Solemnitas Sancti Joannis Baptistae

Hypothoses Non Fingo has a post on St. John the Baptist's feast day, which is tomorrow.

Gloria Patri

When Carissima and I began using Latin in the liturgy, we started with the Gloria Patri. This is a good place to start for three reasons:

1. It's short and easy.

2. There are two translations of this prayer into English, and when you pray the Office in English with others, half of your group prays the old version, the other half prays the new, both halves stammer, stop, and look at each other. Yuck! Latin solves this problem; in the Latin, there is only one version of this doxology.

3. Both English translations, the old and the new, are simply terrible. When a friend of mine was converting to Catholicism some years ago, he asked me what the prayer meant. Not knowing Latin at the time, I could not answer him.

The old translation is: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The new translation is: Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

The original is: Gloria Patri et Filio*, et Spiritui Sancto./ Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,* et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

So what's up with that "world without end" in the older English version? It turns out that "world" used to mean age. It comes from the Old English "were-old" or man-age, i.e. lifetime. "Were" as in were-wolf meant man; it is cognate with Latin "vir" which means the same. So in a sense, "world without end" is not such a bad translation of "in saecula saeculorum".

The original Latin is hard to translate. What else is new? But both of the approved English translations are frankly bizarre. And the reason, I believe, that they are so bizarre, is that in the Latin there is only one verb, "erat", shared over both of the prayer's sentences and all four of the prayer's clauses. This sort of thing very rarely happens in English, and the translators just didn't know how to deal with it.

In Latin, the verb "erat" does duty for both sentences. To make this explicit: Gloria [erat] Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. The translators translated this verb as various forms of the verb "to be": "be", "was", "is", and "shall be". Okay, fine. Every first year student of Latin knows, after all, that "erat" is a form of "esse", right? Right.

And "esse" means "to be", right?

It's not so simple. When "esse" is followed by a dative, it should be translated as "to belong". So "gloria [erat] Patri" means "the glory [belonged] to the Father."

So the prayer should more accurately be translated as: The glory belonged to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it belonged in the beginning, so now, and always, and into ages of ages. Amen.

Now, I am not recommending that you adopt the translation I just made into your celebration of the Divine Office. It is not, after all, approved by the Church, and adding any third translation to the already confusing mix cannot be helpful. And moreover, there is no need. Just pray it in Latin!

And if the Latin is mere gibberish to you, well, it still can't be worse than the English, can it?

Liturgia Latine

How should we implement the directives found in Sacrosanctum Concilium in our celebration of the Liturgy?

For those of us fortunate enough to know Latin, the answer is simple. We need only pray the Divine Office with one of the Latin breviaries, available on-line. But for those of us who are yet learning Latin, or who celebrate with others who don't know Latin, what should we do?

I celebrate Lauds and sometimes Matins alone in the morning, before my family wakes up, and I pray them silently in Latin. But every evening, we celebrate Vespers together, and my wife does not know Latin.

So we agreed to replace some of the more repetitive texts of the Divine Office with their Latin versions. We started simply with the Gloria Patri which ends each psalm and canticle. After we mastered the text, we began chanting it, using the version found at the end of the Asperges, which we got from the Adoremus Hymnal. A few months later we moved to the Pater Noster, first saying it and then chanting it. Now we've added the introduction and conclusion, and we've just started the Magnificat, still spoken, not yet chanted.

It has really surprised me how easy all these things were to do, and how rewarding they have been.

Sancti Antonii Lilia

The Whapsters have an excellent post on Saint Anthony's Lilies here.

Interprete Maria

Last Saturday was the memoria of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was blessed to be able to pray the Matins for this memoria at the Jumonville Retreat Center in western Pennsylvania. So I was meditating on the mystery of Mary's immaculate heart when I read psalm 131(132), and I was struck by the psalm's antiphon, "Deus meus, in simplicitate cordis mei, laetus obtuli universa," which translated means, "My God, joyful I have offered all things in the simplicity of my heart."

Keep in mind that this psalm is not proper to this memoria. It was just a happy accident. If it had been intended to be a reference to Mary, the subject of the antiphon would have been "laeta" and not "laetus." Nevertheless, the parallel to Mary struck me, and I did something I had never done before nor heard of anyone doing. I prayed the psalm through Mary's voice.

The Latin text of the psalm can be found here. You no doubt have an English translation of this psalm within easy reach, but indulge me to retranslate it for you from the Latin, because in Latin, the words for "ark," "Sion," and "lantern" are feminine, which make it far more evocative of the Mother of our Lord.

1 Remember, O Lord, David
and all his meekness,
2 for he has sworn to the Lord,
a vow he swore to the Mighty One of Jacob:

3 "I shall not enter into the tent of my house,
I shall not climb into the bed of my cover,
4 I shall not give slumber to my eyes
and to my eyelids dormition,
5 until I find a place for the Lord,
a tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob."

6 Behold we have heard that she was in Ephrata,
we found her in the plains of Jaar.
7 Let us walk into his tent,
May we worship at the footstool of his feet.

8 Rise, O Lord, into thy rest,
Thou and the ark of thy strength.
9 Let thy priests wear justice,
and may thy saints jump up and down.
10 Because of David thy servant
mayest thou not avert the face of thy christ.

11 The Lord has sworn truth to David
and will not withdraw from her:
"One from the fruit of thy womb
will I place upon thy chair.
12 If thy children will keep my covenant
and my testimonies, which I will teach them,
their children into the age
shall sit upon thy chair."

13 For the Lord has chosen Sion,
he has desired her as a dwelling for himself:
14 "She shall be my rest into the age of an age;
here shall I dwell, for I have desired her.

15 Her fare I who bless will bless,
her paupers I will fill with bread.
16 Her priests I will clothe with salvation,
and her saints will jump up and down in exultation.

17 There I will make the horn of David sprout,
I will prepare a lantern for my christ.
18 Her enemies I shall clothe with confusion,
upon him, however, her crown shall bloom."

What must Mary have felt when she prayed this psalm? How would she have reacted to these words, knowing what she knew? Although an in-depth study of this question would require a knowledge of Hebrew (something, alas, that I still lack), I can't quite help but think that the Latin provides us with a clearer window into the world of highly inflected language that English alone is hard-pressed to open to us.