abortion politician.  However, due care of the Sacrament is on the rise.  That flows from witnessing the dire fruits of decades of neglect and misdirection.   Some younger guys actually learned something about the Eucharist and they are taking their responsibilities seriously.   Again and again these days I have heard of young priests taking a stand about Communion for someone, including that case in Michigan, but also some other cases that aren’t public.  In the Grand Rapids case, the bishop backed the priest, thanks be to God.   In some others, however, the priests are being crucified by their pastors and bishops.

They need support in prayers and probably material things due to the punishment they will experience at the hands of those who ought to back them.

Perhaps a prayer to a potential “patron saint of priest defenders”, the late Bp. Robert C. Morlino, the Extraordinary Ordinary, is in order.  I don’t worry about the state of his soul, not one little bit.  He was extraordinary also for letting priests know that he had their back.  I recall one sermon he gave at an ordination when he riffed on Job and his persecutions, making an analogy with what happens when people in a parish attack priests for doing something like moving a chair or preaching on contraception.   When the trials come, he said, we repeat with Job, “Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”, and he assured them that he was with them.  He was with them when they took hell for preaching the truth in charity.

Truth is a necessary component for charity.

It is not charity to defy the truth of people who should not receive the Eucharist because a) they are too young to understand,  b) they are cognitively impaired and do not understand, they believe but they are manifestly scandalous figures, d) they manifestly don’t believe what the Church teaches.

Can. 916 lays down that people who know they should not receive must not receive.

Can. 915 lays down that priests must not give the Eucharist to those who manifestly must not receive.

A priest is not being “mean” by denying the Eucharist.  A priest, knowing the law and knowing the situation accurately actually violates the human dignity of those who approach and must not receive if he administers the Eucharist to them.  In that moment, he instrumentalizes those people as if they are objects for his own self-satisfaction or justification or virtue signaling.

So, I support Fr. Illo.  He did the right thing and he needs to know that we have his back.

You priests and bishops out there.  Straighten your backs!  You seminarians, start getting your heads into that place where you can suffer when you do the right thing.  For now, keep your mouths shut and put on a smile and do your work and pray well.  But start thinking about the days after seminary.  Start playing out the scenarios in your heads now.  Think of it as Propaedeutical Situational Awareness.

Lay people: Support your priests.  Give them some kudos when they stand upright on the hard issues and take flak.   Ask for their blessings and thank them in the confessional.  Pray for them.  Fast and storm the heavens for your priests.

And you ladies out there, please please please consider the Seven Sisters apostolate.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Hard-Identity Catholicism, Mail from priests, Priests and Priesthood, Si vis pacem para bellum!, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices, Wherein Fr. Z Rants | Tagged , , ,
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ACTION ITEM! End of year giving suggestions from @FatherZ

Posted on 17 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At the end of the year most people consider their annual charitable giving.

In this time of great confusion for the institutional Church, here are a couple suggestions for your donation dollars.

First, year in and year out I have recommended a clinic here in Madison, Our Lady of Hope Clinic.    CLICK HERE  

OLHC It is run entirely on Catholic moral principles and it provides health care for the poor.  I go there. I contribute. The average cost of a visit to OLHC is approximately $80.  A gift of $150 pays for nearly 2 doctor’s visits for a uninsured patient.  Right now and through the end of the year, there is a generous donor who will match your donation.  You donation will have twice the impact.  A little while ago, I brought them a Daniel Mitsui print of Our Lady of Hope which I blessed and which now hangs in their waiting room.   The Clinic is trying to expand.    I have a strong sense of goodness when I go there.

Next, the TMSM, the Tridentine Mass Society of the Diocese of Madison.  CLICK HERE. 

This also a 501(c)3 organization.  Your donations are deductible.  I am the president for some years now.  We have over the years been building a good treasury of vestments.  One day a cathedral will be built here and we will have worthy vestments for pontifical ceremonies.  We are going to turn our attention to new aspects of spreading and fostering Tradition in the next years.  Donations have come in from readers all over the country.  In turn, I firmly believe that the work of the TMSM, made known through this blog, has helped to inspire people in other places to get organized.   We depend on you and I am grateful for the help.  What we are doing, I believe, helps to raise the tide that helps all boats to rise.  Also, I have some big invoices to pay!  Help!

 

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Vatican allows blaspheming Netflix to advertise on building

Posted on 16 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Does this seem right to you?

What is the problem?

Netflix has a show which is horrifically blasphemous, timed for Christmas – the bastards – about a “gay” (I hate that word) Christ.

So, does that seem right to you? Advertise a Netflix film on the side of a Vatican-owned building?

What could possibly have persuaded the powers to be to do that?

1) Lots of money
2) The people who approved it also approve of what Netflix did in that blasphemous show

Posted in Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, What are they REALLY saying?, You must be joking! | Tagged ,
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More shots of the Pontifical Mass with Cardinal Burke

Posted on 14 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

On 8 December, His Eminence Raymond Leo Card. Burke offered a Pontifical Mass at the Throne at tiny St. Mary’s in Pine Bluff, WI.  We were squeezed in to capacity both in the sanctuary and the church itself.  It was a fine event.  I’ve had a couple of photoposts, but since I am now back from my NYC trip, I can post a few more.

During Terce

The chapter.

Some, just because I want to show off the great vestments.

We call this the “Morlino Set”, because one of you readers gave a sizable donation to the TMSM so that we could have them made.  She wanted them in honor of the late Bp. Morlino.

Confiteor.

Because of the lack of space, we wound up on the steps.  Which works.

Thanks giving after Mass.

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ACTION ITEM: Rapid response to help a priest

Posted on 14 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Dear readers, without going into details, I suggest a rapid response of charity for a priest whom I believe to have been falsely accused of something and poorly treated thereafter… for a long time in a kind of hellish diocesan clerical-cryogenic freeze.  You’ve all heard the stories about how priests are simply sidelined and left to fend for themselves while their cases are caught in a Dickensian limbo.

This situation has developed and needs quick action.

This is time sensitive.  HERE

There are two phases for this fundraiser, an smaller initial swift goal is needed now.

I won’t provide updates on this, as I often do.

Tell him Fr. Z sent you.

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Sending snail-mail 2019 Christmas cards

Posted on 14 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

If you would like to send me Christmas greetings or cards, please send by snail mail, if possible with really cool stamps.

As I have done in years past, I’ll try to post all the places whence they were mailed from around the world.  Keep in mind that if you don’t include your address, I can’t easily do that.

I have a US PO BOX address.

Fr John Zuhlsdorf
Tridentine Mass Society of Madison
733 Struck St.
PO BOX 44603
Madison, WI 53744-4603

PAST ADDRESSES ARE VOID

If you need to send anything that requires a signature, such as gold bars, a Bugatti Chiron, bearer bonds, cases of Pappy Van Winkle, complete Pontifical Mass vestment sets … you know, the usual stuff, get in touch with me for an alternate address.

Please! DON’T send perishable food items. I am sure they would be wonderful, and neither poisonous nor hallucinogenic… mostly. But, please, just don’t.  I can’t get to the P.O. Box everyday.

If you put glitter in the card, I’ll recite the Maledictory Psalms against you. No. Really.  And if you send something threatening or illegal, I’ll turn it in to law enforcement.  I’m sorry I have to write that under such a cheery topic, but this is the world we live in.

I always enjoy the Christmas cards.  Also, I find the notes and letters which describe the year people have had to be interesting and, often, moving.  I read them all.  And drawings by kids are a hoot.

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St. Lucy and Advent Ember Week

Posted on 13 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

13 December was the darkest day – with the least sunlight – of the old Julian calendar.

Today in the Gregorian calendar is the feast of St. Lucy, whose name from the Latin lux, for “light”, reminds us who dwell in the still darkening northern hemisphere that our days will soon be getting longer again.

Lucy will usually be depicted in art with a lantern, or with a crown of candles, or – most commonly – with her own eyes on a platter.

Some accounts have Lucy slain by having her throat thrust through with sword.  Other accounts say that to protect her virginity she disfigured herself by cutting her own eyes out and sending them to her suitor, a plot likely to discourage him.  St. Lucy is therefore the patroness of sight.

St. Lucy shows up fairly often in Dante’s great Divine Comedy.  She is first in the Inferno.  It is Lucy who asked Beatrice to help Dante.  In Purgatory the eagle that bears Dante upward in a dream is actually Lucy who is bearing him to the gate of Purgatory.  Eagles, of course, are “eagle-eyed” and see very well.  In the Paradiso she is placed directly across from Adam in the Heaven of the Rose.  She can gaze directly at God.  St. Lucy was something of a patroness for Dante and that he was devoted to her because, as we glean from various works, he may have had a problem not just with his eyes but also struggling with sins of the eyes.

Next week we also have Ember Days, which in Advent come after the Feast of St. Lucy.   Do you remember the little mnemonic poem?  “Lenty, Penty, Crucy, Lucy”, or else “Fasting days and Emberings be / Lent, Whitsun, Holyrood, and Lucie.”

Ember Wednesday will be the Missa aurea.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at Lucy’s Collect in the Ordinary Form.

This prayer was not in the pre-Conciliar editions of the Missale Romanum. It is based on a prayer in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary for St. Felicity (VIIII KALENDAS DECEMBRIS).

Intercessio nos, quaesumus, Domine, sanctae Luciae virginis et martyris gloriosa confoveat, ut eius natalicia et temporaliter frequentemus, et conspiciamus aeterna.

First, you will have immediately caught the elegant hyperbaton, the separation of intercessio and the adjective that goes with it, gloriosa.  There is also a nice et… et construction.

Confoveo is “to cherish, caress, keep warm.”  It is a compound of foveo which essentially is “to be hot, to roast”.  It obviously deals with heat, flame, light.  This is a good word for this time of year in the northern hemisphere (unless you are in, say, Florida).

Conspicio is “to look at attentively, to get sight of, to descry, perceive, observe”. We are obviously dealing the seeing and sight.  This word should ring mental bells for the throngs of you readers who attended Holy Mass in the Novus Ordo celebrated in Latin.  Conspicio is in the Collect for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, used in a an extremely clever way juxtaposed to exspecto.  They share a common root.  But I digress.

Natalicia refers to birthdays.  In the Christian adaptation of this word, we are always referring to the saints being “born” into heaven.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Lord, give us courage through the gracious prayers of Saint Lucy. As we celebrate her entrance into eternal glory, we ask to share her happiness in the life to come.

Here is the usual clunky parataxis we know so well from the dreadful obsolete translation.  As usual, the translation is dumbed-down.  Do you see anything of the concept of vision?  Sight?  Is there anything in there that harks to the time of year?

Can you believe that some people want this back?

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

May the glorious intercession of the Virgin and Martyr Saint Lucy give us new heart, we pray, O Lord, so that we may celebrate her heavenly birthday in this present age and so behold things eternal.

We are obviously much closer to the Latin in this new version.  Also, that behold at the end is consoling.

Reason #7569320 for the new, corrected translation.

Perhaps you might say a prayer today to St. Lucy, that she will intercede with God and implore Him, for us in the vale of tears, to open the eyes of so many of our elected officials – and voters – and our Church leaders too, while we’re at it.

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WDTPRS – 3rd Sunday of Advent: The childlike dash

Posted on 13 December 2019 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Our rose set for Sung Masses on Gaudete and Laetare when we have an Asperges.  DONATE

We are coming to the 3rd Sunday of Advent, also nicknamed Gaudete…. the plural imperative of gaudeo, “Rejoice!”, the first word of the Introit chant.

This Sunday there is a relaxation of the penitential aspect of Advent, just Laetare Sunday does during Lent.

Yes, Advent is a penitential time, though not so much as Lent.  Advent is a time for joyful penance or penitential joy.

Remember: Real priests wear rosacea.

In the first week of Advent we begged God for the grace of the proper approach and will for our preparation.

In the second week, we ask God for help and protection in facing the obstacles the world raises against us. This Sunday we have a glimpse of the joy that is coming in our rose colored (rosacea) vestments, some use of the organ, flowers. Christmas is ever nearer at hand.

COLLECT – (2002MR)

Deus, qui conspicis populum tuum nativitatis dominicae festivitatem fideliter exspectare, praesta, quaesumus, ut valeamus ad tantae salutis gaudia pervenire, et ea votis sollemnibus alacri laetitia celebrare.

The infinitives in our Collect (expectare… pervenire… celebrare) give it a grand sound and also sum up what we are doing in Advent. L&S informs us that conspicio means, “to look at attentively, to get sight of, to descry, perceive, observe.” Alacer is, “lively, brisk, quick, eager, active; glad, happy, cheerful” and it is put in an unlikely combination with laetitia, “joy, especially unrestrained joyfulness”.

At the same time we also have votis sollemnibus. Votum signifies first of all, “a solemn promise made to some deity” (we have all made baptismal vows!) and also “wish, desire, longing, prayer”.

There is a powerful sentiment of longing in this prayer, God’s as well as ours.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that expecto is from ex- + pecto (pecto, “to comb”). Exspecto is “look forward to, await, long for, dread” in your L&S.  You can also comb through your copy of the etymological dictionary of Latin by Ernout and Meillet which says it is from ex– + *specio, spexi, spectum or ex- + spicio. Therefore, it is a cousin of conspicio: God “watches” over us and we “look” back at… er um… forward to Him. This word play is clever.

Furthermore, sollemnis, related to sollus, i.e. “totus-annus“, points to something that takes place every year.  So, it basically means “yearly, annual”.  Thus, by extension it means something that takes place at appointed times, such as rites of a religious character and that which is does by custom.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:

O God, who attentively watch Your people look forward faithfully to the feast of the Lord’s birth, grant, we entreat, that we may be able to attain the to joys of so great a salvation and celebrate them with eager jubilation in solemn annual festive rites.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Lord God, may we, your people, who look forward to the birthday of Christ experience the joy of salvation and celebrate that feast with love and thanksgiving.

You decide.

Rose vestments from the days of Fr. Finigan in Blackfen. Then came the regime change….

With the last two week’s of “rushing” in our prayers and doing good works, we have now the added image of eager and unrestrained joy, an almost childlike dash towards a long-desired thing.

Have earthly fathers watched this scene all of a Christmas morning?

Even so should we be in our eager joy to perform good works under the gaze of a Father who watches us, a Father with a plan.

The obsolete ICEL version captures little of the impact of the Latin prayer, that is, God the Father is patiently watching his people as we go about the Advent business of doing penance and just works in joyful anticipation Christ’s coming.

NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation, land to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing.

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