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Easter can fall at its latest on 25 April in the Gregorian Calendar codified by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. In this 2025th year of our salvation Easter is quite late, occurring on 20 April. This is because the first full Moon after the Vernal Equinox will be at 20:22 of 12 April EDT which is 01:22 of 13 April UTC (GMT). Palm Sunday would be 13 April with Easter being on the following Sunday. Since Easter is so late in 2025, this year we will be able to use the formularies for Sundays after Epiphany without the need to stick one or more in the fridge to use before the 34th and Last Sunday after Pentecost. Hence, this year we get to celebrate the 5th Sunday of Epiphany on the 5th Sunday of Epiphany. That means that next week will be Septuagesima Sunday. Start thinking about “burying the Alleluia” now, so it doesn’t sneak up on you.
This Sunday we have in the Epistle from Paul to the Colossians (3:12-17) the striking phrase,”Ἐνδύσασθε οὖν ὡς ἐκλεκτοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ ἅγιοι καὶ ἠγαπημένοι σπλάγχνα οἰκτιρμῶν,Ἐνδύσασθε οὖν ὡς ἐκλεκτοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ ἅγιοι καὶ ἠγαπημένοι σπλάγχνα οἰκτιρμῶν, …”. This is rendered in the Latin Vulgate as “Induite vos ergo sicut electi Dei sancti et dilecti viscera misericordiae…”. In the KJV and nearly identically in the DRV (Douay-Rheims) as “Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, (RSV)”
“Put on the bowels of mercies”. That sounds great. So great does it sound to modern ears that most contemporary translations choose “heart of compassion”, or some such. The Greek σπλάγχνα (splágchna) means the viscera: intestines, lungs, other internal organs. We get our word “spleen” from the Greek.
The ancients Greeks and Romans considered the bowels to be the seat of violent passion, like anger, but the ancient Jews thought they were the seat of tender affection. In ancient times and up to not all that long ago, according to the notion of the bodily humors that governed mental and physical health, the spleen was thought to be the preserve of the humor “black bile” which when ebbing or flowing brought about merriment or melancholy. Shakespeare in Julius Caesar IV,1 uses splenic imagery about Gaius Cassius:
Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch
Under your testy humour? By the gods
You shall digest the venom of your spleen,
Though it do split you; for, from this day forth,
I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,
When you are waspish.
Here we have both depression and mirth.
When the spleen is out of whack, one can become splenetic and have a “case of the vapours”, light-headed emotional agitation of the moods (cf. for examples, recent opinion columns of the National Catholic Reporter aka Fishwrap – speaking of bowels – wherein certain writers are in these last few weeks resorting to the proverbial fainting couch).
Circling back to the point, Paul urged the Colossian, as us through them, to internalize to the deepest possible level “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience” (v.12) and a readiness to forgive.
It is interesting that this which is so deeply internal as to be “viscera”, is described with the language of clothing, putting on, which is on the body’s exterior. Paul also uses clothing imagery in Ephesians 6, which exhorts his listeners to “put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes” (v. 11). He associates different pieces of armor with aspects of the spiritual life.
Let me have a little fun in drawing the threads of this together by means of the Sunday Mass Collect.
The Collect, remarkably, is the same on this Sunday in both the Vetus Ordo and the Novus Ordo (5th Sunday of Ordinary Time). Since that is the case, here it is in the colometrical style, stacking up the phrases rather than just running the text out without line breaks.
More or less the clauses correspond to a colon. There’s that word again! A colon (Greek κῶλον… kõlon) can be a single line of poetry, or a single clause. The punctuation mark or alphabetic letter colon is used to divide grammatical segments or to indicate vowel (not bowel) length. But there’s more! The colon is also the last segment of the intestines. And so we come full circle so that you can internalize all of this.
Familiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine,
continua pietate custodi,
ut, quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innititur,
tua semper protectione muniatur.
The first two lines, which forms the prayer’s prelude or protasis are the same as in the Collect of the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, which is toward the end of the liturgical year, just as the 5th Sunday after Epiphany can also be.
I like that spiffy conceptual parallel of continua pietate custodi… semper protectione muniatur.
Pietas is a loaded word including “dutiful conduct toward the gods, one’s parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc., sense of duty.” Pietas is also one of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf CCC 733-36; Isaiah 11:2), by which we are duly affectionate and grateful toward our parents, relatives and country, as well as to all men living insofar as they belong to God or are godly, and especially to the saints. In common parlance, “piety” indicates fulfilling the duties of religion.
However, applied to God, pietas usually indicates His mercy towards us. This reminds me, as I repeat it for the hundredth time, of our “bowels of mercy” image. God is love. His “mercy endures forever”. Love is at the very core of the Trinity, so interior that is purely involves them all in each other, though they are distinct.
Ought not families have this mighty bond, this interiorized force which fortifies them from within against all adversities? Do not military units create brotherly bonds especially forged in action?
I detect strong military imagery in the prayer’s vocabulary, even though, or perhaps because of, the dominant concept of “family” from the oration’s beginning. Custodio, common in military contexts, means “to watch, protect, defend.” Munio, is a military term for walling up something up, putting it in a state of defense. The verbs are pretty much synonymous, though munire goes farther, even “to fortify”, not just “guard” as with sentinels. Speaking of sentinels, innitor means “to lean or rest upon, to support one’s self by any thing.” Caesar and Livy describe soldiers leaning on their spears and shields (e.g., “scutis innixi … leaning upon their shields” Caesar, De bello Gallico 2.27). I think it justified to claim a martial sound in innititur because of the connection with a verb of similar form and ending (the trope homoioteleuton), muniatur.
A QUITE LITERAL VERSION
Guard Your family, we beseech You, O Lord,
with continual mercy,
so that that (family) which is propping itself up upon the sole hope of heavenly grace
may always be walled about by Your protection.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care,
that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace,
they may be shielded always by your protection.
As I have reflected on this prayer over the years, I have simultaneously pictured the sentinel on his rampart, looking out into the darkness for sake of protecting his brothers at rest overlapping with a father checking into the innermost sanctum of his home, the bedrooms of his children as they sleep. During the night they listen for sounds of distress or need.
The Church is not afraid to combine images of family and soldiering, the symbiotic exchange of duty, obedience and protection. Putting the military imagery in relief helps us to hold both sets of images in mind as we hear Father lift our Collect heavenward during Holy Mass.
We Catholics are both a family, children of a common Father, and a Church Militant, a corps (from Latin corpus, “body”).
Many of us when we were confirmed by bishops as “soldiers of Christ” were given a blow on the cheek as a reminder of what suffering we might face as Christians.
We ought rather die like soldiers than sin in the manner of those who have no gratitude toward God or sense of duty.
We ought to desire to suffer if necessary for the sake of those in our charge.
In this Collect we beg the protection and provisions Christ our King can give us soldiers while on the march. We need a proper attitude of obedience toward God, our ultimate superior, and dutifulness toward our shepherds in the Church, our earthly parents, our earthly country, etc.
To attain and maintain this outward attitude, toward those around us, we also need what Paul exhorts in Colossians 3, our Epistle for this Sunday. How central this program – along with the vigilance and patience underscored in the Gospel reading – is to the peace of a family, the cohesion of a military unit, an association of people such as a parish, etc. etc. etc. Here is the Douay-Rheims which you will probably hear:
12 Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: 13 Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. 14 But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: 15 And let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. 17 All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.