"praise signifies that a man offers his mind [(mens)] to God...."

"Praise is a sacrifice to God inasmuch as it is a sign of interior devotion, for praise signifies that a man offers his mind [(mens)] to God...."

"Laus est sacrificium Deo inquantum est signum interioris devotionis, quia laus significat quod homo Deo offert mentem suam...."

     Thomas Aquinas, Super Psalmo 49, no. 7.
     Roy J. Deferrari and M. Inviolata Berry's A lexicon of Saint Thomas Aquinas based on the Summa Theologica and selected passages of his other works (Washington, DC:  Catholic University Press of America, 1948) gives three definitions for mens:  "(1) intellect, mind, spirit, intellectual being, the opposite of corpus, and sensus, (2) intellect, intellectual faculty of perceiving or desiring, (3) remembrance, memory."  The debt to the Thomas-Lexikon of Ludwig Schütz that Deferrari and Barry acknowledge in their Foreward is clear in its comparably tripartite definition of mens.  Nonetheless, it is not clear to me that the use of mens here is encompassed by either lexicon sufficiently.
     Corpus Thomisticum, following the Parma text of 1863 supposedly, has "sacrificium Dei".  But Robert Wielockx, who also claims to be following the Parma text, has "sacrificium Deo" ("Adoro te deuote:  zur Lösung einer alten Crux," Annales theologici:  revista internazionale di teologia 21 (2007):  113 (101-138)).
     For the larger context, see the online translation by Dr. Stephen Loughlin.

The crucified God

"'There is not a first saying nor a last one; rather, the first and last word give a single, full, undivided meaning, that Christ is our righteousness there, there, there, in this person and thus where he, God and Human Being, suffers and dies. . . .  Thus our righteousness is not God absolutely but rather the crucified God, as Paul, Jeremiah and Isaiah clearly report. . . .'"

"'ist da kein erster noch letzter Spruch Sondern die ersten vnd letzten wort geben ein einige vollige vnzergentzte meinung das Christus vnser Gerichtigkeit ist do do do der gestalt vnd also do er Gott vnd Mensch leidet vnd stirbet. . . . So is vnsere Gerechtigkeit GOtt nicht absolute, Sondern der gecreutzigte Gott wie Paulus Jeremias vnd Isaias klerlich melden. . . .'"

     Joachim Mörlin, Historia Welcher gestalt sich die Osiandrische schwermerey im lande zu Preussen erhaben, vnd wie dieselbige verhandelt ist, mit allen actis beschrieben (Magdeburg:  Michael Lotter, 1 April 1554), X 1v-X 2r, as trans. Timothy J. Wengert, in Defending faith:  Lutheran theological responses to Andreas Osiander's doctrine of justification, 1551-1559 (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 150 and 150n167.

Spenser on a suicide

   But sith this wretched woman ouercome
   Of anguish, rather then of crime hath beene,
   Reserue her cause to her eternall doome,
And in the meane vouchsafe her honorable toombe.

     Sir Guyon of Lady Mortdant (Amavia).  Edmund Spenser, The fairie queene II.i.58.

eternall doome:  the Last Judgment?
honorable toombe:  decent burial, albeit only a pagan one (Spenser encyclopedia, s.v. "Amavia, Mordant, Ruddymane" (at p. 25) and "hair", by Carol V. Kaske).

Does the Holy Spirit make us sons and daughters?

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, quem, docente Spiritu Sancto, paterno nomine invocare præsumimus, perfice in cordibus nostris spiritum adoptionis filiorum, ut promissam hereditatem ingredi mereamur.

     Collect (Collecta) for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.

     Daniel McCarthy ("Intimate with a majestic God," The Tablet, 12 August 2006, p. 16) reaches back into the 7th century for the antecedents to this one:

The oldest version of this prayer is found in the Sacramentary of Padua, an adaptation of the papal sacramentary for presbyteral use at St Peter’s Basilica between 670-680. Our version is closest to that in the Sacramentary of Bergamo, a pre-Carolingian, Ambrosian sacramentary.     

     The clause in orange is not present in the Prayer (Oratio) for the Office of Readings, Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Liturgy of the hours (and therefore early editions of the Novus Ordo), but is present in Bruylants I, no. 145 (pre-788 sacramentary of Prague, Bibliothek des Metropolitanskaptiels Cod. 0.83; cf. Bruylants I, no. 116), 

Deus, quem, docente spiritu sancto, paterno . . . per debitam servitutem

Corpus orationum no. 3886 (post-850 sacramentary of Bergamo, Bibl. di S. Alessandro in Colonna; cf. the late-9th-century Ambrosian sacramentary of Milan (Bibl. del Capitolo Metropol., D 3-3)),

Omnipotens sempiterne deus, quem, docente spiritu sancto, paterno nomine invocare praesumimus, effice in nobis filiorum corda fidelium, ut hereditatem promissam mereamur ingredi per debitam servitutem.

and no. 1482 of the 8th/9th century Gelasian sacramentary of Angoulême (Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS Lat. 816),

Deus quem docente Spiritu Sancto, paterno nomine inuocare presumimus, crea in nobis fidelium corda filiorum, ut ad promissam hereditatem adgredi ualeamus per debitam seruitutem

i.e. Corpus orationum no. 1320a (cf. 1320b), which Corpus orationum traces back to the end of the 8th century sacramentaries of Gellone and Rheinau):

Deus, quem, docente spiritu sancto, paterno nomine invocare praesumimus, crea in nobis fidelium corda filiorum, ut ad promissam hereditatem aggredi valeamus per debitam servitutem.

Cf. no. 882 of Concordances et tableaux pour l'étude des grands sacramentaires:

Ds, quem docente spiritu sancto paterno nomine invocare prae sumimus. . . .

     Cf. also Alan Griffiths ("The collect:  a Roman Catholic perspective," in The collect in the churches of the Reformation, ed. Bridget Nichols (London:  SCM Press, 2010), 205), and Fr. Z.

     But in no case does the Latin affirm (as in the pre-2010 translation of the ICEL) that “your Spirit made us your children”:

     Almighty and ever-living God,

     your Spirit made us your children,

     confident to call you Father.

     increase your Spirit within us

     and bring us to our promised inheritance.

What it says is what it says in the new translation of the Missal (except that "we pray" is not there in the Latin):

     Almighty ever-living God,

     whom . . . we dare to call our Father,

     bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts

     the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters,

     that we may merit to enter into the inheritance

     which you have promised.

     Almighty ever-living God,

     whom, taught by the Holy Spirit,

     we dare to call our Father,

     bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts

     the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters,

     that we may merit to enter into the inheritance

     which you have promised.

Or, as I would translate this,

     Almighty ever-living God,

     whom, the Holy Spirit teaching,

     we presume to call by the paternal name,

     bring to completion in our hearts
          the spirit of the adoption of sons

     that we may merit to enter into the promised inheritance.

Fr. Z took this one up on 7 August 2015.

Akrasia in the realm of sexuality (Temperance)

Him so I sought, and so at last I found,
   Where him that witch had thralled to her will,
   In chaines of lust and lewd desires ybound,
   And so transformed from his former skill,
   That me he knew not, neither his own ill; . . .

     Lady Mortdant (Amavia), of Sir Mortdant's enchantment by Acrasia.  Edmund Spenser, The faerie queene II.i.54.
     Yet Amavia, too, is a dupe of passion.

Spenser on passion

Then turning to his Palmer said, Old syre
   Behold the image of mortalitie,
   And feeble nature cloth'd with fleshly tyre,
   When raging passion with fierce tyrannie
   Robs reason of her due regalitie,
   And makes it seruant to her basest part:
   The strong it weakens with infirmitie,
   And with bold furie armes the weakest hart;
   The strong through pleasure soonest falles,
         the weake through smart.

     Sir Guyon, in Edmund Spenser, The faerie queene II.i.57.  This in response to the devastation wreaked upon Sir Mortdant and Amavia both by Acrasia.

"So God ye speed, and send you good successe; | Which we farre off will here abide to vew."

Loe yonder he, cryde Archimage alowd,
   That wrought the shamefull fact, which I did shew;
   And now he doth himselfe in secret shrowd,
   To flie the vengeance for his outrage dew;
   But vaine:  for ye shall dearely do him rew,
   So God ye speed, and send you good successe;
   Which we farre off will here abide to vew.

     Edmund Spenser, The fairie queene II.i.25.