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Colligite Fragmenta: 3rd Sunday after Epiphany

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Because of the vagaries of your planet’s Moon, toward the end of this liturgical year and before the beginning of the next Advent, we will not have Remaining Sundays after Epiphany to fill in the calendrical gaps.  This year, we sail straight through the Sundays after Pentecost all the way to the 24th and Last in unbroken order.

In our Sunday Mass for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, the Gospel reading gives us the account of what happened after the Sermon on the Mount.  At the beginning of Matthew 8, Our Lord goes down the hill and encounters a leper who worships Him and asks to be healed (vv. 1-4).  Then Christ is approached by a Roman Centurion who submits his will to the Lord and asks for healing of his puer, which could mean “servant” or “boy” as in his son (vv. 8-13).  Then, after our Gospel reading ends, Christ heals Peter’s mother-in-law (vv. 14-15).  In the case of the leper and the Centurion we have cases not only of people who were ritually unclean, but also despised.  The parallel passage in Luke 5 says that the man was “pléres lépras… full of leprosy”.  He must have been quite horrible to behold and dreadfully miserable.  The Centurion was a Gentile and a feared military oppressor.   I make no comment about attitudes towards mothers-in-law.  However, she was a Jew and would not have been avoided for that.  She did not approach the Lord, He went to her.  So for now, let’s stick to the first two, like the Gospel reading does.

The focus on the first two healing miracles seems to have been chosen to emphasize how Christ’s dealings with them foreshadowed that He was not only the Messiah and Savior of the Jews (the leper), but also of the Gentiles (the Centurion).

Both these men overcame their societal taboos and had the courage of convicted Faith.  In suffering love, charity, they sought Love Himself.  Both encountered the mighty right hand of God.

Moreover, in Matthew 8 with the three healings (leper, servant, mother-in-law) we see a kind of rhetorical pattern: the leper approaches Christ for his own sake, the Centurion approaches Christ for another’s sake and Christ doesn’t go to the servant, Christ approaches the mother-in-law for her sake.  In each case there is a healing.  There are three patterns of encounter, with the middle encounter involving an intermediary.

Note how God’s “right hand” is a theme of the Mass formula.  The Offertory Antiphon from the victorious Ps 117 (118 RSV) could have been sung by the leper for himself or the Centurion for his servant (or by the mother-in-law).

Déxtera Dómini fecit virtutem, déxtera Dómini exaltávit me: non móriar, sed vivam, et narrábo ópera Dómini.

It is good to read ahead of and/or after Psalm verses chosen for antiphons.  Here is the RSV with the antiphon’s words in bold:

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
but the Lord helped me.
The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
Hark, glad songs of victory
in the tents of the righteous:
“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly,
the right hand of the Lord is exalted,
the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!”
I shall not die, but I shall live,
    and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The Lord has chastened me sorely,
but he has not given me over to death.

“The right hand… the right hand… the right hand…”.  It’s downright Trinitarian.

The first great oration of the Mass, the Collect, also embeds the “right hand” theme.  This prayer was in the ancient Veronese and Gelasian Sacramentaries.  Hence, it represents the best of the liturgical tradition of the early Church in Rome, formed out of the cultural, intellectual, spiritual milieu of the era.  It survived the scissors and paste-pots of Fr. Bugnini and his merry band in the Consilium as the Collect for Saturday after Ash Wednesday in the Novus Ordo.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, infirmitatem nostram propitius respice: atque ad protegendum nos dexteram tuae maiestatis extende.

There is an elegance to these ancient prayers which is hard to capture in English without resorting to nearly archaic forms.  However, archaic forms as well as tools of ancient rhetoric can help us to sift intent of the prayer.  Let’s tear it apart and look at its pieces.

Most of our orations have an Address and a Petition.  In the address we have a powerful asyndeton, which is a Greek rhetorical term for “unconnected”, that is, without grammatical conjunctions.  The result is vocal speed and your own swift connecting of the concepts as you hear them.   “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus… Almighty Eternal God…”.  Any “and” would just slow us down as we rush to our urgent point, the petition.

The petition can be separated into a protasis and apodosis which commonly describe “if-then” clauses.  A protasis, from the Greek for “that which is put, stretched, forward” establishes a condition for the apodosis, from the Greek for “what returns back”, that is, the conclusion if the condition is met.

Our protasis is, “infirmitatem nostrum propitius respice…”

Respicio means “to look behind, look upon, look to, look around”.  By extension, “to have a care for, regard, be mindful of, consider”.  Note the word order.  It isn’t simple verb/object “respice infirmitatem” but infirmitatem with hyperbaton (separation for emphasis of elements that belong together) from the politely imperative verb respice.  The “infirmity” in our prayer is certainly our moral weakness due to sin, but it does not exclude physical wellbeing.  Latin infirmitas can be “weakness, sickness, cowardice, fickleness”.  The structure of the oration swiftly places our infirmitas up against God’s timeless omnipotence so that if He would just look, He would do something about it.  I have an image of a child with upturned gaze pulling on an adult’s pants leg.  “Hey!  Respice! We’re tugging on your attention here! Look down… pleeeeze…”.

And behold, a leper came up and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if You will, You can make me clean.

Now when He had entered Capharnaum, there came to Him a centurion who entreated Him.

Back to the oration, we go to the second part and find a prodosis and apodosis which is joined to the address by the Latin conjunction atque which often connects a more important thing to less important thing.  What is being joined?   We have an ad with a verbal -nd- instead of a final clause with “ut protegat”.

ad protegéndum nos … in order to protect us”

Latin protego has the idea of placing something over in order to shield or protect, such as a roof.

Then

déxteram tuæ maiestátis exténde… stretch forth the right hand of your majesty”.

In our Latin prayers, maiestas, used almost like a title (“Your Majesty”) is often interchangeable with “glory”, the divine attribute which made Moses shine with light from their meetings in the tent.  It is a transforming divine power.  The object dexteram is again separated from the imperative at the end of the colon, which parallels the earlier imperative respice in a kind of anaphora.  Again, the object and finishing with the imperative.  That forms an A-B-A-B patten called synchysis, another trope intended to delight the ear and underscore the content.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
infirmitatem nostram propitius respice,
atque ad protegendum nos
dexteram tuae maiestatis extende.

There is a great deal going on in the Latin orations, especially those with ancient origins.  These treasures are hard to glean in the English renderings.

CURRENT ICEL NOVUS ORDO VERSION:
Almighty ever-living God,
look with compassion on our weakness
and ensure us your protection
by stretching forth the right hand of your majesty
.

SORT OF LITERAL BUT MISSING STUFF:
Almighty eternal God,
graciously look upon our infirmity
and extend the right hand of your divine might
in order to shield us from the danger (of our weakness, fickleness, sickness…etc.).

I have the image in mind of how in ancient Rome a master would free a slave by placing his hand over him, the newly freed man becoming his master’s client.  I have the image of a Roman general raising his hand over a soldier to remit punishment.  I have the mental picture of the priest in the confessional raising his hand toward the penitent as he pronounces the words of absolution and of a blessing.

Lest this be overly prolonged, I offer a brief take away from the scenario of Matthew 8.

Take a hint from the leper and the Centurion.  Put off your leper rags and truly reveal your mind and heart to Christ in all your unloveliness and ask for healing.  Surely this will involve a serious examination of conscience and confession.  Put off the plumed helm of pride and submit with confidence to His mercy in spiritual works of mercy for others.  Pray for yourself.  Pray for others.

Go to the Lord with the leper’s need and lowliness. Go to the Lord with the Centurion’s urgency and courage.

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