Sunday, September 6, 2020

"to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!"

"O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.  Through."

"Deus, per quem nobis et redemptio venit et praestatur adoptio, filios dilectionis tuae benignus intende, ut in Christo credentibus et vera tribuatur libertas, et hereditas aeterna."

O God, through whom to us both redemption comes and adoption is offered, direct, [being] benignant, your thoughts at the sons you have chosen-in-love, that upon those who believe in Christ both true liberty may be conferred and[, surpassing that, an] eternal inheritance.

     redemptio, libertas; and, beyond that, adoptio, hereditas.  Collect for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  "surpassing that," I say, on account of both et . . . et and an original sense of praestare (the verb that goes with the pair adoptio, hereditas), "to surpass or excel."
     This one begins like Corpus orationum 1310a-c (it is most like 1310a, which is found in the 8th-century Gelasian, among many others, and which asks God to look back at the works of his mercy and confer upon those [baptismally] regenerated (Blaise:  renatus, from renascor) in Christ an artfully reversed pair of nouns (redemptio, libertas; and, beyond that, hereditas, adoptio).  CO 1310a:
Deus, per quem nobis et redemptio venit et praestatur adoptio, respice in opera misericordiae tuae, ut in Christo renatis et aeterna tribuatur hereditas et vera libertas.
(Corpus orationum says nothing close to this much at no. 483 on p. 177, on the current 3rd ed. of the Missale Romanum.)

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