While many this Sunday will see Holy Mass clothed in green, purple is the colour for the Traditional Latin Mass. In the classical calendar we have already moved into the pre-Lent Sundays. This is Septuagesima, or the “70th” day before Easter. Hard on the heels of the Christmas cycle this year, we enter a preparatory season before the discipline of Lent.
We are reminded now about how serious Lent should be by dropping the Alleluia and wearing the colour of penance on Sundays. The prayers and readings for the Masses of these pre-Lenten Sundays were compiled by St Gregory the Great (d 604), the pope in a time of great turmoil and suffering. Speaking of serious, today the antiphons for the first part of Mass convey themes of affliction, war and oppression. We hear in 1 Corinthians about how Christians must strive on to the end of the race. The Tract is the De profundis. Let’s see the Collect for Septuagesima: “Preces populi tui, quaesumus, Domine, clementer exaudi: ut, qui iuste pro peccatis nostris affligimur, pro tui nominis gloria misericorditer liberemur.”
This prayer is in various ancient sacramentaries, such as the Gregorian. The wonderful Lewis & Short Dictionary says exaudio means “listen to” in the sense of “harken, perceive clearly”. There is a greater urgency to exaudi (an imperative, or command form) than in the simple audi. Clementer is an adverb from clemens, meaning among other things “mild in respect to the faults and failures of others, ie forbearing, indulgent, compassionate, merciful.” We ask God the omnipotent Creator to listen to us little finite sinful creatures in a manner that is not only attentive but also patient and indulgent.
Literal translation: We beseech You, O Lord, graciously to hark to the prayers of Your people: so that we who are justly afflicted for our sins, may mercifully be freed for the glory of Your Name.
We are justly punished for and by our own sins. Those of you who hear Mass primarily according to the Novus Ordo will notice the profoundly different tone of this prayer. The focus on our responsibility and guilt for our sins is alien to the style of the Ordinary Form. Such direct references to our sinful state were systematically excised from the ancient prayers which survived, in some form, in the post-conciliar Missale Romanum. We need them back.
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