Entwine our desires

I’ve been playing with the text of an early Latin Collect which came up recently.

Dirigat corda nostra quaesumus Domine tuae miserationis operatio, quia tibi sine te placere non possumus comes out (in the word order of the modern English Collect) as something like Lord, because without you we cannot be acceptable to you, may the activity of your compassion, we ask, direct our hearts which Cranmer’s seventeenth century revisers rendered O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.

Both the translation process and the way this has been ‘improved’ by the reference to the Holy Spirit is clear thus:

Source / Prayer Book

Lord / O God

because / forasmuch as

without you / without thee

we cannot  / we are not able to

be acceptable to you  / please thee

may the activity of your compassion / mercifully

we ask  / grant that

- / thy Holy Spirit

- / may in all things

direct / direct

- / and rule

our hearts / our hearts.

Leaving that to one side, my playing has tried to create new prayers which capture what the Latin originators might have been encouraging us to feel towards:

Stir our hearts, Lord, we pray,

because we cannot come to you

without your mercy at work in us

or even

Entwine our desires

with your mercy, O Lord,

that you might delight in them.

Source / First new prayer

Lord /  Lord

because /  because

without you /  without your

we cannot  /  we cannot

be acceptable to you  /  come to you

may the activity of your compassion /  mercy at work in us

we ask  /  we pray

direct /  stir

our hearts / our hearts

Source / Second new prayer [negative ‘because without you we cannot be acceptable to you’ shifted to a positive ‘that you might delight in them’]

Lord /  O Lord

because /  that

without you /  you

we cannot  /  might

be acceptable to you  /   delight in them

may the activity of your compassion / with your mercy

we ask  /  [this is only implied]

direct /  entwine

our hearts /  our desires

Meanwhile, the largess to the poor is the feeding of the hungry as one of the corporal works of mercy in the Charlotte Bronte memorial window in St Michael's, Haworth.