A Lament for Laetare’s Collect

It is our pastor’s custom to pray the collect of the day with the assisting minister(s) and acolyte(s) before we head back for the entrance procession. And so he prayed the one LSB (and I believe LW) appointed for Laetare. And as he prayed, a nagging suspicion grew in my mind. After saying “Amen” to that rather verbose collect, I pulled out The Lutheran Hymnal and checked. Sure enough! Somewhere along the line we DITCHED the decidedly more somber Latin original. Here’s what TLH has for Laetare:

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of Thy grace may mercifully be relieved, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord...

Which mirrors exactly the old Latin collect:

Concéde, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, qui ex mérito nostra actiónis affligimur, tuae grátiae consolatióne respirémus. Per Dóminum nostram. (The picture shows this from the 1613 Cantica Sacra, the Great Cathedral Book of Lutheran Magdeburg).

This particular collect has sharp edges, no? It makes us uncomfortable.

And so somewhere we swapped it out for the rather lovely but utterly round edged current prayer (I hesitate to call it a collect):

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, Your mercies are new every morning; and though we deserve only punishment You receive as Your children and provide for all our needs of body and soul. Grant that we may heartily acknowledge Your merciful goodness, give thanks for all Your benefits, and serve You in willing obedience; through Jesus Christ...

I’m sorry, but despite being a fine enough prayer in its own right, I don’t think it’s an improvement at all as the Collect for Laetare. The shorter, punchier and sharper original has about it all the characteristics that Edmund Bishop rightly lauded in the Latin rite (and that is our Lutheran heritage). I keep thinking of how Tyndale was a prophet when he rendered Matthew 6 with “Babble not much as the heathen do.” The prosaic wordiness that overexplains everything is perhaps the besetting sin of our current rite, and frankly either it grows more irritating with the passing of time (or perhaps I’m just getting older and crankier, or once again, both?).