2nd Sunday after Pentecost - Holy Fear

Fr. Zuhlsdorf, with some interesting observations on holy days and prayers, as usual:

It isn’t really Corpus Christi in the traditional Roman calendar, though it is often transferred to this Sunday. It is really the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost. Corpus Christi was Thursday, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

Let’s see today’s quintessentially Roman style Collect for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Missale Romanum. This week’s Collect survived the slash and burn expertise of the liturgists of the Consilium to live on unscathed for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo. It was already in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary on the Sunday after the Ascension (which everyone knows is also supposed to be on a Thursday). This prayer is also prayed at the end of the Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

This is a marvelous prayer to sing in Latin! It is simultaneously stark and lavish. Its elements are carefully balanced. It is perfectly Roman.

COLLECT – (1962MR):

Sancti nominis tui, Domine, timorem pariter et amorem fac nos habere perpetuum: quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis, quos in soliditate tuae dilectionis instituis.

Your bulky editions of the Lewis & Short Dictionary contain the entry, the lemma, for timor: “fear, dread, apprehension, alarm, anxiety” and, in a good sense of “fear”, “awe, reverence, veneration”....

LITERAL ATTEMPT:

Make us to have, O Lord, constant fear and, in equal degree, love of Your Holy Name: for You never abandon with Your steering those whom You establish in the firmness of Your love.

Do you see how the concepts are balanced? Timor/amor (fear and love) and instituo/destituo (establish and abandon)? ....

Novus Ordo 12th Sunday OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Father, guide and protector of your people, grant us an unfailing respect for your name, and keep us always in your love.

Can you believe we had this rubbish for so many years?

Novus Ordo 12th Sunday CURRENT ICEL (2011):

Grant, O Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name, for you never deprive of your guidance those you set firm on the foundation of your love.

[Still no "fear," but Father adds:] ... God’s Holy Name is sacred. “God fearing” men and women need not have terror of the Lord, but speaking and hearing His Holy Name will warm them with His love.