I find it fun to look up the prayers of the Mass in their original Latin form. Sometimes the words in English don’t mean what they meant in Latin when the prayer was written. This is the case in this week’s Collect for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Grant, O Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name, for you never deprive of your guidance those you set firm on the foundation of your love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
In this prayer, there are four words whose definitions weren’t what I expected. However, knowing these four definitions make this a great prayer to use for your lectio divina study.
The first word is revere. It comes from the Latin word timor and means fear, but not the scary kind of fear. It means awe and reverence. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is fear of the Lord and this means the same. We’re not afraid of God, it means that we have great respect and reverence for Him.
There is one word in the Latin prayer that we don’t find in the English version, and that is pariter, which means equally. In the Latin prayer, we pray that we would equally revere and love God’s holy name. It’s not simply a both/and or a 50-50, it means we love them both the same, both 100%.
Speaking of love, in the Latin form of the prayer, for the word love, we find the word amor. Amor is the love that is an instinctual desire for union with the other. It is a tender affection for someone. So why do we ask that we love God’s name? It’s because His name isn’t just what we call Him. His name is His essence. When we love God’s name, we love Him.
The third definition we need to know in this prayer is for the word guidance. God’s guidance isn’t a list of directions, it is a Person, the Holy Spirit. This Guidance is never kept from, or taken from, those who love God.
The last word we need to study is the second love in the prayer. In the Latin prayer, for this love, we find the word dilectionis. This is a love that we give, not because of what someone has done for us, but because of who they are to us.
As I prayed into this prayer, I had a sense of a platform, something like a stage, but not that high. However, the stage was “flipped” because the back was wider than the front. I had a sense of the Father and Jesus both standing near the back of the platform, and as the prayer says, the platform was made from the dilectionis love, the love we give someone because of who they are to us. What a beautiful description of the love between the Persons of the Trinity, isn’t it? But it gets better, because as I meditated on that scene, I had a sense of the Holy Spirit who comes to invite each of us to join to step onto that platform, onto that foundation of love.
This dilectionis love is your identity. God loves you, not for what you do for Him, but because of who you are to Him. After you let that settle into your mind and heart, turn it around because this prayer is a great love story.
It’s now your turn to love God, not for what He does for you, but because of who He is to you and this love begins and grows when we revere and love His holy name.
Thanks for praying with me.