no longer a hymn but a non-public poem

Sacred Mysteries: new insights into the very best loved devotional lyric by Thomas Aquinas

 

 

there’s a hymn to Jesus current in the Blessed Sacrament known by means of its first phrases in Latin: Adoro Te dedicate. among translations in English is one by the great 19th-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, beginning “Godhead here in hiding”. but we must no longer in reality call to mind it as a hymn in any respect.

“most effective after the 17th century,” writes Paul Murray in a brand new book, Aquinas at Prayer, “do we’ve proof of this brief prayer being set to song.” He draws on the analysis of Robert Wielockx, a Belgian-born historian working in Rome, to set the 28-line prayer in context.

It was once composed by means of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century as a personal prayer to be recited sotto voce when, as was regularly his follow, he selected to attend a second Mass in the day, now not as priest celebrating the rites, however as a participant following them devotionally. The prayer is addressed to Jesus Christ directly and not (like many prayers) to God the father through Jesus. The prayerful recitation of the verses would be accommodated within the time between the Consecration of the bread and wine and the recitation of the Our Father.

I was delighted to learn from Father Murray (like Thomas Aquinas, a member of the Dominican Order of friars) that doubts in regards to the authorship of the poem had been resolved. It was within the early 20th century that the attribution of the poem to Thomas used to be challenged. but in 1996, the first biography of Thomas (by means of William of Tocco, writing within the early 14th century) seemed in a scholarly adaptation by way of Claire le Brun-Gouanvic. In it, the entire textual content of the poem had been integrated as Thomas’s work.

This issues, now not as a result of biography all the time rubs off on poetry, but as a result of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy and theology are an impressive physique of work by means of any same old, and it is helpful with the intention to read across from it to this poem. And it’s excellent as poetry, despite the fact that it differs in conventions from classical Latin verse. For a begin it rhymes. there is additionally a pleasure in word-play that a modern reader can share.

The text as given via Wielockx, in line with early manuscripts, differs moderately from that acquainted in payer books. For one thing, the primary line ends no longer latens deitas, “hidden Godhead”, but latens veritas, “hidden fact”. On a philosophical degree, Thomas wrote about actuality, like goodness and love, being transcendant realities that God does no longer possess however with which he is similar. When Thomas read in the first Epistle of St John that “God is love”, he realised it to be proper.

So, within the poem, after declaring that sight, contact and style are deceived in apprehending the Sacrament (which appears to the senses bread and wine, however is actually Jesus current as God and man), Thomas involves the feel of listening to. hearing is reliable, he says, when it hears words which can be to be believed. (faith comes via taking note of what somebody says.)

here in the poem, Thomas offers two strains of word-play: Credo quicquid dixit dei filius / Nihil veritatis verbo verius. “I consider all of the Son of God has said; nothing can also be extra true than the phrase of actuality.” obviously here he’s picking up the title verbo “phrase” that St John applies to Jesus in the elegant prologue of his Gospel, which begins “in the beginning was the word”.

Fr Murray deals in his e book with different verses by means of Thomas Aquinas, significantly the Pange lingua and other hymns composed for the feast of Corpus Christi (additionally discovered by modern scholarship to be Thomas’s authentic work). He touches on his commentaries on the Psalms and Epistles of St Paul. a person of deeply scriptural prayer emerges.

for a lot of the Adoro Te dedicate is still so moving partly because of its directness in addressing Jesus. Thomas permits current-day readers to be in his position (a extra good, holy man) and adopt his insights and devotional depths.

 

 

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