Short shrift

      "Had Michel been spared the mutilation which was the cause of his dismissal, Paul would have had no difficulty in confessing his part in the accident, for in that event he would have derived no benefit from it, and judgment following his confession would have involved him in no loss.  But he knew now what the sentence would be:  'Find your brother and restore to him all that is his.  Without restitution there can be no forgiveness.'
     "And to do this—to admit his guilt when such admission meant the surrender of the fruits of that guilt—this was out of the question.
     "He had stolen from Michel once, when they were boys. . . .  He had taken a ring their mother had given Michel on his birthday; Michel, believing it lost, was inconsolable.  Paul hid it among his things; his pride got the better of his conscience, and he pretended to himself that he had ‘found’ it, until his mother discovered it, and drew the truth from him:  a type of surgery for which she had a painful aptitude.  She would have attained, he often thought, just renown as a confessor.  Since she could not fufill that role herself, she packed him off to the Abbé Courtot, from whom he received exceedingly short shrift.
     "'You are to restore the ring to your brother.  Do not merely put it back where you found it, but give it to Michel himself.  Tell him that you took it and are sorry.  When you have done this, return to me, and I will give you absolution:  not before.'
     "Would he receive other treatment in the present case, from the Abbé Courtot, or any priest to whom he made known the facts?  And except he made known the facts, would he have peace of mind while he lived?
     "Clearly, he must either confess his sin, or forget it.  The one he would not do, the other he could not. . . .
     ". . . no priest living would have credited such an argument, and neither could he.
     "Plainly, there was no escape from this dilemma except to cease the practice of religion, and this he did. . . ."

     Michael Kent, The mass of brother Michel (Milwaukee, WI:  The Bruce Publishing Company, 1942), 89-90 (chap. 5 (“As the green bay tree”), iii), underscoring mine.  Paul's sin was a sin of omission; he chose not to warn Michel of the approach of the boar.
     The OED does not recognize this "severe mercy" as the original meaning of "short shrift" (though it's an excellent one):  "originally a brief space of time allowed for a criminal to make his or her confession before execution; hence, a brief respite".

Dialogue is all the rage

     "The word 'dialogue' is in fashion; I regret this, not having myself any of the virtues of the dialoguist, which are not to hear what is said to one, or to take [what is said to one] in a sense that renders it easy to refute."

     "Le mot dialogue est à la mode; je le regrette, n’ayant moi-même aucune des vertus d’un bon dialoguiste, qui sont de ne pas écouter ce qu’on lui dit, ou de le prendre dans un sens qui le rende facile à réfuter."

     Étienne Gilson, "Le dialogue difficile," in Les tribulations de Sophie:  essais d’art et de philosophie (Paris:  Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 103.  I was put on to this by the description to the recent translation of this book by James G. Colbery:  "the virtues of a skilled dialoguer ... are not to listen to what is being said and to take it in a sense that makes it easy to refute."  To this I would add the virtue of treating the process as a form of maneuver.

"This sacrament is the fruit of the tree of life"

 "Est . . . hoc sacramentum ligni vitae fructus".

     St. Albert the Great, Commentary on Luke 22.19 as trans. Liturgy of the hours (Universalis).  Opera omnia 23 (Paris:  1890-1899), 673, col. 1.

Make it possible for me to see them, live with them II

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to see them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque cum illis in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac vivere.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to live with them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

     Two forms of the Oratio pro patris et matris, Orationes pro defunctis, Officium defunctorum (Mass for the dead), late medieval/early modern Sarum missal (if not also other uses), translations mine.  Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae eccleslae Sarum, ed. Dickinson (Burntisland:  E Prelo de Pitsligo, 1861-1883), 873*.  Note:  these are Corpus orationum no. 1903, where the earliest of the 17 sources listed is the 11th-century Missale Drummondiense (Drummond Missal, London, British Library, C 35 i II (but unless it's only a fragment, this implies, rather, Morgan Library MS M.627 ("or early 12th century"); G. H. Forbes, ed., The ancient Irish missal in the possession of the Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Drummond Castle, Perthshire (Edinburgh:  1882), p. 37) =Bruylants, vol. 2, no. 407:  Missel du Latran, 11th/12th cent.; Missel de la Curie, beg. 14th cent.; no. 491 in the 1st ed. of the printed Roman Missal of 1474; 1st typical edition of the 1570 Roman Missal of Pius V; 2nd typical edition of the 1604 Roman Missal of Clement VIII.  I was put onto this by the dedication to Eamon Duffy's The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]), though I should have noticed it also in the third typical edition of the current Missale Romanum, under Masses for the Dead, IV. Various Prayers for the Dead, 11. For the Priest's Parents (Saint Paul Daily Missal:  Sunday and Weekday Masses . . . (2012), pp. 2596-2597):

Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer patri et matri "(parentibus nostris), eorumque peccata dimitte, meque (nosque) eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per" etc.

"O God, who commanded us to honor father and mother, have mercy in your compassion on my father and mother (our parents), forgive them their sins, and bring me (us) to see them one day in the gladness of eternal glory.  Through" etc.

Any updates to this post placed here only.

 

"make us love what you command"

"Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise.  Through."

"Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum, et, ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.  Per."

Almighty ever-living God, give to us an augmentation of faith, hope, and charity, and, in order that we may merit to obtain what you promise, cause us to love what you command.  Through.

     Collect for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.  =Corpus orationum no. 3819, where it is traced back to no. 598 in the Leonine/Veronese "sacramentary", which Mohlberg places in "Datierungsversuche" no. 6 (366/384), 28 (mid-5th-century anti-Semipelagian), 37 (468/483), 51 (492/496), 63 (498/514), and 68 (537/555).  So anywhere between 366 and 555 as of 1956.

1549 BCP, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity:

 "ALMIGHTYE and euerlastyng God, geue unto us the increase of faythe, hope, and charitie; and that we may obteine that whiche thou doest promise; make us to loue that whiche thou doest commaunde, through".

1662 BCP, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity:
"Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command, through."

1976 BCP, Proper 25 (Contemporary), Sunday closest to November 2:
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through."

1973 ICEL, as above:  "Almighty and ever-living God, strengthen our faith, hope, and love.  May we do with loving hearts what you ask of us and come to share the life you promise.  We ask this through".

     Cf. this one.

     Image:  Fragment of a 3rd/5th-century vessel of gold glass in the British Museum that Princeton University's Index of Medieval Art treats as "possibly" an image of Pope Damasus of Rome (366-384), the earliest figure to whom this prayer is attributed in the scholarship indexed in 1956 by Mohlberg, above.

"the whole life and substance of the Church is in the Word of God"

"The gospel is, before bread and Baptism, the sole most certain and most noble mark [(symbolum)] of the Church, since [it is] by the gospel alone [that] it is conceived, formed, fed, produced, educated, led out to pasture, clothed, adorned, fortified, armed, conserved; in a word, the whole life and substance of the Church is in the Word of God, as Christ says:  'Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

"Euangelium enim prae pane et Baptismo unicum, certissimum et nobilissimum Ecclesiae symbolum est, cum per solum Euangelium concipiatur, formetur, alatur, generetur, educetur, pascatur, vestiatur, ornetur, roberetur, armetur, servetur, breviter, tota vita et substantia Ecclesiae est in verbo dei, sicut Christus dicit 'In omni verbo quod procedit de ore dei vivit homo.'"

     Martin Luther, Ad librum eximii magistri nostri Mag. Ambrosii Catharini, defensoris Silv. Prieratis acerrimi, responsio (1521), WA 7, 721 (705-778), ll. 9-14, quick-and-dirty translation mine.  I have not read around in this treatise, which has not yet (?) appeared in English, but is no. 1.42 on the Prospectus for the supplement to Luther's works.

"There is but one single utterance of God amplified throughout all the scriptures"

St. Augustine preaching, Morgan Library
& Museum M.1175 (1525/30), fol. 192r (cropped)

     "There is but one single utterance of God amplified throughout all the scriptures [(sit unus sermo dei in scripturis omnibus dilatatus)], dearly beloved. Through the mouths of many holy persons a single Word makes itself heard [(unum uerbum sonet)], that Word who, being God-with-God in the beginning, has no syllables, because he is not confined by time. Yet we should not find it surprising that to meet our weakness he descended to the discrete sounds we use [(propter infirmitatem nostram descendit ad particulas sonorum nostrorum)], for he also descended to take to himself the weakness of our human body."

     St. Augustine, En. Ps. 103.4.1 (Ennaratio 4.1 on Ps 103), as trans. Maria Boulding in WSA III/19, 167.  Latin from CAG, i.e. CCSL 40, 1521, ll. 1-7).  Image identified the Index of Medieval Art.