The Praeceptis salutaribus

Lost in Translation #163

After finishing the Canon, the priest introduces the Lord’s Prayer. He calls the assembly to pray with the familiar Oremus and then says or intones:

Praeceptis salutaribus moniti,

Et divina institutione formati,

Audemus dicere.

Which I translate as:

Taught by salutary precepts,

And formed by divine instruction,

We dare to say:

Transformative Teachings

The exhortation’s structure is redolent of the synonymous parallelisms found in the Psalms, whereby the second line reinstates or reiterates the first. For example, in Psalm 2, 1, the Psalmist cries out:

Why have the Gentiles raged,

And why have the people devised vain things?

The diction of the exhortation goes back to the third century. In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (appropriately enough), St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) writes:

Qui inter cetera salutaria sua monita et praecepta divina, quibus populo suo consulit ad salutem, etiam orandi ipse formam dedit: ipse quid precaremur monuit et instruxit. [1]

Which I translate as:

Among His other salutary teachings and divine precepts with which He counsels His people for their salvation, He Himself also gave a form of prayer: He Himself taught and instructed what we should pray for.

Jungmann surmises that the Praeceptis salutaribus has the same fourth-century editor or author as the Roman Canon, whoever he may be. [2]

And the wording is somewhat distinctive. Instead of more obvious choices for the verb “to teach” such as docere or erudio or praecipio, the text has monere. Derived from mens, the Latin word for mind, it means “to call to mind,” but it is often used to admonish or warn. That fits well with Our Lord’s precepts, for as with the Ten Commandments, not choosing to embrace them is ominously choosing curse and death. (see Deut. 30, 19) Fittingly as well, these precepts are called “salutary,” for they bring health and salvation to all who follow them.

The second line also uses a distinctive word for teaching. The word institutio poses a challenge to translators, for it is not an “institution” in the sense of a corporate or legal establishment, but an education or induction into a higher mode.

And the effect of this induction is transformative, for we are formed (formati) by it. In our previous study of the Roman orations, we noted on several occasions how the prayers constitute what Pope Benedict XVI calls a “school of love” that reshapes and reorients our desires (see here and here). Now, in the Ordinary of the Mass, we see the same powerful claim being said about Christ’s teachings in general, and about the Lord’s Prayer in particular. Oddly, not a single pre-conciliar hand Missal that I consulted translates the past particle formati correctly, opting instead for “following” – as if the emphasis were on obedience rather than formation. [3] Happily, the 2011 English translation of the new Mass has “And formed by divine teaching.”

The Novus Ordo

There are two curious aspects to the Praeceptis salutaribus in the 1970 Missal. The first is the omission of Oremus at the beginning. When Pope Paul VI saw the first draft of the new Mass, he asked: “Why omit the ‘Let us pray’ before the Our Father?” Bugnini writes that the Consilium rejected the Holy Father’s “implied suggestion” on the grounds that “ ‘Let us pray’ is an invitation to prayer, but such an invitation is already contained in the exhortation that precedes the Our Father.” [4]

Second, although the original wording of the exhortation remains unchanged, there appears to be a strange international collusion against translating it accurately. Specifically, no official “vernacular” translation that I consulted keeps the text’s synonymous parallelism (with a past participle as the backbone of each clause) or makes an effort to convey its unusual diction; and every official translation that I consulted changes the adjective “saving” or “salutary” to the noun “Savior” or even, as in the German, “Lord and Redeemer” (see the Appendix of Modern Translations below). I do not know the origin of the latter preference, except to note that a Fr. Bonifatius Fischer wrote an obscure article in 1950 arguing that praeceptis salutaribus can also mean praeceptis Salvatoris (“precepts of the Savior”) [5], and that in his 1960 proposed “sample Mass,” Fr. H.A. Reinhold recommends the following:

Let us pray:

Obeying our Saviour’s command

And taught by his divine institution,

We dare to say: [6]

There is no mention of the issue by the Second Vatican Council, in the documents of the Magisterium, or in Annibale Bugnini’s memoir. Whatever the reason, the new formulation is accurate but unfortunate: accurate because our Savior did indeed command us to say the Lord’s prayer; unfortunate because it erases a verbal link between the Our Father and the Preface, which uses the same word (salutare). And as we will see in a later essay, the two prayers stand in a complementary relationship with each other.

Moreover, the replacement flattens the very Christian concept of a salutary, root-and-branch, transformative observance of a precept into a mere act of obedience. In the words of Fr. Ernest Fortin,

“The truth which the Christian is persuaded to accept is not a truth in any ordinary sense of the word but… a beatifying or saving truth, which is fully appropriated only when it issues in those deeds to which it points as its fulfillment.” [7]

All the new translations that I reviewed follow this turn in other ways as well, choosing words like “obedience” and “following” instead of words that more robustly point to teaching and formation. The problem with this shift is that in moving away from a transformative view of justification, it creates a vacuum for the Lutheran forensic view of justification, the so-called doctrine of imputed righteous.

One translation is egregious for a different reason. The Spanish in the Missal for Mexico is:

Fieles a la recomendación del Salvador,

y siguiendo su divina enseñanza,

nos atrevemos a decir: [8]

Which I translate as:

Faithful to the Savior’s recommendation,

And following his divine teaching,

We dare to say:

As we have seen, moniti can mean “advise” insofar as it connotes rebuking or admonishing, but the Biblical context rules out this possibility. Introducing the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says to His disciples, “When you pray, say…” with “say” in the imperative voice. (Luke 11, 2) For that matter, how many times in the Gospels does Jesus Christ “recommend”? Conversely, how many times does He say: “Amen, Amen, I say unto you” or “Others have said, ‘Do this,’ but I say unto you, “Do that’”?

Giusto di Menabuoi, The Creation of the World; detail of the dome fresco in the Baptistery of Padua, 1378. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Yukio Sanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

The Audacity

Thankfully, every one of the consulted translations faithfully renders the final line, audemus dicere or “we dare to say.” The notion that praying the Our Father is a daring act comes from the Patristic era.

“Daily we dare to say” (audemus quotidie dicere),” Augustine says in a sermon: “‘Thy kingdom come.’” [9] And Jerome writes:

[Our Lord] so instructed His Apostles that, daily at the sacrifice of His body, believers may be bold enough to say [audeant loqui], “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…” [10]

The audacity of reciting the Lord’s Prayer lies chiefly in its first two words. As Blessed Columba Marmion explains, out of sheer love and generosity the First Person of the Holy Trinity has willed for all eternity to extend to us His Paternity, to recognize us as His adopted sons so that we can be filled with holiness and share in His eternal happiness. But although it is in accordance with our nature to call God our Creator, it is not natural for a creature to call his Creator “Father.” That privilege is the result of a purely supernatural act of adoption. “By nature God has only one Son,” Marmion observes; “by love He wills to have an innumerable multitude.” [11]

Thus, in calling God “our Father,” we accept the calling of divine adoption and the obligations that it entails. And hence, we should approach this divine intimacy with a healthy sense of fear and trembling. In the words of the Apostolic Constitutions (ca. 400):

Pray [the Lord’s Prayer] thrice in a day, preparing yourselves beforehand, that you may be worthy of the adoption of the Father; lest, when you call Him Father unworthily, you be reproached by Him, as Israel once His first-born son was told: “If I be a Father, where is my glory? And if I be a Lord, where is my fear?” (Malachi 1, 6) For the glory of fathers is the holiness of their children, and the honour of masters is the fear of their servants, as the contrary is dishonour and confusion. For says He: “Through you my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles.” (Is. 52, 5) [12]

“The glory of fathers is the holiness of their children.” If we wish to call God our Father, then we need to resemble Him like a son who is the spitting image of his dad. And the more we resemble Him, the worthier we are to receive His Son in Holy Communion.

Appendix of Modern Translations

The official French translation is:

Comme nous l’avons appris du Sauveur,

et selon son commandement,

nous osons dire: [13]

Which I translate as:

As we have learned it from the Savior,

And according to His commandment,

We dare to say:

The official Italian is:

Obedienti alla parola del Salvatore

e formati al suo divino insegnamento,

osiamo dire: [14]

Which I translate as:

Obedient to the word of the Savior,

And formed by His divine teaching,

We dare to say:

The German translation is:

Dem Wort unseres Herm uns Erlösers gehorsam,

Und getreu seiner Auftrag,

Wagen wir zu sprechen:

Which I translate as:

Obedient to the word of our Lord and Redeemer,

And faithful to His command,

We dare to say:

And the 2011 English translation is:

At the Savior’s command,

And formed by divine teaching,

We dare to say: [15]

Michael Foley is the author of Lost in Translation: Meditating on the Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite (Angelico Press, 2023).

Notes

[1] Cyprian, Treatise IV.2.

[2] Jungmann, vol. 2, 56-57.

[3] That includes the Father Lasance Missal, the St. Andrew’s Daily Missal, the Abbot Cabrol Missal, the Saint Joseph Daily Missal, the Baronius Press Missal, and the Marian Missal.

[4] Bugnini, 380.

[5] Bonifatius Fischer, O.S.B., “Praeceptis salutaribus moniti,” Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 1 (1950), 124-127.

[6] Reinhold, 96.

[7] Ernest L. Fortin, “Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric,” in Collected Essays, vol. 1 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996), 85.

[8] Misal Romano (2017), 118.

[9] Augustine, Sermon 110.5.

[10 Jerome, Against the Pelagians III.15.

[11] Bl. Columba Marmion, Christ the Life of the Soul (Tacoma, WA: Angelico Press, 2012), 24, emphases added.

[12] Apostolic Constitutions 7.24.

[13] Missel Romain, 3rd. ed. [MAME Desclée, 2001], 512.

[14] Messale Romano, 3rd ed. [Fond.Ne Di Religione Santi Francesco D'assisi E Ca, 2020], 444.

[15] The Roman Missal, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2011), 336.