DON'T TRIP, STUMBLE AND FALL: TRINITY 13

Joss Naylor, shepherd and fell-runner

Latin original (in both Leonine and Gelasian Sacramentaries)

OMNIPOTENS et misericors Deus, a cujus beneficentia profiscitur ut tibi a fidelibus tuis digne et laudabiliter serviatur, tribue quæsumus nobis, ut ad promissiones tuas sine offensione curramus. Per Jesum Christum Do. &c.

1549 

ALMYGHTIE and mercyfull God, of whose onely gifte it cometh that thy faythfull people doe unto thee true and laudable service; graunte we beseche thee, that we may so runne to thy heavenly promises, that we faile not finally to attayne the same; through Jesus Christe our Lorde.

1662

ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service; Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Cranmer’s translation is fairly tight, but deftly underlines a few points he sees in the Latin. He translates God’s beneficentia as his “onely gift” with an Elizabethanly-displaced adjective: it is not God’s only gift, it is only by His gift that we can serve him truly and well. To his credit, he keeps our running (remembering the Collect of a couple of weeks ago)to God’s promises, but he wants to stress that they are heavenly; and he dodges the complexity of the Latin offensiones, which are both physical stumbling-blocks, things that one trips over when running, and bad things one may commit or undergo. Instead, he translates the sense, neutrally hoping that in running to the promises we may not, in the end, fail to reach them.

At first this seems like a much less rich and dramatic Collect than Trinity 12. Yet it is worth looking at with real care and discernment. First, the choice of the Invocation. It’s a common one – God both almighty and merciful – but here it explains the beneficentia that earns our gratitude: God is both mighty enough to give us the capacity to serve him and merciful enough to be ready and willing to do so, recognizing our need. 

Then, the Acknowledgement. God’s fideli, His faithful people, serve him in ways that are both true (faithful and efficacious) and laudable (well enough to be praiseworthy); and they recognize, because they are fideli, that they can do this only because it is itself already His gift. We, faithful as we may be, can still do no true and praiseworthy thing for God on our own initiative and behalf. 

Now for the Petition. The sentence turns from the third person plural, the general category of the fideli and their actions, to the first person plural: we who are here in prayer. What do we realize we need, what do we want, what can we ask for? Well, first of all, to run to His heavenly promises. To recognize that they are there, that they are infinitely desirable, to desire them urgently enough to drop our parcels and run.

And secondly (this is really the Aspiration), as we run, panting, we hope and pray that we may not trip over an unseen obstacle, some sleeping policeman, some banana skin, that will leave us flat on our face with two broken ribs; or, to put it another way (Trop., say Lewis and Short), that in running toward heavenly promises, we may not do something unforgivable, like elbowing a neighbouring runner out of the way, that will ban us from receiving them.

Once again, the 1662 revisers do not like the image of running and suppress it, replacing it by the dutiful serving which, if it is dutiful enough,  will let us attain the promises,though only by the merits of Christ. One may think, as I do, that this change is a weakening; but whatever one’s opinion, it is clear that even what we may at first think a humdrum sort of Collect is a wonderfully compact commentary on the life of both fides, faith, and re-ligio, the restoring of the bond between the human race and its long-suffering Deity.