Saturday, December 02, 2006

Freedom - regulate the days of our lives

Since my parish doesn’t offer an early morning Mass on Saturday I attend a Mass where the first Saturday of each month it is held in Latin. For some reason I caught a difference in the Latin interpretation.

Eucharistic Prayer I (Roman Canon)


Latin
Hanc igitur oblationem servitutis nostrae, sed et cunctae familiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine, ut placatus accipias: diesque nostros in tua pace disponas, atque ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi et in electorum tuorum iubeas grege numerari.

Here is what you usually find:

English
Father, accept this offering from your whole family. Grant us your peace in this life, save us from final damnation, and count us among those you have chosen.


In our little booklet, the interpretation of the same Latin is somewhat different:

We therefore beg you to accept, O Lord, this offering of our worship and that of your whole family; regulate the days of our lives so that they may be spent in your peace; spare us from eternal damnation and help us to be numbered in the fold of your chosen.


My mind was set upon the Lord after discovering that difference and reading the following excerpt from the meditation of the day in the Magnificat by Monsignor Luigi Giussani. “Our companionship has this “freedom,” which is not doing what we please, but the affirmation of the bonds that constitute us… So the first point is the awareness of the responsibility we have to make Christ present in our flesh, through our witness – witnessing being the way of behaving, of a self-awareness permeated by that memory, in which that memory is present. The second point is to free man from all despotism, from power, so that power goes back to being what Christ’s power was – service.

I found the idea of “freedom” linked up with our prayer; “regulate the days of our lives so that they may be spent in your peace…”

1 comment:

Athos said...

Nice, Aramis. Service to the King of kings. Isn't that the definition of a Massketeer?