Created, Gathered, Pleasing – The Collect for the 18th Sunday

A few years ago I came across a useful document on the website of the Committee on Divine Worship of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. At the time they were concentrating on the third typical edition of Missale Romanum (for what we now call the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite) - i.e. the Latin original. Now their focus seems to be entirely on the newly issued English translation and I have been unable to find this document on the website at present. It consisted of extracts from the March-April 2002 newsletter of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy (as it was then called) which included the noteworthy changes to Missale Romanum made in the editio typica tertia. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, the document is still available.

Included was the remark that "some prayers, such as the collect for the 18th Sunday of the year, have been corrected." At the time I was gathering texts for the Divine Office for the celebrations inserted into the calendar in 2000. The collects at Mass are by design the same as the concluding prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours on the same day. A change to the Missal in this respect means a change to the Breviary. Naturally I looked up this corrected prayer.

It was a matter of one word.

The text of this collect (called "Opening Prayer" in the translation of the Missal which has just gone into disuse) in the first two editions of the editio typica is as follows:
Adesto, Dómine, fámulis tuis, et perpétuam benignitátem largíre poscéntibus, ut {his}, qui {te} {auctorem} et {gubernatórem} gloriántur habére, et {grata} restáures, et restauráta consérves.
Be present to your servants, Lord, and grant perpetual kindness to those who seek it, that you may make {things to be pleasing} again {to these} who glory to have {you} as {creator} and {guide} and you may preserve what has been restored.
(Curly brackets {} indicate which words are to be taken together, the translations do not necessarily follow the word order of the originals.)

The translation in the English edition, in use until the other day:
Father of everlasting goodness, our {origin} and {guide}, be close to us and hear the prayers of all who praise you. Forgive our sins and restore us to life.
Note that grata disappears.

The old website of the Birmingham Oratory has a Mass Sheet from (presumably, going by the file name) 2002 with the following translation. Although the Latin text is from the third edition, the translation [pdf] is of the text from the first and second editions.
Be present, O Lord, to Thy servants, and grant {to those} who glory to own {Thee} as their {author} and {ruler} the everlasting kindness of restoring what is {pleasing} to Thee, and preserving what Thou hast restored.
The translation is defective since it misses the final clause (ut…restaures, et…conserves) but this is an attempt to make sense of the strange idea – which the grammar of the prayer in this form seems to be expressing – that it is God's task to make life pleasing for his people rather than to make his people pleasing to himself. As we shall see, although this is a very old prayer, grata was only introduced in 1970.

The text in the third edition of the editio typica corrected grata to creata:
Adesto, Dómine, fámulis tuis, et perpétuam benignitátem largíre poscéntibus, ut {his}, qui {te} {auctorem} et {gubernatórem} gloriántur habére, et {creata} restáures, et restauráta consérves.
Be present to your servants, Lord, and grant perpetual kindness to those who seek it, that you may restore {created things} {for these} who glory to have {you} as {creator} and {guide} and you may preserve what has been restored.
In the new translation, now in use, the prayer runs:
Draw near to your servants, O Lord, and answer their prayers with unceasing kindness, that, {for those} who glory {in you} as their {Creator} and {guide}, you may restore what you have {created} and keep safe what you have restored.

In the 1962 Missal (and its predecessors) this collect is given as a prayer "super populum" at the end of Mass for Thursday after the second Sunday of Lent (a.k.a third Thursday in Lent, the station being Santa Maria in Trastevere).

Habere with the accusative is absent and instead tu, auctor and gubernator are in the ablative. The indirect object in the purpose clause beginning ut is is ea id  – the distal demonstrative pronoun that – rather than hic haec hoc – the proximal demonstrative pronoun this. Finally, where grata – and later creata – would be found in the Missals of Paul VI and John Paul II, the Missal of John XXIII has congregata.
Adésto, Dómine, fámulis tuis, et perpétuam benignitátem largíre poscéntibus, ut {iis} qui {te} {auctóre} et {gubernatóre} gloriántur, et {congregráta} restáures et restauráta consérves.
Be present to your servants, Lord, and grant perpetual kindness {to those} who seek it, that you may make {things to be gathered up} again {for those} who glory {in you} as {creator} and {guide} and you may preserve what has been restored.
The Latin-English Missal published for the use of the congregation by Burns, Oates and Washbourne in 1962* has the prayers translated by the Reverend J. O'Connell MA and Dr H. P. R. Finberg.
Come, Lord, to the help of thy servants, and grant them the unceasing loving-kindness they implore. Mend {whatever is shattered} in the lives of {those} whose glory is to have {thee} for their {creator} and {guide}; and preserve what thou hast mended.
In 2004 Baronius Press published a new edition of the 1962 Missal for a congregation. There is no indication of the translator. The copyright notice indicates that it is based on the 16th edition of the Daily Missal and Liturgy Manual published by Laverty & Son in Leeds in 1960.
To Thy servants who call upon Thee hearken with unfailing kindness, O Lord, and while they glory {in Thee}, their {Maker} and {Ruler}, do Thou collect and restore {all that was lost}, and once restored preserve it.
Note that both translations appear to mistranslate completely congregata restaures – "{in order that} you may restore the gathered things". Congregata (and grata) must be read as a kind of prolepsis, where the object of restaurare is a word which would only be appropriate if the restoration has already happened. This is why the English translators use "whatever is shattered" and "all that was lost" when the Latin word means precisely the opposite.

There is a marvellous book called Enchiridion Euchologicum Fontium Liturgicorum – The Euchological [of, or pertaining to, the study of prayers] Handbook of Liturgical Sources. It contains the text of numerous historical prayers. It begins with Ethnica – i.e. prayers from pagan sources (including extracts from Sophocles' Antigone, Euripides' Bacchae and Aristophanes' Frogs) – and then moves onto Hebraica and then Iudaeo-Christiana and so on into the realms of the sacramentaries (books containing all the prayers to be said by the priest in the Liturgy). Unfortunately it does not have a full index of words used (only an index of Latin formularies) as I would like to look up the use of congrego and restauro in prayers.

In Enchiridion Euchologicum n.1484 Adesto domine is attributed to (the reign of) Gregory II (715-731) as a prayer "super populum" for Thursdays in Lent. Otherwise no indication of the liturgical context is given. It is found in the Sacramentarium Hadrianum Gregorianum.
Adesto domine famulis tuis, et perpetua largire poscentibus, ut {his} qui {te} {auctore} et {gubernatore} gloriantur, et {congregrata} restaures et restaurata conserves.
This is almost precisely the prayer found in what we now call the Extraordinary Form except this source uses his instead of iis. (In the context, there really is very little difference in meaning.)

It was there, in August 2006, that I left the matter. Last Sunday (17th per annum) I remembered this information and dug up a text file with my notes. When I had first looked at it I think I searched the internet for information but drew a blank. At that point Fr Zuhlsdorf had not covered the 18th Sunday in What Does The Prayer Really Say. I see that last year he finally reached it, in a post that discusses translation and inculturation. Also The Tablet, on 4th August 2007 [pdf] published an article by Dom Daniel McCarthy OSB (I assume those are the same person, Ampleforth Abbey, for example, these days prevents monks from having the same name, although in my time there were still a few duplicates).

Fr Daniel informs us that this prayer can be traced back to
…the Verona collection of Mass booklets compiled between 561 and 574, where it appears as a prayer over the people for the fast of…September…according to the old Roman calendar. During the redaction of the Gelasian Sacramentary between 628 and 715…the prayer was transferred to Wednesday of the second week of Lent and the word creata was changed to grata…Sometime shortly before the pontificate of Pope Gregory II (715-731), prayers were composed for the Thursdays of Lent. Accordingly, this prayer was transferred to the Thursday of the second week of Lent, and grata was changed to congregata…In 1970 this prayer over the people…became an opening prayer and was tranferred to this Sunday. In 1970 congregata was restored to grata of the Gelasian, and in 2002 to creata of the Verona.**
I had assumed that grata in 1970 was simply a misprint, or perhaps a misreading of a manuscript note in the minutes of the Consilium. Fr Daniel's article is a close reading of the grammar of the prayer.

*(Not strictly a "1962 Missal" since St Joseph does not appear in the Canon, something that only happened by a decree in November of that year, see Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, St Michael's Abbey Press, 2004, chapter 3, fn 582, p. 276)

**(The ellipses around "September" hide a confusion over the Roman calendar whose names had been out of line with their numerical meaning since at least 153 BC and possibly since the reign of King Numa Pompilius, supposedly Romulus' successor. I doubt that the Christians would have bothered to resurrect the Romulan calendar.)

Corvopolis is where?

The Roman Martyrology today – to pick a day at random – has the following at number 14:
Eboraci in Anglia, beati martyris Thomas Welbourne, qui…
 At 15:
In urbe Nam Định in Tunquino, Sanctorum Dominici Nguyễn Văn Hạnh (Diêu)…
Where on earth are these places?

Someone with a classical education – even one who is not familiar with the names of the counties or TV stations can presumably be expected to know that Anglia is England, but will he know that Eboracum is York, even if, under that name, it was the scene of the proclamation of Constantine as Emperor? Italics in Ecclesiastical texts indicate the vernacular form of a word so Nam Định is clearly the form of the name in the railway timetables. One might guess that Tunquinum is Vietnam. In fact it is the northernmost part of that country, Tonkin. This was (…Wikipedia…) one of the historical divisions of Vietnam borrowed by the French for administrative purposes and used by the Church. Hence Annamia, Cocinchina and Tunquinum should all be translated as Vietnam.

At 4:
Gerundæ in Hispania Tarraconensi, sancti Felicis…
This is nothing to do with the fabled part of speech familiar to students of Latin. It is the city of Girona in eastern Catalonia. Hispania Tarraconensi was the northernmost province of Spain covering the territory of Catalonia, Aragon and Navarre (more or less). Saints of the modern era are said to die in Hispania, not in the historical Roman province. So Blessed Enric Canadell martyred outside Girona on 17th August 1936 is listed at 11 for that date:
Apud oppido Castellfullit de la Roca prope Gerundam in Hispania, beati Henrici Canadell…
I have not found a single source to translate Latin names into their conventional English forms. The Lexicon Nominum Locorum by Carlo Egger translates from the Vernacular into Latin. It seems to be restricted to Dioceses. Faced with a puzzling Latin name, one can always search Catholic-Hierarchy.org. Unless you are familiar with the meaning of Wagga Wagga you are unlikely to guess that some inspired Latinist gave it the name Corvopolis, City of Crows.

Otherwise the only two resources known to me are the  RMBS/BSC Latin Place Names File and the Cathedral Libraries Catalogue : Names of printing towns. These are restricted to places where books were printed.

The economics of recycling

When my workplace replaced its computers I volunteered to take them to be recycled. (I was the boss, it was a political campaign organisation, that was the sort of stupid thing you do). They sat in my flat in Homebush Bay. Then when I moved to much smaller accommodation they took up a corner of my parents' place before coming with me when I moved to my present home. Eventually I got round to finding a good place to recycle them...which turned out to be in Homebush Bay a short drive from my old flat.

While I was living there, in a block that was pretty much the last building on the road before the Parramatta River (and no bridge at the end of it) I was puzzled by the amount of traffic that went past at all hours. I surmised there was a brothel or something tucked away in the industrial estate at the end of the road. It turned out there was in fact a collection of recycling depots* down there and the traffic was trucks taking stuff to be saved from wastage.

*(A grove of recycling depots?)

A brief primer on the merits of recycling from The Corner at National Review by Veronique de Rugy. She refers to an article in the Washington Examiner, this is a more up to date link.

Some more links:

"Recycling is the philosophy that everything is worth saving except your time." – Bryan Caplan.

I Recycle! by Donald J. Boudreaux.
After I awaken, I shower and dry myself with a towel that I’ve had for a few years. I use this towel day after day. I don’t discard it after one use. When it gets dirty, I toss it in the washing machine to clean it for further use. I recycle my towel.
Recycling from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Recycling Is Garbage by John Tierney, in The New York Times, yes, The New York Times. It was 1996, a different age.

The English Day for Life

When I lived in England, there was a Day for life when the Bishops urged us to consider the effect of dog fæces on the streets. Not much has changed. JPII's request is one of those rules nobody keeps.

William Oddie, The Bishops’ Conference has decided that Day for Life 2012 is all about the Olympic Games. Every year, it’s anything BUT what Pope John Paul intended.
A week or two ago, I referred to “the great conundrum, for the English Church, about the reign of John Paul II: why was it, when he had appointed most of our bishops, did nearly all of them go out of their way to undermine his vision for the Church?” Now, perhaps the greatest and most persistent example of this undermining of John Paul’s teaching has been the English bishops’ failure, over the years, collectively to oppose abortion and euthanasia as they should have been opposed. And perhaps the most grotesque and cynical example of this phenomenon is in the annual Day for Life, which year after year has in this country been about anything but what Pope John Paul, when he called for its annual observance, intended that it should be about.

Bresson and Dreyer

The Tarkovsky site, linked to in the previous post, is part of a family of sites called Masters of Cinema which themselves have some kind of connection with the cinephile DVD and Blu-Ray series of that name produced by Eureka Video.

The other members are robert-bresson.com and carldreyer.com. I have, and have seen, almost every film produced by Robert Bresson including The Trial of Joan of Arc. Given that the script is based on the transcript of the trial could we say Joan is a co-screenwriter? Perhaps not.

The only Dreyer film I have seen is The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928. Given its depiction of English soldiers as British Tommies, only 10 years after many of those Tommies died defending France, it is not surprising that it was banned in the UK at the time of release. It disappeared until a print emerged in a Norwegian lunatic asylum, of all places.

Tarkovsky Tarkofski Tarkovski Tarkovskij Tarkowski

When my family cannot decide what film to watch, I put on Tarkovsky's Mirror until they come up with an answer.

Behold: a mine of information on the work of Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, Nostalghia.com.
Nostalghia.com is committed to bringing you the most extensive information on Andrei Tarkovsky found anywhere on the World Wide Web. We are dedicated to researching, preserving, and disseminating information related to the film-making career of Andrei Tarkovsky. We aim at providing uniquely interesting material, not easily accessible elsewhere (e.g., use our our Links section if you are looking for a Filmography). This is accomplished by, through our extensive network of contacts, obtaining permission from filmmakers, film crew members, authors, editors, researchers, and photographers to use and publish their material here. The Webmasters themselves are fluent in several languages (Russian, German, French, Swedish, Polish, Norwegian, Danish, English), making possible translation into English material otherwise only available in foreign languages.

The Queen and Tolkien

This story, about the Queen's visit to the Midlands, caught my attention.
Her Majesty unveiled a plaque commemorating her visit to the cathedral after a special Worcestershire-themed service led by the Bishop of Worcester the Right Reverend Dr John Inge, which included the audience singing an excerpt from JRR Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings to Elgar’s Land Of Hope And Glory before finishing with the National Anthem.
What, I wondered, could that have been?

The official press release from Worcester Cathedralwas not much help:
The audience, which included more than 300 schoolchildren, joined in a refrain based on words by J.R.R. Tolkien in celebration of Worcestershire, sung to Elgar’s tune of Land of Hope and Glory.
So not actually one of the poems in The Lord Of The Rings, and yes, that's right, the representatives of a Cathedral, discussing a Church service,  described attendees as "the audience". One of the congregation was a little more revealing on a Worcestershire community website:
We rehearsed a couple of things before The Queen arrived - three lines from J.R.R. Tolkien who said "Any corner of Worcestershire is home to me, as no other part of the world is", set to Elgar's tune of Land of Hope and Glory:
Worcestershire is our Shire,
Hill and vale and tree,
Every corner of this Shire is home to me.

And the National Anthem. The three lines were sung three times during the performance.
The line "Hill and vale and tree" (actually a half line) is from the hymn 'For the beauty of the earth' made famous by John Rutter, words by Folliot Sandford Pierpoint (1835-1917). As for the rest, it is derived from a remark by Tolkien in a letter to his son Michael, dated 18th March 1941, discussing his maternal relations, the Suffields, who were from the West Midlands and in particular Worcestershire.
Though a Tolkien by name, I am a Suffield by tastes, talents, and upbringing, and any corner of that country (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is.
Number 44 in: Humphrey Carpenter ed.,
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien,  George Allen & Unwin, 1981.


Inside an illuminated manuscript

I have not been to Chartres Cathedral since its restoration. Medieval churches were a riot of colour. Not the "gothic" gloom of today.
"You could say that we are taking a risk by transforming something which is admired and loved by so many people," said Gilles Fresson, the historian overseeing the work for the rectorate of Chartres cathedral. "But you could also say that we are putting our trust in the people who first conceived this beautiful place. People sometimes think of Gothic architecture as dark and sombre, but that is not the way that the original architects and masons saw their work. Cathedrals were originally intended as a way of gaining a glimpse of paradise on earth. They were designed to be ethereal buildings, temples of light."
Charles Cole's photos of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, reveal something of this effect.

When the Triplex isn't enough

A few weeks ago I had occasion to mention the Roman Gradual. The Monks of Solesmes are responsible for the modern edition. For various technical reasons [insert flannel] to do with new discoveries in the correct interpretation of the notation of plainchant, they also produce the same book with the neumes (the signs) from the earliest manuscripts added. This is called the Graduale Triplex – because it records the notation of the manuscripts of Laon, St Gall and Einsiedeln. The introit for the Mass of Christmas during the Day looks like this:

(Credit to: Karen Thöle of Mittelalter-Recherche).

But, you know, sometimes I find the Graduale Triplex just doesn't tell me enough. 

On those days I swiftly repair to Charles Cole's post of a list of Semiological Sources. There are links to online facsimiles of all the major chant manuscripts. God bless the internet, and all who sail in her.

On C(utting) C(olouring) D(rawing)

We are starting over...

 It is hard to tell to what extent, if any, this is exaggerated for effect. Since the author is an American priest it is perfectly possible he is closing down the standard programme (oh, all right, program) of sacramental instruction to replace it with something that might actually work.

I  no longer intend to prepare children for First Communion and Confirmation. There will no longer be First Communion and Confirmation classes. How and when will the children receive Communion and Confirmation? They will receive when they are ready.  When are they ready? They are ready when they want the Sacrament. How do we know they want the Sacrament? When they understand it, can tell the pastor what it is and why they want it. If they are not in ongoing religious education and they are not coming to Mass on regular basis, they don’t want the Sacrament.
When I read this I remembered seeing a joke recently that CCD stands for "Cutting Colouring and Drawing". I googled "cutting colouring and drawing ccd" to find out where, but it is buried among a bunch of religious education websites filled with instructions to get the children to, well, cut, colour, and draw.

Higgs boson

The first thing to say about the Higgs boson is that the stress is on the first word. Boson is a thing named after a person, not a person who was Higgs' colleague. More importantly it should never have been called the God particle as Br Consomalgno sj explains.

"The name 'the God particle' was given to it as a joke by Leon Lederman," the Vatican astronomer recalled. "It was basically a provocative title for book he was writing on particle physics. He said that if there was a particle that could exist that could explain all the little things we wanted to explain, it would be a gift from God. It is a metaphor and has nothing to do with theology."

(If you click through to that story you will see a picture of something even harder to find than a Higgs boson – a Jesuit brother in a dog collar).

I watched two videos meant to explain the significance of the possible find. They start from different ends. One goes through everything and then arrives at a discussion of the Higgs field. The other starts with the Higgs field and conveys the same information form there. I learnt a few things and learnt more things I would never understand. I also learnt that young physicists like stop motion animation. Some prefer it digital, some prefer it real.

LHC = Large Hadron Collider.

Plainchant joke

On 22nd November 1903, St Pius X issued Tra le Sollecitudini, an instruction on sacred music.
The ancient traditional Gregorian Chant must, therefore, in a large measure be restored to the functions of public worship, and the fact must be accepted by all that an ecclesiastical function loses none of its solemnity when accompanied by this music alone.
Today, 9th July 2012, I reckon it is a safe bet that in most parishes you will never hear Gregorian Chant. And this is not because they are getting by on a diet of Palestrina and Mozart. (Nor because it isn't Sunday). Tra le Sollecitudini seems to be wasted ink. The Vatican website does not even have an English version.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology of Catholic liturgical books, the parts of the Mass to be sung by the people (or by the choir on behalf of the people) are printed in a book called the Roman Gradual.

Q: Why is it called the Roman Gradual?
A: Because it is being implemented slowly.

(A post on The Chant Café warned me I might have to assert copyright to this joke, which I have been making for a few years now).

A man who once met a woman who had known Beethoven has just died

George Isserlis (father of the cellist) died on 25th June 2012. From the Telegraph obituary:
Thus, in 1923 George Isserlis landed in Vienna — where he met a 102-year-old hausfrau who had known Beethoven when she was a little girl (and hated him).
Mme Calment (the oldest human who ever lived, patriarchs excepted) said she once saw Van Gogh buying paints in her uncle's shop in Arles in 1888. Nor did she think much of the famous artist.

Our friends the Cane Toads

As a rule of thumb I don't watch online videos over ten minutes and from four minutes onwards I am less and less likely to click play. I also am not a big fan of ad hoc debates where at least one of the parties has barely a clue, nor do I particularly like watching ambushes.

But this is a really good job. Some ladies in support of the feral US Nuns* were holding a protest outside the Cathedral Church of St Augustine in Kalamazoo, Michigan. One of them has two theology degrees and 16 years teaching experience (only some of it?) at collegiate level. With a video camera running (held by a friend of hers) she begins a discussion with the Parochial Vicar. It lasts 18 minutes.

He doesn't make mincemeat of her. He's too gentle. But it is quite a show. I found it at What Does the Prayer Really Say? so in case the video after the break dies you may find a replacement from links there.

*So far as I know this is an Australianism. You know what feral animals are like, good things gone wild in a new environment?  - a great metaphor for whacky sisters.

NLM on Cathedral Liturgy

When I lived in London I used to visit Westminster Cathedral regularly.  One afternoon I heard Gregorian chant coming over the speakers. It was not piped music but actual live singing of the Divine Office. A friend of mine who knows these things remarked that (a) all Cathedrals are supposed to have public recitation of the Divine Office and (b) Westminster is pretty much the only Cathedral in the world that does. When in Rome I have attended Vespers at the Basilica of the the Holy Cross in Jerusalem* and again at the Basilica of the Floating Ceiling. In the former case it might only have been happening because I turned up on the Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross. The point is that my friend is pretty much right.
*(Despite the name this church is in Rome.)

Anyway the New Liturgical Movement blog has an essay on the subject.

I have said this several times in the past, but most American cathedrals are essentially overgrown parish churches, and this paradigm has so ensconced itself in our liturgical consciousness that many bishops see their cathedrals as model parish churches for their diocese.

It's one of those rules nobody keeps.

(I am pretty sure New Liturgical Movement can be translated by something better than Novus Liturgicus Motus).