Fr. Z writes:<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see what happened to today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Collect in the 1962MR when it was ported over into the 1970MR.<\/p>\n
COLLECT (1962MR):
\nDeus, qui Filii tui humilitate iacentem mundum erexisti:
\nfidelibus tuis sanctam concede laetitiam;
\nut, quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus,
\ngaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis.<\/p>\n
With a slight variation this prayer was in the Gelasian Sacramentary on the Sunday after the Octave of Easter, which is today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sunday: Deus, qui in filii tui humilitatem iacentem mundum erexisti, laetitiam concede In the meantime, think laterally: isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the last phrase of the Collect similar to the end of the prayer recited after the Salve Regina? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Grant us your servants, we pray you O Lord God, to enjoy perpetual health of mind and body, and, by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary ever-Virgin, may we be delivered from present sorrow and enjoy everlasting happiness (aeterna perfrui laetitia).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The themes here are similar to today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Collect in that there is a shift from sorrow to joy through God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s providential gift. Moreover, when the priest vests for Holy Mass, traditionally he says special prayers while putting on each vestment. For the alb, the symbol of our baptism, he prays: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Make me white, O Lord, and cleanse my heart, so that having been made white in the Blood of the Lamb, I may enjoy everlasting joys (gaudiis perfruar sempiternis).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There is similar vocabulary in the other vesting prayers, which could once be found posted in every sacristy in the world. I use them daily and exhort other priests to do so as well.<\/p>\n My hook for these last comments was the verb perfruor, one of a few famous deponent verbs used normally and classically with the ablative case: utor, abutor, fruor, fungor, potior and vescor. In different periods of Latin these verbs could have active forms, as we saw above, and could also take objects in the accusative or even genitive. In modern liturgical usage they are deponents and always get ablative \u00e2\u20ac\u0153objects\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Actually, these aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really objects, but rather a kind of instrument: e.g., vescor, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feed myself from\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; fruor, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I get fruit\/benefit from\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; etc. A good grammar explains how these verbs work. Latin Students: If you want a really good Latin grammar get the superb Gildersleeve & Lodge, or fully, Gildersleeve\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Latin Grammar (enlarged with the additional help of Gonzalez Lodge). Basil L. Gildersleeve said, and this is true in the world of WDTPRS, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No study of literature can yield its highest result without the close study of language, and consequently the close study of grammar.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Two words in the prayer, gaudium and laetitia, can be rendered into English with the same word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and variations. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to give undue emphasis to the different sorts of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d possible with different words. However, our chockful L&S states that gaudium suggest a joy which is interior whereas laetitia suggests a unrestrained joy having outward expression, even though L&S also says gaudium in the plural (as it is in our prayer) can also be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the outward expressions of joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. In a supplement to the L&S, A. Souter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D., we discover that gaudium is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everlasting blessedness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while laetitia is simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prosperity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. So, in Souter we still uncover something of the spiritual versus material distinction. Blaise\/Dumas, or Le Vocabulaire Latin des principaux th\u00c3\u00a8mes liturgiques, implies that laetitia and gaudium are pretty much the same thing.<\/p>\n Are these distinctions really important? The dictates of ancient rhetoric (and this prayer is ancient) required copia verborum, a richness of vocabulary to avoid boring repetition. Nevertheless, each word gives us \u00e2\u20ac\u0153joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but with shades of meaning. Perhaps a solution is found in L&S\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s explanation that gaudium is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like our \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcjoy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, for an object which produces joy, a cause or occasion of joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. You might think in terms of someone saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You are a real joy to me!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For us who, raised up from our sins, die in God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s friendship, the object which will produce joy is, in this world the state of grace and a clean conscience and, in the next life, the Beatific Vision and Communion of Saints.<\/p>\n L&S indicates that erigo, giving us erexisti, means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to raise up, set up, erect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, analogously, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to arouse, excite\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cheer up, encourage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The verb iaceo (in the L&S find this under jaceo) has many meanings, such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to lie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lie sick or dead, fallen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and also \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to be cast down, fixed on the ground\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to be overcome, despised, idle, neglected, unemployed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Humilitas is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lowness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. In Blaise\/Dumas, humilitas has a more theological meaning in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abasement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the God Incarnate who took the form of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153slave\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (cf. Philippians 2:7). Blaise\/Dumas cites this Collect in the entry for humilitas.<\/p>\n LITERAL TRANSLATION: Our Collect views material creation as an enervated body, wounded, weakened by sin, lying near death in the dust whence it came. In the sin of our First Parents all creation was wounded. The harmony there ought to have been between the rest of material creation and man, its steward, has been damaged.<\/p>\n Because of the Fall, the whole cosmos was put under the bondage of the Enemy, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prince of this world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (cf. John 10:31 and 14:30). This is why when we bless certain things, and baptize people, there was an exorcism first, to rip the object or person from the grip of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prince\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and give it to the King. God is liberator. He rouses us up from being prone upon the ground. He grasps us, pulling us upward out of sin and death. He directs us again toward the joys possible in this world, first, and then definitively in the next.<\/p>\n But we must get back to our feet: rise again.<\/p>\n Our Savior rose for this reason. We have seen in many of our ancient Roman prayers a pattern of descent and ascent, of exit and return. Before the Resurrection there is the Passion. Before exaltation there is humiliation. The descent, exit, Passion and humiliation bring an even more exalted joy which will embrace the entirety of man in both soul and body, the interior and the outward human person. Ultimately, it will embrace the entire cosmos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fr. Z writes: Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see what happened to today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Collect in the 1962MR when it was ported over into the 1970MR. COLLECT (1962MR): Deus, qui Filii tui humilitate iacentem mundum erexisti: fidelibus tuis sanctam concede laetitiam; ut, quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus, gaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis. With a slight variation this prayer was in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.latinliturgy.org\/phila\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nO God, who raised up a fallen world by the abasement of Your Son, grant holy joy to Your faithful;
\nso that You may cause those whom You snatched from the misfortunes of perpetual death,
\nto enjoy delights unending.<\/p>\n