Mar 29, Night Prayer for Thursday of the 5th week of Lent
Ribbon Placement:
Liturgy of the Hours Vol II:
Page 1642
Christian Prayer:
Page 1049
General instruction:
Please pray with us actively, especially by joining with us in saying antiphons and responses, most of which are indicated in this highlight.
Consider an examination of your own conscience before beginning to best make use of our time together in prayer.
Thursday Night Prayer in Lent
God, come to my assistance.
– Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
– as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
Examination of conscience:
We are called to have a clear conscience toward God and toward men, in our hearts and in our minds, in our actions and inactions. To do so, it is vital that we examine our conscience daily and to ask for God’s mercy as we fall short and to ask for His strength to do better.
Lord Jesus raise us to new life:
Lord, have mercy.
– Lord have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you forgive us our sins:
Christ, have mercy.
– Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus you feed us with your body and blood:
Lord, have mercy.
– Lord have mercy.
HYMN
Holy is the True Light, and passing wonderful,
lending radiance to them that endured in the heat of the conflict,
from Christ they inherit a home of unfading splendour,
wherein they rejoice with gladness evermore.
Alleluia!
”Holy is the True Light” by Chichester Cathedral Choir; Words: from the Salisbury Diurnal by GH Palmer
”Holy is the True Light” by Chichester Cathedral Choir is available from Amazon.com.
PSALMODY
Ant. 1 In you, my God, my body will rest in hope.
Psalm 16
God is my portion, my inheritance
The Father raised up Jesus from the dead and broke the bonds of death (Acts 2:24).
Preserve me, God, I take refuge in you.
I say to the Lord: “You are my God.
My happiness lies in you alone.”
He has put into my heart a marvelous love
for the faithful ones who dwell in his land.
Those who choose other gods increase their sorrows.
Never will I offer their offerings of blood.
Never will I take their name upon my lips.
O Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup;
it is you yourself who are my prize.
The lot marked out for me is my delight:
welcome indeed the heritage that falls to me!
I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel,
who even at night directs my heart.
I keep the Lord ever in my sight:
since he is at my right hand, I shall stand firm.
And so my heart rejoices, my soul is glad;
even my body shall rest in safety.
For you will not leave my soul among the dead,
nor let your beloved know decay.
You will show me the path of life,
the fullness of joy in your presence,
at your right hand happiness for ever.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be for ever. Amen.
Ant. In you, my God, my body will rest in hope.
READING 1 Thessalonians 5:23
May the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
RESPONSORY
Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.
– Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.
You have redeemed us, Lord God of truth.
– I commend my spirit.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
– Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.
CANTICLE OF SIMEON
Ant. Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.
Luke 2:29-32
Christ is the light of the nations and the glory of Israel
Lord, now you let your servant go in peace;
your word has been fulfilled:
my own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people:
a light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be for ever. Amen.
Ant. Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.
Concluding Prayer
Lord God,
send peaceful sleep
to refresh our tired bodies.
May your help always renew us
and keep us strong in your service.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
– Amen.
Blessing
May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.
– Amen.
Antiphon or song in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today’s “Prayer over the people”, at the end of Mass in the Ordinary Form, was originally in a truncated form in various manuscripts of the Gelasian Sacramentary. However, I eventually found it also in a longer form in the Veronese in this form for the month of July:
ORATIO SUPER POPULUM:
Esto, quaesumus, Domine,
propitius plebi tuae,
ut, de die in diem, quae tibi non
placent respuens,
tuorum potius repleatur
delectionibus mandatorum.
LITERAL VERSION:
O Lord, we beseech You, be
propitious toward Your people,
that, from day to day, spewing out
what is not pleasing to You,
it (the people) may rather
be filled with the delights of your mandates.
The Veronese Sacramentary has it this way:
Esto, quaesumus, domine, propitius plebi tuae, ut, de die in diem, quae tibi non placent, respuentes, tuorum potius repleantur dilectionibus mandatorum et, mortalis vitae consolationibus gubernati, proficiant ad immortalitatis effectum.
Nice. You will also note that a version of this is the Collect in the Extraordinary Form today.
The imagery here, from Revelation 3:16, implies that God’s people, in imitation of our Judge, will also spew out what is not pleasing. But remember that God our Judge will spew what is tepid, uncommitted.
God is not pleased by tepidity, which a form of cowardice.
Sometimes we can get out back up about having to obey mandates that are imposed on us. We have free will. Some things are written into our beings because we are God’s images. Some things are given by divine positive law. Some other things are given Holy Church’s positive law. All of these mandates are for our good, not to oppress us. They are given so that we do not hurt ourselves, and so that we can get to heaven.
Obedience to laws establishes a springboard by which we can rise higher. We lose nothing of who we are by obeying God’s laws. When we submit our will to God, we begin to take delight in what we know is His will for us. As Picarda says in Dante’s Paradiso, “In his will is our peace”.
We must not be afraid to give ourselves wholly over to God’s will. Pope Benedict spoke of this at the end of his first great sermon as Vicar of Christ, at his inaugural Mass:
“Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.”
Sticking with Dante for a moment more, in the Inferno, when Dante moves through the gate that says “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”, passing into the “fore-Hell”, he sees a great, bare plain upon which a vast multitude of souls run in a circle chasing a meaningless whirling banner. A great moaning wail rises up. As Dante gazes at them, he says, “I had not thought death had unmade so many.” As they run, wasps and flies sting them. These are the souls who were tepid, whom God spewed out. They are “hateful to God and His enemies”. As commentator Anthony Esolen describes them in his good translation, they are the “unnamed spirits whose cowardice relegates them to the vestibule”.
Dante is not trying, in the Divine Comedy, to describe actual Hell. His works is an exercise in poetic theory and political philosophy. But if it is mainly those, that doesn’t mean that we cannot use it for our spiritual reflection on the Four Last Things. This episode in the fore-Hell, with the tepid, gives urgency and force to the verb in todays Oratio super populum: respuo, “to spew out” what is displeasing to God.
Finally, the form of respuo here is an active participle in the singular, because is modifies plebs, God’s “people”. We are all in this together.
Remember: we are looking at the “Prayer over the people”.
As a whole people, a whole Church, we must reject what is displeasing to God and seek to do His will as espressed in natural law, divine positive law and in the laws of Holy Church. For this we need a strong sense of who we are as a Church, who we are as Catholics. And no revitalization of our Catholic identity will happen without a revitalization of our worship of God, that thing we raise to Him which, when authentic, is most pleasing because it is His due by the virtue of religion.
With a strong identity and fervent hearts we will be moved in action to influence those spheres which in our state in life are entrusted to us.
