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Diebus Saltem Dominicis – 8th Sunday after Pentecost: A Matter of Life or Death

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This week allow me to attempt a connection between the Collect for Sunday’s Mass, the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, and the Epistle pericope from Romans 8:12-17.  Pray for me.

An initial observation about this Sunday’s text is that, like last week, we have a sharp contrast between the two kingdoms or spirits, that is, the Spirit of God and the spirit of the flesh, the children of the light or of the world.  This is clearly a theme in the Gospel reading from Luke 16:1-9, the Parable of the Unjust Steward.

In Romans, St. Paul contrasts one who lives according to the flesh and one who is “led by the Spirit of God” (v. 14).  By the indwelling of the Spirit, we have been freed from death and bondage and fear.  No longer slaves, we have through the Spirit become sons and heirs by divine adoption.  As adopted children of God we have the promise of an inheritance, which is the bliss of Heaven.  However, this inheritance will be ours on the condition that we “put to death the deeds of the flesh” (v. 13).  The Latin for “put to death” is a future perfect, followed by a future result, paraphrased, “if you will have first put to death (morticavéritis) the deeds of the flesh, then you will live (vivétis)”.

Of this passage, the biblical scholar Scott Hahn writes in his commentary on Romans:

The choice facing every believer – and notice that Paul makes his appeal personal by speaking directly to the readers as you – is between life and death, final justification and final condemnation.  The one who yields without repentance to the sinful demands of the flesh will die an eternal death apart from God; but the one who prevails over the urges of the body will live an eternal life in God’s presence.  Paul describes the latter as an effort to put to death the deeds of the body.  Catholic spirituality terms this “mortification” (from the Latin mortificare), which is used to translate Paul’s Greek thanatoô, “put to death”).

I’ll step away from Hahn’s remarks for a moment to underscore that the Latin text was constructed with futures strongly to emphasis final consequence.  Hahn, however, brings out a critical point from the Greek text, to wit:

Paul’s use of the present tense of the verb thanatoô indicates that mortification requires a continual exertion that extends over time; it is not a once-and-done deal.  At the same time, Paul is no Pelagian who believes that men and women possess the natural willpower to accomplish such a feat without the inward assistance of grace.  Believers can successfully mortify the flesh only by the Spirit – that is, in conscious reliance on God’s indwelling presence.  Spiritual discipline must be exerted “in the Spirit.”

For the Christian, there is no way around mortification, acts of self-denial of the urges of the flesh, our appetites which are disordered because of Original Sin over which our will must seek control.  Moreover, our efforts at mortification must be conscious.  The determination to diet, for example, for the sake of losing weight is a good choice that requires the will.  However, that is not the same as mortification, which has a higher and more lasting goal.  In a sense, mortification through a strict diet, intentionally directed primarily for the sake of control of the flesh in view of life in Heaven, can result in a special kind of weigh gain.  As St. Augustine wrote in Confessions 13, “amor meus pondus meum… my love is my weight”.  Augustine understood by his 5th century science, which knew nothing of the force of gravity, that the weight of a thing was caused by an interior property constantly seeking to go to the place it belongs.  This is why hearts can’t be at peace when given over to any created thing, or as Paul would place it, the flesh.  Properly aligned hearts, indwelt by the Spirit, strive with all their interior weight to go to God.

Let’s pivot to the Collect, the first oration of Holy Mass, which I will first vivisect.

The Collect is from the ancient Veronese Sacramentary and the Gelasian and the so-called Gregorian.  It survived the Consilium’s liturgical seamstresses with their scissors and thread to result in the post-Conciliar Missale Romanum on Thursday of the 1st week of Lent.  However, there is a minor alternation in the Novus Ordo version which we can look at in a moment.  Let’s drill into what our prayer really says.

COLLECT (1962MR)

Largire nobis, quaesumus, Domine, semper spiritum cogitandi quae recta sunt, propitius et agendi: ut, qui sine te esse non possumus, secundum te vivere valeamus.

I love that elegant holding over of spiritum across the conjunction et to go with both cogitandi and agendi.  Did you catch the parallelism? That sine te esse… secundum te vivere? Another fancy feature from the genius who wrote this is the juxtaposition of possum and valeo: a veritable copia verborum.  And vivere valeamus gives us a lovely rhythmic clausula

In the Novus Ordo version propitius is replaced by promptius.  In the critical edition of the ancient Veronese Sacramentary, you find promptius.  The reformers preferred the version that pre-dated the “Tridentine” editio princeps of 1570.  What happened?  In reading an old manuscript it is easy to misjudge squeezed squiggles and read –mpt- for –pit-. 

One meaning of secundum in the prestigious Lewis & Short Dictionary is “agreeably to, in accordance with, according to”.  Remember that largire is an imperative of a deponent verb, not an infinitive.  The famous verb cogito is more than simply “to think”.  It reflects deeper reflection, true pursuit in the mind: “to consider thoroughly, to ponder, to weigh, reflect upon, think”.  Last week, as you might recall, we also had a “recta sunt”Recta is from rego, “to keep straight, keep from going wrong”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION

We beg you, O Lord, bestow upon us propitiously the spirit of reflecting upon always things which are correct, and of carrying them out, so that we who are not able to exist without You may be able to live according to Your will.

In Acts 17:28, we read about our God, “in whom we live and move and have our being”, a concept perhaps influenced by the legendary Epimenides of Knossos (6th c?).  Also, there is a scholastic adage agere sequitur esse… action follows being.  Our very being comes from God, Who not only brought us into existence, but keeps us in existence at every moment unto eternity.  For us to act in a way that is pleasing to God, we must be interiorly shaped to act that way.  Hence, the working of divine grace in us is necessary for us to put to death the deeds of the flesh by mortification and then, harking back to the Greek, “be living” in an ongoing way, not by our own will only, which is impossible, but by our will and the strength God the Holy Spirit imparts to us.

Last week in our collect, as I mentioned above, we had a “quae recta sunt”.  Last week it was paired up with Latin operatio “a working, labor, a religious performance”.  Last week, we prayed God to extricate us from perversitas (“turned away from”) to what was good and right (recta).  Compare that with this week’s Collect.

This Sunday we pray to God in our Collect to give us the actual graces we need in order to live properly according to our very being, which is His image and likeness in us.  We are even more ourselves, even freer when, eschewing our own errant wills, we embrace the One Who is Goodness, Truth and Beauty.  Paul says that, by the Spirit, we are no longer slaves but rather adopted sons of God, in other words, more according to His likeness.  We say, Abba Father.  What is a son but a likeness of his father?

Mortifications are a Christian fact of life.  Our flesh and appetites rebel against mortification, saying “no” to ourselves even about things which in themselves are good.  As soon as we start to say “no” to ourselves, we begin to suffer, sometimes more, sometimes less.  However, suffering is going to be a part of this new life of the Spirit.  Coincidently, our Sunday Epistle reading cuts off in the middle of the verse.  The whole verse, Romans 8: 17a and 17b reads:

and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Undertaken intentionally and with confident prayer, especially to God the Holy Spirit, we can gradually discipline our desires for the sake of heavenly joy as well as present coherence with our Christian character.  Our very being, recreated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, deepened in Confirmation and nourished with the Eucharist, is drawn as if by the restless gravity of the heart to this inexorable obligation.

You can do this.

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