[I read this essay today and thought I would like to have it somewhere where I could come back to it regularly and that no better place was here. Esolen does the Poetry and Praise article for Magnificat each month, though the article is available for only one month on line. In any case, I loved the prayer as well as Esolen’s Commentary; thus I “published” it here. les]
Riches Forgotten
Anthony Esolen
To be a Roman Catholic in our time, I’ve found, is at times like being heir to a vast estate with many a beautiful mansion and garden, enclosed woodlands, secret springs and streams, sudden waterfalls, and tree-hidden cliffs. But instead of seeking out the beauty and fostering the truth, we spend much of our time drinking cheap wine and lying abed into the afternoon.
I blame myself for it too, because I’m an old man and I’m still learning my prayers. Here is one that takes my breath away, the Universal Prayer, attributed to Pope Clement XI (r. 1700–1721).
Clement was a wise and holy man, thrust into the papacy against his will, in a world that swung wildly between religious severity and effete license. Imagine having to deal with the Jansenist movement, with its Christ of narrow arms, dying on the cross only for those predestined to be saved, and its gloomy view of every human love as evil unless it is supernatural love. Imagine that you have to reckon also with the court of the immensely ambitious and worldly Louis XIV, and the rivals in the War of the Spanish Succession, with unreliable friends in Spain and an embittered former friend in Austria, all while the Turks bide their time and await the opportunity to strike from the east. It is a century that sees Pascal on one side and Voltaire on the other—as in America we would have the fiery revivalist Jonathan Edwards and the scoffing rationalist Thomas Paine.
What prayer would you compose for such a time?
So the heir one day sets out on the estate, and he finds a little chapel overgrown with wild grapevines, and a most powerful and beautiful prayer. I will give it in its entirety, touching up the translation here and there.
The gem
I believe, O Lord, but may I believe more firmly; I hope, but may I hope more securely; I love, but may I love more ardently; I sorrow, but may I sorrow more deeply.
I adore you as my first beginning; I long for you as my last end; I praise you as my constant benefactor; I invoke you as my gracious defender.
By your wisdom direct me, by your righteousness restrain me, by your clemency console me, by your power protect me.
I offer you, Lord, my thoughts, as toward you, my words, as about you, my deeds, as following you, my trials, as for your sake.
I will whatever you will, I will it because you will, I will it in the way you will, I will it so long as you will.
I pray, Lord, enlighten my understanding, inflame my will, cleanse my heart, sanctify my soul.
May I weep for sins past, repel temptations to come, correct evil leanings, nurture fit virtues.
Give me, good God, love for you, hatred for myself, zeal for my neighbor, contempt for the world.
May I strive to obey those above me, to aid those beneath me, to have care for my friends, to spare my enemies.
May I conquer sensuality by austerity, avarice by generosity, anger by gentleness, lukewarmness by fervor.
Render me prudent in planning, steadfast in dangers, patient in adversity, humble in prosperity.
Make me, O Lord, attentive at prayer, moderate at meals, diligent at work, firm in purpose.
May I be careful to maintain inward innocence, outward modesty, exemplary behavior, a well-governed life.
May I be always watchful in subduing nature, fostering grace, observing your law, winning salvation.
May I learn from you how precarious is the earthly, how great the divine, how fleeting the temporal, how lasting the eternal.
Grant that I may prepare for death, fear judgment, flee hell, gain paradise. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Prayer as poetry
Clement was prodigious in his accomplishments but as humble about them as if they had been the work of someone else. People recognized it, too. It’s said that when news of his election reached the Protestant city of Nuremberg, the bells rang out for joy and the burghers ordered a medal stamped in his honor.
Certainly he had an ear for poetry, for the balance of idea with idea in words that echo one another in sound and sense, for amplification, contrast, reversal, return, crescendo and diminuendo, anticipation, climax, and completion. All these come across in the Latin original, because in Latin, when words have the same grammatical function, they often end with the same sounds. That’s the case again and again in Clement’s petitions. Thoughts, words, deeds, and trials are, in the Latin, cogitanda, dicenda, facienda, ferenda, literally, things to be thought, things to be said, things to be done, things to be borne. When Clement begs certain gifts of the Spirit, in Latin, it is noun and adjective, four times, always in the same form: amorem tui, odium mei, zelum proximi, contemptum mundi, literally, love of-you, hatred of-me, zeal of-neighbor, contempt of-world.
That’s a master at work. Recall the two great commandments Jesus gives us: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37, 39). These two are inseparable. That is why Clement has them “rhyme” with each other, so to speak: love of God goes along with zeal for my neighbor. I am not to envy him; the words jealous and zealous have the same origin. I am to be as zealous on his behalf as most people are jealous on their own.
Look at each set of four petitions as a stanza. Sometimes, as above, the first and third petitions chime, along with the second and the fourth. Sometimes the four descend, from a great first principle to a most quiet and humble application. So Clement prays to will what God wills. That is the principle. From there it follows that he wills because and as and so long as God wills. Sometimes the four ascend, as if you were climbing a ladder to heaven. So Clement prays that God will illumine his mind, inflame his will, and cleanse his heart—all to the great end that his soul may be made holy.
Not yellow paint, but gold
I understand that some petitions in the prayer strike our ears as a bit, well, unusual, antiquated, even foreboding.
Suppose you go to a land whose culture is quite different from yours, and suppose the people are, in an ordinary human way, healthy and content. Unless you are a confirmed bigot, you give them the benefit of the doubt. You say, “Maybe these people foster a virtue we have neglected or forgotten. Maybe we can learn from them.” If we would be gracious and deign to learn from a merely human way of life, why not be humble and deign to learn from a holy man, or from the evangelists and apostles and the Lord himself? When something jars against our sensibilities, why must we muffle it or deck it in modern garb or stuff it in the attic? Is our current life so consistently marvelous that I should give it the only say in how I pray or what I think?
Let’s then look at a couple of things Clement prays for that we typically do not. The first leaps out at us: he prays to be struck with greater sorrow. We may assume that he is sorry for his sins, but he does not actually say so. Perhaps there is a great mystery here. Jesus is the man of sorrows foretold by Isaiah (53:3), and Mary, her heart pierced with seven swords, joins her sorrowing Son. Imagine someone incapable of sorrow. Wouldn’t he also be incapable of love? If the angels weep for our sins, and yet their joy is undisturbed, can we not say that our love and joy, on this side of the new Jerusalem, must proceed along the way of sorrow, the high and enlightening ascent of Calvary?
What about contempt for the world? Let’s be honest. The beloved apostle who says that God is love (1 Jn 4:8) is also most vehement in his rejection of the world, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world (1 Jn 2:16). You cannot love God and love what John, echoing the Lord, calls “the world.” Think of it. We are not talking about birds and beasts, trees and flowers, sun and rain. Nowhere in the words of our Lord do we find dismissiveness for the birds of the air that God feeds, or for the lilies of the field that he robes. But they are not the name plate on the desk, the vice-presidency of a corporation, a star on a walk of fame, a fat bank account, prestige, power, spotlights, attention—dust, ashes, vanity and a striving after wind (Eccl 1:14).
Is it any surprise that love for this world should supplant or stifle our love for God? Clear away the briars, then, and pray with Pope Clement, that we may in our last hour “prepare for death, fear judgment, flee hell, gain paradise.”
Anthony Esolen is professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, translator and editor of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House), and author of four volumes of essays, How the Church Has Changed the World (Magnificat).
Image: The Wailing Wall by Salvador Dalí; 1975. (Israel Museum).
