The Indulgent Collect of the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Pieter Brueghel, The Preaching of John the Baptist (1885)

Lost in Translation #30

The Fourth Sunday of Advent resumes the pattern of Excita or “Stir Up” Collects begun on the Last Sunday after Pentecost and carried over into Advent before the “interruption” of Gaudete Sunday last week:

Excita, quáesumus, Dómine, potentiam tuam, et veni: et magna nobis virtúte succurre; et per auxilium gratiae tuae, quod nostra peccáta praepediunt, indulgentia tuae propitiatiónis accéleret: Qui vivis.

Which I translate as:

Stir up Thy power and come, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and with great might run to our aid; that by the help of Thy grace, Thy merciful forgiveness may accelerate what our sins are impeding. Who livest.

The Collect contains three imperatives. The first and second, “stir up and come,” are lifted verbatim from the Collect of the First Sunday of Advent (which in turn is inspired by Ps. 79, 2). The third, “run to our aid,” is mildly pleonastic, that is, it can be characterized as using more words than are absolutely necessary. I say “mildly,” however, because power (potentia) and might (virtus) are close in meaning but not synonymous. In Christian Latin, virtus has the more specific meaning of “the supernatural force of God which is productive of wonderful effects.” [1] The repetition also adds urgency, as does the use of succurre, which literally means to run under, and denotes rushing to the aid of another. Further, the repeated request for God’s power echoes the yearning of the generations waiting for Christ. “Just as of old, when the pagan world was sunk in degradation,” writes Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, “the Patriarchs prayed for an all-powerful Savior, so in this Collect the Church calls upon the Omnipotence of God to save her children by the might of His grace.” [2] Finally, the repetition of et before and after magna nobis virtute succurre likewise conveys a certain rushed breathlessness.

All told, it is a unique Collect. As Sr. Haessly observes:

In no other of the Sunday Collects do we find three imperatives. On this last Sunday before the feast of Our Lord’s coming, the Church, fearing lest we should miss the fulness of His grace, multiplies her petitions, uttering her desires in varied expressions. First she repeats the prayer made on the first Sunday: “Rouse Thy might, and come.” As if this were not urgent enough, she adds in more persistent tone: “with great might hasten to our assistance” before it is too late. [3]

The second half of the prayer consists of a purpose clause (even though there is no ut). Emphasis is placed on the help of God’s grace by the prominent position of per auxilium gratiae tuae. Again Sr. Haessly: “It is through grace that the first Advent of the Savior is perpetuated” [4] -- that is, carried through into His second Advent (His visitation to our heart [5]) -- and it is through grace that we are prepared for His third Advent (aka, His Second Coming) at the end of time. In the syntax of the prayer, grace is contrasted with what comes next: that which ours sins impede (quod nostra peccata praepediunt). What our sins impede is left undefined, but we can hazard a guess in light of the current season: it is, among other things, progress in being ready for Christ’s coming. There is also a subtle contrast between God’s running to our aid (succurre) and our sins tripping us up: praepedio, which is from the Latin for “in front of the foot,” means to fetter or shackle. The choice of accelero for hasten or accelerate also adds to the pedal motif of the prayer.

Finally, we come to the phrase indulgentia tuæ propitiatiónis, which occurs two other times in the 1962 Roman Missal. Indulgentia means forgiveness, and in at least one case it refers specifically to the forgiveness of sins committed after baptism. [6] Providentially, this Sunday’s Gospel describes St. John the Baptist “preaching the baptism of penance for the remissions of sins.” (Luke 3, 3). John’s baptisms were not efficacious in removing sins, but thanks be to God, our sacraments of baptism and confession are. The faithful can therefore fruitfully use this Collect as a reminder to be shriven before they celebrate the great feast of the Nativity. May the remission of our sins and the accelerant of grace quickly return us to the path that makes straight the path of the Lord.

[1] Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum (Dekker, 1963), 128.

[2] Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal (Ursuline College for Women, 1938), 29.

[3] Haessly, 29.

[4] Haessly, 30.

[5] See, for instance, the Collect of the Third Sunday of Advent.

[6] Missa ad postulandam continentiam. See Ellebracht, 156.

The Accommodating Collect of the Third Sunday of Advent

We pray for an audience with a King, and a visit.

Lost in Translation #29

A simple but beautiful Collect gathers our prayers for the Third Sunday of Advent:

Aurem tuam, quáesumus, Dómine, précibus nostris accómmoda: et mentis nostrae ténebras gratia tuae visitatiónis illustra: Qui vivis. 

Which I translate as:

Accommodate Thine ear to our prayers, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and enlighten the darkness of our minds by the grace of Thy visitation: Who livest.

The Collect joins those of the First and Fourth Sundays of Advent in addressing God the Son; common during Advent, this address is rare during other seasons. [1] In another way, the Collect breaks rank. For three Sundays in a row, the Collect has begun with Excita or “Stir up,” but that streak ends here. The desire for the Messiah to rouse up and come, however, is transferred rather than suppressed. “Stir up, O Lord, Thy might and come to save us” (Psalm 79, 2-3), the inspiration behind the Collects of the First and Fourth Sundays of Advent, appears in this Sunday’s Gradual and Alleluia. Rather than the imagery of rousing, the prayer employs the language of accommodation and illumination. While our hearts are stirred up by Gaudete Sunday’s theme of rejoicing, the Collect strikes a more irenic note.

The Collect may not incorporate Psalm 79, 2, but it does draw from another Biblical convention. “Inclining one’s ear,” which is no doubt the inspiration behind the English expression “to bend an ear,” is used several times in the Old Testament, including invocations to God. [2] In the Vulgate translation, the idiom is translated with inclino as the verb. In this Sunday’s Collect, the Church uses the less common accommodo, which literally means “to fit or adapt one thing to another.” Hence the prayer asks God not simply to bend an ear to our prayers, but to reshape His ear in such a way that it conforms to our prayers.

Another biblical influence is evident in the choice of visitatio. Saint Peter writes of the “day of visitation” (1 Pet. 2, 12) and the “ time of visitation” (ibid. 5, 6), presumably with respect to the glorious return of the Son of Man. Here the Church speaks of the illuminating grace of visitation enlightening our darkened minds. As we have mentioned before, the Advent and Christmas seasons celebrate three comings: the coming of Our Lord to Bethlehem, His coming into our hearts, and His coming at the end of time. This Sunday’s Collect indirectly references the middle coming and indirectly alludes to the third.

Some Collects, such as this one, contain two separate petitions, one in the protasis and one in the apodosis (the first and second parts). The petition of the protasis is for accommodation; the petition of the apodosis is for illumination. Note that the author has put both of these imperatives (accommoda and illustra) at the end of each part. This figure of speech is called a homoioteleuton: in pairing the two words, it more forcefully brings them to the reader’s or listener’s attention. How can we possibly translate this emphasis into English?

The Collect begs for an audience with God so that He may accommodate our prayers. Prayer is an important theme of this Sunday: both the Introit and the Epistle implore us to make our petitions known to God. The Collect uses the word preces (plural) to denote prayer. Prex is different from other Latin words for prayer such as oratio, votum, and supplicatio insofar as it does not have a public meaning (the other words were originally tied to formal events or ceremonies). [3] And the author may have simply acted out of customary usage when he put the word in the plural, but even if he did, both the plural voice and the choice of the “private” prex remind us of the mystagogical function of the Collect in the Mass, which is “to collect” the myriad private prayers of the individuals who have assembled for the sacrifice and to unite them into a single coordinated public petition. Whatever our hopes, fears, and wishes we bring with us to this Sunday, they will be made better by the gentle and illuminating grace of Christ when He visits our hearts.

[1] For more on the Christocentric prayers of Advent, see Peter Kwasniewski’s 2016 article on the subject.

[2] See Ps. 16, 6; 70, 2; 85, 1; 87, 3; 101, 3.

[3] Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal (Ursuline College for Women, 1938), 125.

The Heartfelt Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent

Flemish school, St. John the Baptist, ca. 1600

Lost in Translation #28

For the third week in a row, the 1962 Roman Missal uses an Excita or “Stir Up” Collect during the Sunday Mass:

Excita, Dómine, corda nostra ad praeparandas Unigéniti tui vias: ut per ejus adventum, purificátis tibi méntibus servíre mereámur. Qui tecum vivit et regnat.

Which I translate as:

Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thine only begotten Son; that through His coming we may deserve to be in Thy service with purified minds. Who with Thee liveth and reigneth.

On the Last Sunday after Pentecost, the Church prayed to the Father to stir up our wills. On the First Sunday of Advent, she prayed to the Son to stir up His power and come. Now, during the Second Sunday of Advent, she prays to the Father to stir up our hearts in preparation for “the ways of” His Son. The phrasing has a nice seasonal ring to it: preparing the ways of the Only-Begotten is evocative of the Forerunner of Christ, who figures prominently during Advent. Like St. John the Baptist, we are called to prepare the ways of the Lord (Luke 1, 76).

The order of Collects also makes sense. Last week we inaugurated Advent by asking the Son to come; this week we get ready for His arrival. But instead of asking God to stir up our wills as we did two weeks ago (during the Last Sunday after Pentecost), we now ask Him to stir up our hearts. Because the Last Sunday after Pentecost betokens the end of time, it is appropriate that we prayed then for more willpower to help us rise to the challenge of the final struggle. Now, however, we want our hearts to be ready, which I take to include not only our will but our desires.

This Sunday’s Postcommunion Prayer provides an excellent example of a heart that is ready: it is one that has learned to look down on earthly things and love the heavenly (terrena despicere et amare caelestia). The often misunderstood concept of contemptus mundi or disdain for the world simply means a realignment of one’s subjective desires with the objective hierarchy of goods. The heart that has its act together is the heart that loves the higher goods more and the lower goods less. As St. Augustine writes:

Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally. (On Christian Doctrine, 1.27.28)

Such a heart, for example, is ready to renounce physical safety at the drop of a hat to profess its faith in Jesus Christ, because it loves Christ far more and is not encumbered by an excessive attachment to other things.

St Augustine, by Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, ca. 1745

Finally, the main petition, which requests that we may deserve to be in the service of God the Father with purified minds, is distinctive in two ways. First, whereas some Roman orations ask for pure minds (mentes purae), others such as this Collect ask for purified minds (mentes purificatae), thereby placing emphasis on the purging process and not simply the end result. During Advent we are in a special kind of training that, we pray, has purgative results. Second, instead of asking to serve God, the Collect asks to merit (mereamur) serving God. Serving God is an honor and a privilege, of which we must ask to be deserving since our own merits fall short. In the succinct wording of this Sunday’s Secret: “no influence from our merits is sufficient (nulla suppetunt suffragia meritorum).”

The Tempestuous Collect for the First Sunday of Advent

James Tissot, Jesus Stilling the Tempest (1886-1894)

Lost in Translation #27

The First Sunday of Advent and of the liturgical year begins with the second “Stir up” Collect in a row:

Excita, quǽsumus, Dómine, poténtiam tuam, et veni: ut ab imminéntibus peccatórum nostrórum perículis, te mereámur protegénte éripi, te liberánte salvári: Qui vivis et regnas.

Which I translate as:

Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that from the imminent dangers of our sins, we may deserve to be rescued by Thy protection and saved by Thy deliverance: Who livest and reignest. 

Although the Roman orations reflect a Roman rhetorical tradition often distinct in diction and syntax from the Latin translations of the Bible, this Collect draws directly from Psalm 79 (80), 2, “Excita, Dómine, poténtiam tuam et veni, ut salvos fácias nos”,  that is “Stir up, O Lord, Thy might, and come to save us.”

The traditional subtitle for Psalm 79 is “a prayer for the church in tribulation.” As St Robert Bellarmine explains, the psalmist prays for God in this verse to stir up His might because it looks as if His might is buried when God allows us “to be harassed by our unjust persecutors.” Last week, the Church prayed that God stir up our wills to make a good end; this week, she prays that God stir up His power to make a good beginning in the midst of a bad situation.

And not just God in general, but God the Son. Whereas last week’s Collect was addressed to the Father, this week’s is addressed to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (see the ending “Thou who livest.”) Pleading with the Son to come makes sense during the season of Advent, as we liturgically relive the ages before His Nativity and beg for His arrival in Bethlehem; this “re-enactment,” in turn, helps us prepare for His coming in our hearts and His coming at the end of time. The Collects of Advent reinforce the “B.C.” aspect of the season in a delightfully subtle way. Regardless of whether they address the Father or the Son, all Sunday Advent Collects avoid mentioning the Holy Name of Jesus, even in the conclusion. The Jewish people knew for centuries that the Messiah was coming, but no one knew His proper name until the Angel Gabriel revealed it to the Blessed Virgin Mary. We get a taste of what it was like to live before Christ and not knowing His Holy Name.

And there is another dimension to invoking the Son with excita that brings us back to the psalmist’s plea during a time of tribulation. Excitare is the verb used by St. Mark to describe the Apostles waking up Jesus as He slept in the midst of a storm: “And He was in the hinder part of the ship, sleeping upon a pillow; and they awake Him (et excitant eum), and say to Him: "Master, doth it not concern Thee that we perish?” (4, 38)

The scene is almost comical, with the Apostles’ question coming across as passive aggressive. This Sunday’s Collect is a little more upfront. Wake up, Son of God, it demands, and come! You are sleeping, and the ship that is Your Church is perishing. The Barque of St. Peter, as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI remarked a few years ago, “has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing.” [2] Of course, we must admit that we deserve all this bilge: the Collect identifies as the chief danger not an external threat but our own sins. Yet that does not make our situation any less tempestuous, and so we pray to be rescued and saved.

The end of the world, which remains on our minds during Advent, will also be a tempestuous time. In this Sunday's Gospel, Our Lord predicts that upon the earth there will be 

distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves: men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world (Luke 21, 25-26).

And so, in those moments when we are prone to fear and apt to doubt the “sleeping Lord,” let us recall the end of St. Mark's story:

And rising up, He rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: "Peace, be still." And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm. And He said to them: "Why are you fearful? have you not faith yet?" (4, 39-40)

[1] St. Robert Bellarmine, SJ A Commentary on the Book of Psalms (Preserving Christian Publications, 2008),197.

[2] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/benedict-xvi-cardinal-meisner-died-a-cheerful-man-71628.

The Stirring Collect for the Last Sunday after Pentecost

Franceso Hayez, Distruzione del Tempio di Gerusalemme (1867)

Lost in Translation #26 

As can be seen from the Gospel for this Mass, the Last Sunday after Pentecost corresponds to the Last Days of history. According to the Church Fathers, Matthew 24, 15-25, combines a prophecy of the destruction of the Holy Temple (which would take place in A.D. 70) with a prophecy of Doomsday, when the world will be dissolved in a globe of fire and replaced with a new Heaven and a new earth. The Last Sunday after Pentecost anticipates the Second Coming of Our Lord.

But so in a way does Advent (the season immediately following this apocalyptic crescendo of the liturgical year), for Adventus or “coming” 1) remembers the first coming of Our Lord to Bethlehem, 2) implores His coming into our hearts now, and 3) prepares for His coming in glory at the end of time. The last and first parts of the 1962 Church calendar thus overlap, functioning as two interlocking clasps that connect the dazzling necklace of the year’s feasts and seasons.

One of the more interesting components of this clasp are the Collects. During Advent, the Church betrays impatience in her opening prayers: three out of four of the Sunday Collects of this season beg the Lord to rouse Himself up (excitare) and come. But that impatience is so impatient that it cannot even wait for the season of Advent: the Last Sunday after Pentecost has an excita Collect as well:

Excita, quáesumus, Dómine, tuórum fidelium voluntátes: ut divíni óperis fructum propensius exsequentes; pietátis tuae remedia majóra percipiant. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Which I translate as:

Stir up the wills of Thy faithful people, we beseech Thee, O Lord: that as they more eagerly strive after the fruit of divine work, they may receive greater remedies of Thy loving kindness. Through.

We will examine the use of excita more closely in the coming weeks. For now, it is sufficient to note the word order. By placing this imperative at the head of the statement, without fanfare or introduction, the Church emphasizes her impatience. O Lord, make haste to help us--now!

The Collect introduces us to a theme found in the Epistle, namely, “being fruitful in every good work” (Col. 1, 10). Here, however, the Church speaks of the fruit of a divine work, perhaps to emphasize the agency of God in making our works righteous and fruitful, for it is God who gives the increase (1 Cor. 3, 7). Reinforcing the fruit imagery is propensius (“more eagerly”), which is derived from the verb propendeo, to hang down. Although the adverb is applied to the faithful and not to the fruit of divine work, the mind is nonetheless inclined to think of low-hanging fruit, ready for the taking. It is almost the Garden of Eden in reverse: with a will properly roused and weighted towards the Good, we will be eager for the right fruit, and from it we will receive diving healing rather than punishment.

But in order to receive “greater remedies,” do we need to obtain the fruit or merely seek after it? Last week we saw how exsequi is a robust verb by virtue of the perfective force of ex. Usually in the Roman orations, as was the case with last week’s Collect, it implies an action that has been completed. But exsequi can also mean to seek after, and I agree with Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht that that is its meaning here. [1]

Either way, whether we are taking fruit or about to take it, we are engaged in an activity of harvesting. As St. Mary Gonzaga Haessly notes, 

On this last Sunday of the Ecclesiastical year, the Church prays God to rouse the wills of the faithful, in order that they may reap the harvest, as it were, of all the good things that He has worked in them during the year. [2]

And, we may add, it is a good idea to petition for a roused-up will near the end of a harvest or a long journey, when our spirits are prone to flag or grow weary. Although such a reaction is understandable, it must (at least in the spiritual life) be resisted. Whether it is the end of the world or the end of one’s life, the devil will make a last-ditch effort to entrap souls and drag them to Hell. With the finish line in sight and the Enemy on our tail, now is the time not to relax the reins but apply the spurs. For only he that shall persevere to the end shall be saved.

[1] Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum (Dekker, 1963), 101. The English edition of the new Missal likewise interprets exsequentes in this prayer as “striving.” Unlike my interpretation, however, it then goes on to translate divíni óperis fructum in terms of human agency: “that striving more eagerly to bring your divine work to fruitful completion.” (See the Collect for the Thirty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time). 

[2] Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal (Ursuline College for Women, 1938), 170.