14th Ordinary Sunday


Let us pray (in silence) [for forgiveness through the grace of Jesus Christ]

pause

Father,
through the obedience of Jesus,
your servant and your Son,
you raised a fallen world.
Free us from sin
and bring us the joy that lasts for ever.

This is the official ICEL translation of:

Deus, qui Filii tui humilitate iacentem mundum erexisti,
fidelibus tuis sanctam concede laetitiam,
ut, quos eripuisti a servitute peccati,
gaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis.

Its origin goes back to the Gelasian Sacramentary where the collect for the Sunday after the Octave of Easter was, as it continued to be up to and including the 1962 missal:

Deus, qui Filii tui humilitate iacentem mundum erexisti:
fidelibus tuis sanctam concede laetitiam;
ut, quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus,
gaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis.

Literally translated, this would be:

O God,
you who have raised up the fallen world in the abasement/humility/lowering of your Son
grant holy joy to Your faithful;
so that You may bring it about that those whom You snatched away from the perils of perpetual death,
may enjoy everlasting joy.

The change by those appointed by the Consilium under Cardinal Lercaro and Annibale Bugnini was primarily losing the parallel of eternal death and eternal joys. The pre-Vatican II version had all focused on the consequences beyond death. The revised prayer sees the past, in which God raised up the fallen world, the present, in which we pray for holy joy, and the future in which we hope to have these joys eternally. "Free us from sin" in the ICEL translation is present neither in the traditional prayer, nor in the contemporary Latin original. "those whom You snatched away from the perils of perpetual death" becomes, in the new version, "those whom You snatched away from the slavery of sin".

The prayer is best read and prayed alongside Philippians 2:5-11
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