Reasonable Meditation and the Collect for the “Twenty-Fourth” Sunday after Pentecost

The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1635, by Rembrandt van Rijn -- An act of reasonable worship? Kind of...

Lost in Translation #25

In this year of Our Lord 2020, the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost is a Movable Sunday, and as such it is a liturgical mutt: the orations and biblical readings are from the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (which, because of the date of Easter, was not celebrated this year) while the antiphonary (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, and Communion) are repeated from the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost.

The result is a fascinating lesson in how context can shape the interpretation of a text. When hearing this Sunday’s Epistle (1 Thess. 1, 2-10) during the Time after Epiphany, for example, the verse about having just “turned to God from idols” might assume greater prominence, since the Time after Epiphany indirectly continues to celebrate the conversion of the Gentiles that began with the visit of the Magi. But during the apocalyptic leg of the Time after Pentecost, other verses from the same reading, such as Jesus delivering us “from the wrath to come,” will naturally exert a stronger gravitational pull.

One prayer that is fascinating both on its own and in different contexts is the Collect for this Sunday:

Praesta, quáesumus, omnípotens Deus: ut semper rationabilia meditantes, quae tibi sunt plácita, et dictis exsequámur et factis. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Which I translate as:

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that ever meditating upon reasonable things, we may thoroughly carry out the things that are pleasing to Thee both in words and in deeds. Through our Lord.

Exsequamur (“we may thoroughly carry out”) is a robust verb. Sequor means to follow after, chase, or attain-, but because the prefix ex has a perfective force denoting “completely,” “thoroughly,” or “to the end,” the Church is here petitioning for “a complete and generous ‘following out’ of those things that belong to God and His service.” [1]

But the most intriguing word in the prayer is rationabilia (“reasonable things”), for it goes against the grain of our sensibilities. Even though we Catholic Christians maintain that faith and reason are compatible, we tend to put them in two different containers, at least where worship and study are concerned. We act as if “reasonable things” are for the classroom, whereas worship is more for the heart than the mind. And yet here in the midst of our worship is a plea for constant meditation on reasonable things.

What constitutes the rationabilia can be discovered with a little effort. We may infer from the rest of the prayer that at least some of the things found in the category of the reasonable are the things that are pleasing to God and are to be carried out like, we may presume, the double love of God and neighbor or the Ten Commandments. But meditating on reasonable things may involve more than ruminating on things to do like the divine law or works of righteousness. According to some scholars, the term was once synonymous with “spiritual” until its meaning migrated to “reasonable, conformed to the essence of a thing” and spiritalis took its place. [2] By this reading, reasonable things would include objects of the speculative intellect (to put it in Thomistic terms) as well as objects of the practical intellect.

It may sound odd to think of “reasonable” and “spiritual” as synonymous until one considers Romans 12,1:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service.

The Greek logiké latreia (rationabile obsequium or “reasonable service”) captures the fact that Christian latreia or worship is logocentric or centered on the Word (Logos) that is Christ. As Pope Benedict XVI observes, “the celebration is not only a ritual, it is not only a liturgical game, but is intended to be ‘logiké latreia’, a transformation of my existence in the direction of the Logos.” [3] The last clause is key.  Among other things, to be holy or spiritual is to have one’s faculty of reason (ratio) restored into a likeness of the incarnate Logos. Reasonable things are spiritual things because they renew that spiritual entity known as reason.

Benedict also notes that rationabile appears in the Roman Canon, when the faithful pray that God will, as one old translation has it, “bless, approve, ratify, make worthy (rationabile) and acceptable this offering” (the 2011 English edition of the new Missal has “make it spiritual and acceptable”). As the Pope explains:

The Church knows that in the Holy Eucharist Christ’s gift of himself, his true sacrifice, becomes present. However, the Church prays that the community celebrating may truly be united with Christ and transformed; she prays that we may become what we cannot be with our own efforts: a “rational” offering that is acceptable to God. Thus the Eucharistic Prayer interprets St Paul’s words correctly. [4] 

To meditate on God’s reasonable things and to make ourselves a rational, spiritual offering are the gladsome duties of all Christians at all times and in all places, but they take on new meaning and urgency in the shadow of the world’s end. It is reasonable to expect that the final chapter of human history, awash with false prophets and Antichrists, will not be a Golden Age of Reason let alone of Faith. It is reasonable to expect that tyrannical passions, a dictatorship of noise, and Orwellian newspeak will take the place of dispassionate discourse, quiet contemplation, and clear, honest communication. It is reasonable to expect (since it will be an age of persecution) that the few who keep their heads will be blamed by the many who have lost theirs. [5] In short, it is reasonable to expect that during the end times, it will be more difficult to meditate on the reasonable. And that is all the more reason to pray that we may ever meditate upon reasonable things and thoroughly carry out the things that are pleasing to God both in words and in deeds.

[1] Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal (Ursuline College for Women, 1938), 113.

[2] Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum (Dekker, 1963), 18.

[3] http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/209107bdc4.html?eng=y

[4] http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090107.html

[5] If you can keep your head when all about you 

     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

     Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 

     And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

                                             --Rudyard Kipling, “If”

Divine Participation and Human Dangers in the Postcommunion Prayer for the Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost

The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, by Paolo Veronese, (1540s), the subject of this Sunday’s Gospel.

Lost in Translation #24 

The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost inaugurates, if you will, a season within a season within a season. The main season is the time after Pentecost, which corresponds to that period of human history stretching from the first Pentecost to the Last Day. Within that season, beginning around the Eighteenth Sunday, things take on a more eschatological or apocalyptic note. And within that season, beginning on the Twenty -Third Sunday, the antiphonary of the Mass (Introit, Gradual/Alleluia, Offertory and Communion) is frozen: however many Sundays of the Time after Pentecost remain, the Antiphonary stays the same while the rest of the Propers change.

The effect of this freezing is both reassuring and unsettling: reassuring because, as the Introit states, these selections from the Antiphonary emphasize that the Lord thinks thoughts of peace and not of affliction (Jer. 29, 11); unsettling because their repetition implicitly confirms the threat of a real danger. One does not feel the need to remind oneself of the Lord’s peaceful intentions when the birds are chirping and a warm sun is rising over the serene surface of a lake, but one may feel that need in the midst of a violent storm. And the Offertory, “From the depths I have cried out to Thee, O Lord,” (Ps. 129, 1), would suggest that we are not to imagine ourselves in an ideal situation right now.

Danger is the subject of the Postcommunion Prayer of the Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost:

Quáesumus, omnípotens Deus: ut, quos divína tríbuis participatióne gaudére, humánis non sinas subjacére perículis. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

We beseech Thee, almighty God, that Thou wouldst not permit us, whom Thou givest to rejoice in divine participation, to be subject to human dangers. Through our Lord.

Before the Church pleads for freedom from human dangers, she rejoices in divine participation. Since this is a Postcommunion prayer, “divine participation” first and foremost refers to the reception of Holy Communion, for the faithful have just received the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ--or to put it more simply, human persons have just received within the marrow of their being a Divine Person. That is quite a participation. And yet, divine participation begins not with the Eucharist but with the Incarnation. When the priest mixes water and wine during the Offertory rite he prays:

O God, who in creating human nature didst wonderfully dignify it and still more wonderfully restore it, grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, may we be made partakers of His divinity who deigned to be made partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ our Lord, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever. Amen.

And it continues to the end of time. “Even at this moment He is, as man, making representation for my salvation, until He makes me divine by the power of His incarnate manhood,” writes St. Gregory of Nazianzus of Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of God and ever making appeal for us. (Oration 30, 14)

It is therefore appropriate, especially during this apocalyptic leg of the liturgical year, to think of “divine participation” both in terms of the Eucharist as well as of the Resurrection of the dead (which is also the theme of the Gospel reading, Matt. 9, 18-26), when God will be all in all. But in between our current condition and our fully actualized participation in the Godhead lies a host of “human dangers.” In some respects, the expression is a pleonasm: any danger to a human is a human danger, and we are obviously more concerned in this prayer with dangers to us than dangers to, say, armadillos. Still, the addition of the adjective “human” forms a pleasing contrast to the “divine” in “divine participation.” It is an effective rhetorical antithesis.

What is dangerous to humans? We can start with ourselves. In the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent we pray for deliverance from the “imminent dangers of our sins.” Perhaps the old adage exaggerates when it states that we are our own worst enemy, but it is admittedly on to something. And, of course, the snares of the devil (which often exploit our sinful proclivities) would also qualify as dangers to us humans.

Finally, the verb that we have translated as to be “subject to” is subjacere, which literally means “to lie under.” It is a somewhat colorful image. Were we not mindful of liturgical propriety, we might be tempted to translate the petition as “Do not, O Lord, allow us to be thrown under the bus of human dangers.” At the very least it is worth noting that the verb choice is another antithesis; there is an implicit contrast between divine participation, which is a participation in the good that is above, and the perils of being under the thumb of what is bad. May our mingling with the high keep us from succumbing to the low, now and to the very end. Amen.