Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Collect for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

For a long while I was posting comparisons of the Collects from the current and forthcoming Missal. It was a rather time consuming task week to week, and I couldn’t keep it up, sadly. In any case, I think the point was clearly made: we getting a vast improvement in our essential liturgical materials starting this Advent. In all the weeks I posted the comparisons, I saw virtually no disputes about that essential point, here or anywhere. Is the forthcoming translation perfect? No, and there are times when I stumble over the syntax, which is sometimes peculiar. But the point is that it is much closer to an actual translation, and the style of the language is unmistakable sacral in character. These are gigantic changes that will profoundly affect the sense of the faith that we gain from what is happening in the sanctuary – changes that are much more profound than anything taking place within the people’s parts of the Mass that everyone is focusing on.

Fortunately, Fr. Z has kept it up, and this week he posts a very thoughtful and learned commentary on the Collect for the 19th Sunday.

CURRENT
Almighty and ever-living God,
you Spirit made us your children,
confident to call you Father.
Increase your Spirit within us
and bring us to our promised inheritance.

FORTHCOMING
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.

One Reply to “Collect for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time”

  1. At least … again.

    But if only: if only "we pray," which is not even in the original Latin, had not been added gratuitously (shades of the OLD ICEL!) and added in so clumsy a way (by the same Monsignorial hand as all the other clumsy constructions?) so as to fracture the verb construction "bring to perfection."

    If only: if only the participial clause had not been dropped in IT'S clumsy location, separating the object "whom" from the verb …

    In other words, if only:

    Almighty everlasting God,
    whom we dare to invoke by the name Father
    at the prompting of the Holy Spirit,
    bring to fulness in our hearts
    the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters …
    (2008)

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