Running to your promises

Ever potent God,

who we run into most often

when pursuing your promises,

strew wildly around us

even more clues of your grace, mercy and forgiveness,

until the chase brings us together

into the field in which all your treasure is found.

The Church Times alerts me to the way Cranmer’s own literal translation of this week’s ancient Latin Collect (for the 11^th Sunday after Trinity) preserves a striking picture of ‘we, running to thy promises’ (‘ut, currentes ad tua promissa’ – I enjoyed discovering that Latin for ‘running’ gives us the word we use for running water), while our Common Worship form of the prayer preserves a more morally manipulative idea intruded into it in the 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer with ‘we, running the way of your commandments, may receive your gracious promises’.

It led me back to the original Latin prayer and the way, for example, the notoriously loose Catholic version from the 1970s has a different slant (‘to hurry towards the eternal life you promise’) which has been pulled back characteristically in the more literal new Catholic version (‘those hastening to attain your promises’).

Anyway, I played with the idea and found an image of a paper chase or treasure hunt in my mind and thus through the whole of the version I am developing for myself.  Unlike my version of the Collect for the 4^th Sunday before Lent (which I use in public worship from time to time as if it was a long standing text) I suspect it only works for private meditation.

At the beginning, ‘ever potent’ echoes the Latin ‘omnipotentiam’ which is really ‘all powerful’ - an idea which the life and teaching of Jesus seems to subvert.  I was trying to get nearer to a dynamic ‘ever creative’ than a static ‘almighty’; inexhaustible potential rather than irresistible force. 

At the end, I’ve allowed an allusion to Mattew 13.44 (“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone found, hid again, and then in joy went and sold everything to buy it”) to do the work; discovery, surprise, joy and possession rather than conditional entry.

For what it is worth, I’ve tracked these and other shifts in my text as far as I have developed it thus:

Latin (in English word order) Cranmer (in his own word order) Mine

Deus God God

qui which who

manifestas declarest we run into / even more clues of

omnipotentiam tuam thy almighty power ever potent

maxime most chiefly most often

tuam parcendo in shewyng mercy your mercy

et miserando and pitie and forgiveness

multiplica super nos geve unto us abundauntly strew wildly around us

gratiam tuam thy grace your grace

ut that we until

currents ad running to when pursuing / the chase

tua promissa thy promises your promises

facias esse may be made brings us into

consortes partakers together

caelestium bonorum of thy heavenly treasure the field in which all your treasure is found.

The work of the ants is on our drive.