Sunday, January 20, 2008

Prayers for Mass - II

At Mass itself I add certain devotions, depending on whether I'm at the Traditional Mass, and if it's Low or High, if I'm serving or singing or whatnot, or whether instead I'm at ordinary Mass.

I tend to pay special attention to the orations of the Mass, the collect, secret, and postcommunion. Sometimes at the Offertory I may use the Dominican form of the Suscipe sancta Trinitas:


Suscipe, sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem, quam tibi offero per manus sacerdotis tui, in memoriam passionis Domini nostri Jesu Christi; et praesta, ut in conspectu tuo tibi placens ascendat, et meam et omnium fidelium salutem operetur aeternam.


Passing over my particular direction of prayer and attention during the Canon, the consummation of the Mass, I always say the following, secretly of course! during the Elevations after the Consecration, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in English, usually some in each:


Omnis gloria tibi, Domine altissime.

Dominus meus et Deus meus, salva nos.

(For the Host)

Ave verum Corpus natum
de Maria Virgine,
vere passum, immolatum
in Cruce pro homine.

O Jesu dulcis,
O Jesu pie,
O Jesu Fili Mariae.

(For the Chalice)

Cujus latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine,
esto nobis praegustatum
mortis in examine.

O Jesu dulcis,
O Jesu pie,
O Jesu Fili Mariae.

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.

In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternam.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always say a huge amount of prayers before and after Mass, except when serving. Of course, when serving I don't have my Missal to hand, so I just say the simple ejaculation of St Thomas at the elevations, "My Lord and my God!".

Joshua said...

For some years after my conversion I too did the same, filling up my Daily Roman Missal with even more prayers than those already provided, strictly enforcing on myself 15 minutes solidly reciting prayers after Mass if not also before, but of late have been much less inclined to do so, I candidly admit.

Since I had to sing at Mass today I made the Adoro te devote my prayer after receiving our Lord (thanks, St Thomas), plus a few hurried "Ave in aeternum's" on the way back from the altar rail - see one of my earlier posts about that invocation.

I read somewhere that it's fairly normal in the spiritual life to go from saying a lot of prayers to less and then back to more again, FWIW - I suspect tho' this may be my rationalization for being lazy.

Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

If anything in my prayer life "Yo yo"s, for want of a better expression, then I am always concerned that it might have become a bad accretion/unnatural.

(DON'T take that as commentary on your prayer-life, however!)