Say a Little Prayer for Me

I have a dirty little secret. Sometimes… sometimes, I pray in Latin.

It’s not that I think God likes Latin better than English, and I am certainly not fluent in Latin. In fact it’s safe to say that my knowledge of the language is vanishingly small. This brings up two points: why on earth would somebody pray in a language he doesn’t speak? And why pray using some one else’s words to begin with?

For Latin, you could make an appeal to tradition, I suppose. I’m a Roman Catholic – that is, a Catholic Christian of the Latin Rite. In theory, all of the liturgies and other formal prayers of my Rite are in Latin.

Many non-Catholics probably assume that praying in Latin is just something that Catholics do. The fact is, by and large we don’t.

Since the liturgical changes of the 1970s, Latin has very much fallen out of favour in the Latin church. Oh, the irony! Everything these days must be in “the language of the people”; I’ve known priests and laypeople alike who are positively fanatical on this subject. No Latin no more.

Of course, the practical reason to have everybody all over the world praying in one language that none of them really speak is universality: no matter where you would go anywhere in the world, the words of the Mass were exactly the same. Everybody had their pocket missal that had translations into their own language so they could follow along. In an immigrant nation like the United States you could have people of many nations praying together, even when they couldn’t speak with each other all that well.

The argument against the idea of a “sacred language” for the rites is that a lot of folks wouldn’t bother with missals. They’d show up week after week with only the vaguest idea of what was going on.

So nowadays while people are (perhaps) more engaged in the liturgical prayer, you end up with having separate parishes in the same city with Masses in English, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Polish… and that’s just in my home of Tacoma, a city of 200,000 people. Now imagine New York.

I actually think that both arguments have varying degrees of merit, but those sorts of decisions are taken by folks way over my pay grade.

For centuries the universality argument prevailed. The result is that we had poets and musicians composing prayers in Latin for 1800 years or more. Some of these are quite beautiful, and in many cases the English translations fall flat.

I suppose the more basic question is “why pray somebody else’s words at all?”

I confess that I’m an amateur here, as in so many things. I converted in my late 30s, and I’m still learning how to pray. Nevertheless, and in full awareness of my vast ignorance, I’ll venture my theory.

As I see it, there are three kinds of prayer, all good and valid and useful:

You’ve got your spontaneous prayer, where you’re just talking to God. In my case, this usually involves a great deal of rambling.

Formal prayer is talking to God using somebody else’s words.

Liturgical prayer is formal prayer where the community talks to God.

Now most people don’t make prepared speeches when they talk with somebody they love, so why do so with God, who is Love Himself?

Well, formal prayer includes within it the step of disposing us to talk with God, elevating our finite minds to the infinite mystery – to the Trinity, to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, to the continuing creation in which we are called to participate, to beauty, to love, to redemption.

If your formal prayers don’t do that, you’re better off improvising – it’s the difference between playing in a symphony and playing in a jam session.

The genius of the liturgy is that it is designed to do this: it was designed to elevate us, to peel back the scales before our eyes which is the blindness of sin, to bring us face to face with the transcendent God.

It is not man (or even committee) that designs the liturgy for this; it is the Holy Spirit Himself.

In these rites I discover that something is approaching me here that I did not produce myself, that I am entering into something greater than myself, which ultimately derives from divine revelation. This is why the Christian East calls the liturgy the “Divine Liturgy”, expressing thereby the liturgy’s independence from human control.

(Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy)

This is the same reason we pray the psalms, though we did not write them. They contain every human emotion found in our dealings with God: joy, fear, love, abandonment, communion. They plead and they rage, they praise and they ring with songs of thanksgiving, and they do so with voices far beyond our poor eloquence.

If you don’t need to think of the words, you can be swept up in the universal yearnings of the human soul, perhaps yearnings that you yourself did not know how to articulate, or even know were buried within you.

An Example

Before Mass, I typically pray a prayer composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas. I usually pray the Latin sotto voce to hear the rhythm and the poetry of the words, their sound. Then I silently read the English, the meaning.

Here is the prayer, followed by the same English translation I use. Even if you don’t know how to pronounce the Latin, you can still see the rhyme and the rhythm in the words, which are totally absent in translation.

Oratio Sancti Thomæ Aquinatis Ante Missam

Omnípotens sempitérne Deus,
ecce, accédo ad sacraméntum unigéniti Fílii tui,
Dómini nostri Jesu Christi;
accédo tamquam infírmus ad médicum vitæ,
immúndus ad fontem misericórdiæ,
cæcus ad lumen claritátis ætérnæ,
pauper et egénus ad Dóminum cæli et terræ.
Rogo ergo imménsæ largitátis tuæ abundántiam,
quátenus meam curáre dignéris infirmitátem,
laváre fœditátem,
illumináre cæcitátem,
ditáre paupertátem,
vestíre nuditátem:
ut panem Angelórum,
Regem regum et Dóminum dominántium,
tanta suscípiam reveréntia et humilitáte,
tanta contritióne et devotióne,
tanta puritáte et fide,
tali propósito et intentióne,
sicut éxpedit salúti ánimæ meæ.
Da mihi, quæso, Domínici Córporis et Sánguinis
non solum suscípere sacraméntum,
sed étiam rem et virtútem sacraménti.
O mitíssime Deus, da mihi Corpus unigéniti Fílii tui,
Domini nostri Jesu Christi,
quod traxit de Vírgine María, sic suscípere,
ut córpori suo mýstico mérear incorporári,
et inter ejus membra connumerári.
O amantíssime Pater, concéde mihi diléctum Fílium tuum,
quem nunc velátum in via suscípere propóno,
reveláta tandem fácie perpétuo contemplári:
Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus,
per ómnia sæcula sæculórum. Amen.

Prayer of Saint Thomas Aquinas Before Mass

Almighty and ever-living God,
I draw near to the sacrament of your only-begotten Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ.
I come sick to the physican of life,
unclean to the fountain of mercy,
blind to the light of eternal brightness,
poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth.
So I ask you, most generous Lord:
graciously heal my infirmity,
wash me clean,
illumine my blindness,
enrich my poverty,
and clothe my nakedness.
May I receive the Bread of angels,
the King of kings and Lord of lords,
with such reverence and humility,
such contrition and devotion,
such purity and faith,
and such resolve and determination
as may secure my soul’s salvation.
Grant as I may receive not only the visible sign of the Lord’s Body and Blood,
but also all the reality and power of the sacrament.
Grant, most kind God,
that I may receive the Body of your only-begotten Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ,
which he received from the Virgin Mary,
and may receive it in such a way that
I become a living part of his Mystical Body
and counted among his members.
O most loving Father,
gran me your beloved Son.
While on this earthly pilgrimage,
I receive him under the veil of this sacrament’
so may I come at last
to see him face to face for all eternity.
For he lives and reigns with you
for ever and ever. Amen.