In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite this Sunday we are served a bracing slap of reality. Holy Mass begins with an antiphon taken from Psalm 25 (24) in which David invokes God’s mercy upon him, a sinner, beset with enemies. Then we have the Collect:
“Deus, qui conspicis omni nos virtute destitui: interius exteriusque custodi; ut ab omnibus adversitatibus muniamur in corpore, et a pravis cogitationibus mundemur in mente.”
Pravus, in Latin, is “crooked, distorted”, and in a moral sense “perverse, vicious”. Virtus, in a dictionary such as Lewis and Short, is literally “manhood”, the Roman summation of a man’s physical and mental qualities, including strength, skill, bravery, etc. In the dictionary of liturgical Latin by Blaise, the emphasis is on “power”, in reference to God, and moral strength, in regard to us little mortals. Pliny used adversitas, “contrariety” – a key to unlock our prayer – to describe the great natural hostility between the scorpion and the lizard.
