Monday, October 3, 2011

Salva nos Domine vigilantes

"Salva nos Domine vigilantes: custodi nos dormientes: ut vigilemus cum Christo et requiescamus in pace."

Save us, Lord, keeping watch; watch over us, sleeping.  That we may keep watch with Christ, and rest in peace.

Common prayer (2000):  "Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep may rest in peace."

Book of common worship (PCUSA and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1993):  "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep rest in his peace."

United Methodist book of worship (1992):  "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace."

Book of common prayer (1979):  "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace."

Liturgy of the hours (1975):  "Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace."

Great Sarum Breviary of 1531 (Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum (1879-1886), fasc. 2, col. 228).

12th-century manuscripts listed by CANTUS.

Absent from the earliest antiphonaries (Antiphonale missarum sextuplex of 1935).

Sunday, October 2, 2011

"May the worship of each one here bring salvation to all."

Missale Romanum:  Propitiáre, Dómine, supplicatiónibus nostris, et has oblatiónes famulórum tuórum benígnus assúme, ut, quod sínguli ad honórem tui nóminis obtulérunt, cunctis profíciat ad salútem. Per Christum.

3rd English edition:

2nd English edition:  Lord, hear the prayers of your people and receive our gifts. May the worship of each one here bring salvation to all. Grant this...

Prayer over the gifts (super oblata), Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time.  Latin from here:  http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/ex3.htm#b3e.

Friday, September 30, 2011

St. Bernard on the divine compassibility

"God is impassible, but not incompassible [(impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis)]. . . ."

     St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 26.5 (S[ancti] Bernardi opera 1, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 1-35 (Rome:  Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), 173, ll. 16-17; Bernhard von Clairvaux:  Sämtliche Werke, lateinisch-deutsch 5, p. 394, ll. 16-17; PL 183, col. 906).  My source, Pope Bendict XVI, in his Jesus of Nazareth:  from the baptism in the Jordan to the transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York, NY:  Doubleday, 2007), renders this as follows:  "God cannot suffer, but he can 'suffer with'" (87).

Thursday, September 29, 2011

"a contest in generosity"

"As he left the chapel that morning the saint could not restrain his gladness.  'Oh!  how beautiful is religion!' he exclaimed.  'I was thinking a little while ago that between our Lord and these good religious, his mystic brides, there took place a contest in generosity.  But, do what they may, our Lord invariably proves the winner.  The Sisters said:  'I renew my vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.'  Yet it was they who received most, for I, in my turn, said:  'May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep thy soul unto life everlasting.'"

     The Curé d'Ars, as quoted by Abbé Francis Trochu, in his The Curé d'Ars: St Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859) according to the Acts of the process of canonization and numerous hitherto unpublished documents, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1951 [1927]), 370-371.  Cf. p. 435 of the original French, citing Abbé Monnin, Procès de l’Ordinaire, p. 1094:
Oh! que la religion est belle, s’écriait-il.  Je pensais tout à l’heure que c’était entre Notre-Seigneur et les bonnes religieuses, ses épouses mystiques, un assaut de générosité.  Mais, quoi qu’elles fassent, c’est toujours Notre-Seigneur qui l’emporte…  Les Sœurs disaient:  «Je renouvelle mes vœux de pauvreté, de chasteté et d’obéissance.»  Quand même c’étaient elles qui recevaient le plus, car à mon tour je disais:  «Que le corps de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ garde votre âme pour la vie éternelle.»

Thursday, September 22, 2011

"in such a way that each one of the faithful can be certain"

"the Deputation de fide is not of the mind that this word should be understood in a juridical sense (Lat. in sensu forensi) so that it only signifies putting an end to controversy which has arisen in respect to heresy and doctrine which is properly speaking de fide.  Rather, the word 'defines' signifies that the Pope directly and conclusively pronounces his sentence about a doctrine which concerns matters of faith or morals and does so in a way that each one of the faithful can be certain of the mind of the Apostolic See, of the mind of the Roman Pontiff; in such a way, indeed, that he or she knows for certain that such and such a doctrine is held to be heretical, proximate to heresy, certain or erroneous, etc., by the Roman Pontiff.  Such, therefore, is the meaning of the word 'defines.'"

Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser, relatio of  16 July 1870; The gift of infallibility:  the official relatio on infallibility of Bishop Vincent Gasser at Vatican Council I (11 July 1870), trans. Rev. James T. O'Connor (Boston, MA:  St. Paul Editions, 1986), 74.

Wolfson on Albinus and Plotinus on the via negativa

"the negation of any predicate of God does not mean that its opposite can be predicated of Him; rather it means the exclusion of God from the universe of the discourse of the predicate in question."

Harry A. Wolfson, "Negative attributes in the Church Fathers and the gnostic Basilides," Harvard theological review 50, no. 2 (1957):  146 (145-156), as quoted by Harm J. M. J. Goris, in his Free creatures of an eternal God:  Thomas Aquinas on God's infallible foreknowledge and irresistible will, Publications of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, new series, 4 (Nijmegen:  Stichting Thomasfonds; Leuven:  Peeters, [1996]), 12-13n13.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

The man behind the Curé d'Ars

"Once again the indefatigable Balley went to work.  It was one of the advantages of having had no grand achievements in life; he had not grown bored with doing things that count."

George William Rutler, Saint John Vianney:  the Curé d'Ars today (San Francisco, CA:  Ignatius Press, 1988), 88.