SMALL JEWELS: EASTER 4

DEUS, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis, da populo tuo id amare quod præcipis, id desiderare quod promittis, ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia. Per Christum Do. &c

O almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men : Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise : that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  

In my occasional contemplation of the Collects in the Book of Common Prayer, the oratio for this week seemed particularly pleasing. Once again we begin with the Latin, compact and tense as always: “God, who makes the minds of the faithful of one will…” – and we see right away that Cranmer has been embroidering. “O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men . . .” Whoa! The Acknowledgement here departs considerably from the Latin. Adding “Almighty” to the Invocation is not a problem, but from there on Cranmer seems to veer off into interpretation. What does he add or change? Let’s follow the order of the Latin and start with “fidelium mentes”. No longer, in the English, does God unite the hearts of the faithful: it is of sinful men that He orders, not the minds or spirits but the wills and affections. Moreover, this is so difficult that He alone can do it. 

It all looks very pessimistic and Protestant, and to some extent it is; but there is more to it than that. I think that the Archbishop has been looking at the Petition and Aspiration, which specify what we are asking and to what end. These, interestingly, he translates simply and straightforwardly: we want to be able to love what God commands and to desire what He promises. But when we think about that, we realise that that is not only peculiar but feels oddly wrong: to love what we are commanded to do feels like not only being told to do something but being ordered to love it, while to desire what we are promised feels like putting the cart before the horse. And that strange wrongness, Cranmer clearly thinks and wants to tell us, comes from our wills and affections being somehow skewed: if we were in heaven, it would come naturally – there would be a natural concord between our will and God’s, so that what He commands would be what we love and what He promises would be what we desire. And conversely: they would all fit together in the perfect chords of His will’s harmony. That this is clearly not so, that we need to ask for it to be made so, shows that our wills and affections are “unruly” and that we the faithful are therefore “sinful men”. Being unruly, said wills and affections need to be “ordered” – as we pray every morning that our doings may be “ordered” by His governance.  Notes of music, duly ordered or well-tempered, make a harmony, among themselves and with the spirit of the composer. 

Once again, we see what a small intricate jewel such a Collect is. And Cranmer can even add some ornaments: the bald mundanas varietates become “sundry and manifold”, adding a pretty rhythm, and fixa is intensified by “surely”, that splendid adverb the richness of which I mentioned in my last post. A miniature treasure, for which we may be truly thankful.