I would imagine that most of the people who regularly read this blog are familiar with the Raccolta or A Manual of Indulgences: Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences. (It always sounds to me like “enriched with vitamins and minerals.”) I myself only discoved the Raccolta last year and at that time, I thought it was the coolest thing that I had ever found. In fact, though I tend to be fickle in my loves, one book and then another capturing my heart, the Raccolta on my shelf is well-worn and it comes with us nearly every Sunday on the road to Scranton.

Before our road trips, for example, we use #665, a prayer for those who are undertaking a journey or a walk. It’s sort of a shortened form of the prayers before travel which appear in the old Roman Breviary. (I also made my usual Sunday companions, Clara, Robertus, and Iacobus learn, in Latin, the prayers from the Roman Breviary, which are surpassing beautiful in both content and form. But since praying those prayers, because of the langauge barrier, as it were, takes us nearly the two full hours to Scranton, we generally go with the much shorter, though still beautiful, poem, versicle and prayer in honor of St. Raphael the Archangel. You see, though we give some of the four hours (there and back) to prayer, much of the time Robertus and I listen while we give Iacobus and Clara free reign to declaim (and dispute) any topic which strikes their fancy.

This past Sunday, my companions (particulary Iacobus) demonstrated their erudition by translating, without first having seen it, and only by hearing it, this sweet little prayer of St. Bonaventure. This is another great advantage of the Raccolta: it is fine collection of Latin prayers and poetry which are not online and which one would hardly know where to find elsewhere. Perhaps this little prayer is somewhere in St. Bonaventure’s Opera Omnia, or perhaps not, I don’t know. It was indulgenced by Pius IX, rescript in his own hand, on April 11, 1874. It is as follows:

Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus, propter tuam largitatem et Filii tui, qui pro me sustinuit passionem et mortem, et Matris eius excellentissimam sanctitatem, atque omnium Sanctorum merita, concede mihi peccatori, et omni tuo beneficio indigno, ut te solum diligam, tuum amorem semper sitiam, beneficium passionis continuo in corde habeam, meam miseriam recognoscam, et ab omnibus conculcari et contemni cupiam; nihil me contristet nisi culpa.

There, St. Bonaventure has said all that needs to be said in a few words. The Latin of the prayer exudes the simplicity of sanctity.

If you do not yet own a copy of the Raccolta, I highly recommend the purchase of it. And it makes a great gift, especially for the Novus Ordo Catholic. The prayers in the Raccolta are almost exclusively from the time of Pius XII and earlier: no sissy, modernist, “O Divine Gift-giver, I stand beneath the endless waterfall of your abundant gifts to me,” sorts of prayers. In fact, the Raccolta contains any number of prayers which are far, far from political and ecumenical correctness.

I bought my Raccolta last year from St. Athanasius Press and the Angelus Press has a nicer, hard cover version (with the same text).

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