Free service

Grant us, Lord, we pray, to serve [(servire)] your gifts with a free [(libera)] mind, that, your grace purifying us, we may be cleansed by the very mysteries we serve [(famulamur)].

"Tribue nos, Domine, quaesumus, donis tuis libera mente servire, ut, tua purificante nos gratia, iisdem quibus famulamur mysteriis emundemur.  Per. "

     Oratio super oblata, Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time , Roman Missal:

2010:

"Grant us, Lord, we pray, a sincere respect for your gifts, that, through the purifying action of your grace, we may be cleansed by the very mysteries we serve.  Through."

pre-2010 (which, for all of the many liberties it takes, at least sets the concept of freedom over against that of service):

"Lord God, may the gifts we offer bring us your love and forgiveness and give us freedom to serve you with our lives.  We ask this."

     This is no. 146 in the "Leonine" or Vernonese Sacramentary, and no. 146 is, according to the Mohlberg edition of 1956, to be dated to the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century, i.e. the period of the Vandal persecution (Verfolgung) in Africa (439-523) (group 46 on p. LXXVI); or to the early 7th-century Pope Boniface IV (608-614) (group 83 no. p. LXXXI).  What the scholarship has said since 1956 I have made no attempt to discover.  Corpus orationum no. 5916 lists, beside the "Leonine" or Veronese, no other occurrences!

"Tribue nos, domine, quaesumus, donis tuis libera mente seruire, ut purificante nos gratia tua hisdem quibus famulamur mysteriis emundemur:  per."