Lost in Translation #104
After the priest says Dominus vobiscum and hears the reply Et cum spiritu tuo, he bows his head towards the altar cross, extends and joins his hands, and says Oremus or “Let us pray.” The priest’s actions highlight the nature of prayer. Bowing, as we noted earlier, is customary when offering a gift, and prayer is a gift to God, be it of adoration, petition, contrition, or thanksgiving. Bowing is also an expression of humility: when the priest bows to the cross, he is humbly acknowledging His crucified Lord. As for the motion of the priest’s hands, Fr. Nicholas Gihr writes:
The extending of the hands expresses the ardent longing and the earnest desire of the priest, that the blessing he invokes may be bestowed; the joining of the hands signifies that the priest humbly mistrusts his own strength and confidently abandons himself to the Lord. [1]
It makes sense that the priest uses the verb orare to call the people to prayer, for what follows the word Oremus is an Oratio (in this case, the Collect), one of the proper prayers of the Mass. The Roman Missal uses Oratio for the Collect, Secreta for the Secret, and Postcommunio for the Postcommunion Prayer, but all three are also generically referred to as orations.
What is more difficult to understand is the use of orare and oratio for prayer in the first place, since in classical Latin these words have no denotation or connotation of speech addressed to God. Oratio can mean any mode of discourse or a particular language, but it is usually used to signify “formal language, artificial discourse, [a] set speech” as opposed to ordinary speech or conversational language, which is indicated by the word sermo [2]. And of course, orare and oratio are associated with oratory and law; an oratio perpetua, for example, was not an interminable prayer but a continuous disquisition common in court trials. And the great Roman orators were known for their moving speeches to an audience, not their imprecations to God.
A Roman Orator
Nevertheless, the Vulgate often uses oratio for prayer [3], and so did the early Church. One theory for this choice is that the word “had almost disappeared from the common language” and could thus be more easily repurposed for Christian use [4]. But this theory does not explain how there was a perceived need to repurpose it all since Latin has other words for praying like precor and obsecro, and Christians had no qualms in using these as well.
Dirigatur oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo (Ps. 140, 2)
Perhaps the Latin Church liked two aspects of the classical sense of oratio: its formality and its public nature. Although an oration can be extemporaneous (as in the case of an oratio subita), it is more often associated with a fixed or prepared speech, and this association aligns well with the Church’s transition in her liturgy from impromptu to formulaic prayer. The orations of the Roman Rite are indeed examples of oratio accurata et polita—of meticulous and polished oratory. [5]
Second, both oratory and liturgy are public affairs (even when a Mass is celebrated privately), and the orations are especially ordered towards the public, that is, the congregation. As Gihr writes,
The Collect is is not merely a private prayer of the priest, but a liturgical one, that is, a public prayer which the celebrant recites in the name and by the commission, as well as according to the ordinance of the Church, and with a special intention for the welfare of the whole Christian people. [6]
Indeed, we may go so far as to suggest that the Christian co-opting of oratio is analogous to the Christian co-opting of “liturgy.” Leitourgia in classical Greek refers to a public office performed by a designated official on behalf of the populace, but Christian authors stole it from the polis and transferred it to the Church. And just as an office of the body politic was applied to the Church’s worship, so too was the polis’ main organ of persuasion (oratory) applied to the Church’s liturgical prayer. The language of the earthly city has been taken up by the city of God to demonstrate which city is more important.
Finally, at least judging from later commentators, Christians appreciated the possible etymology of orare and oratio. St. Thomas Aquinas quotes with approval Cassiodorus’ claim that “prayer [oratio] is said to be a kind of oral reasoning [oris ratio].” [7] Cassiodorus was probably drawing from a long tradition of speculation that links the word oration with the Latin word for mouth: Oro ab ore, writes Varro, “I orate from the mouth.” [8] But for Aquinas, the ratio in oratio is especially significant, for it means that prayer is an intelligent activity rather than something that dumb or superstitious people do. And this perfectly rational activity is also at one and the same time “properly an act of religion” (oratio est proprie religionis actus) [9]. Intelligent minds recognize the need to pray, and so they do.
Notes
[1] Rev. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained (Herder, 1902), 411.
[2] “Oratio, orationis,” II, Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1879), 1275.
[3] See 3 Kings 8,28; 2 Macc. 10,16; Luke 6,12; Acts 1,14; Col. 4,2.
[4] Sr. Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum (Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1963), 117.
[5] See Cicero, Brutus 95.326.
[6] Gihr, 409.
[7] Summa Theologiae II-II.83.1.
[8] Varro, De lingua latina 6, § 76 Müller.
[9] Summa Theologiae II-II.83.3.
