Pope Notes

Blogger is having some real problems, so I hope I can somehow get this posted while it is still relevant!

Reading through the Pope's Spiritual Testament in the community Hour of Adoration, I noticed how many Latin expressions and other Church-speak there was--things I can recognize after all these years in the convent, but which would be mystifying, perhaps, to your average reader. So I decided to provide a kind of "footnotes" service.

 

The Pope’s notes were drawn up and revisited, apparently, every year on the annual retreat. Our founder used to call the retreats (monthly and yearly) the “practice of a good death,” and the way the Pope spent his last days really was like a perfect retreat: recollected in intense prayer. It really was the “practice of a good death”!

 

 

"Totus Tuus ego sum": "I am all Yours," the beginning of a brief prayer of consecration to Jesus through Mary: I am all Yours, and all that I possess I offer to You my lovable Jesus, through Mary Your Most Holy Mother. Note the uppercase "You," mirroring the Pope's use of the uppercase for "Tuus" (yours): this is addressed to Jesus, and so the uppercase is used as a sign of reverence. “Totus Tuus” was also the Pope's motto, as found on his coat of arms.

 

"apud Dominum misericordia et copiosa apd Eum redemptio" is from Ps. 130: 7, "with the Lord there is mercy and plenteous redemption." Psalm 130 is especially used in prayer for the dead--and in the Pope's testament, the context is the note about his funeral.

 

"Transit" is rendered in English, so he probably didn't use the Latin "transitus" (passage), but you get a clear sense of a continuing journey, in which death is a way station, not an end.

 

"Sanguis martyum-semen christianorum": "the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians," a quotation from the third century Christian writer, Tertullian, daring the Roman authorities to extinguish the Christian faith by killing Christians. All they would do, Tertullian says, is increase their number.

 

"octogesima adveniens": literally, "the coming eightieth" (written, no doubt, before his 80th birthday; the Vatican retreat is usually held in Lent, and the Pope's birthday was in May). This is a bit of a pun. John Paul's predecessors had written documents commemorating the 40th and 80th anniversaries of the social encyclical "Rerum Novarum" (by Leo XIII, recognizing, among other things, the right of workers to form unions). The documents were entitled, repectively, "the coming fortieth" and "the coming eightieth" (the titles being the first two words of the document itself). John Paul issued his own encyclical (Centesimus Annus; the Hundredth Year) on the centenary of Leo's encyclical.

 

"nunc dimittis": see Luke 2: 29 for the words the elderly Simeon addressed to God when the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple. Literally, "now you (may) dismiss" me from this life, because your promise has been fulfilled.

 

Petrine: this is the adjective referring to St. Peter (as "Pauline" is for Paul).

 

"in medio Ecclesiae": From Ps. 22:23, "I will proclaim your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you." The word translated here as "assembly" is "ecclesiae," which can also be translated "church." John Paul is evidently taking advantage of that fact, as he repeats the expression, in Latin, several times.

 

"ad limina Apostolorum": "to the threshold of the Apostles." The Apostles are Peter and Paul, and their doorway is in Rome. Heads of dioceses visit Rome at least every five years to confer with the Pope about the state of the Church in their charge. These are called the "ad limina" visits.

 

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum": "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." While this is clearly a reference to Jesus' dying words in Luke 23:45 and Ps. 31:6 which they cite (the Psalm, it should be noted, is in the future tense in the Vulgate Latin), the immediate citation is the Responsory for Night Prayer: "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. You have redeemed us, Lord God of truth: I commend my spirit." Night prayer has a very strong theme of preparedness for death (as our own little children's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take").