There are two verbs in Latin that can give us the word spelled Conditor: condo, condere results in cónditor while condio, condire produces condítor. The verb condo, condere, condidi, cónditum, “to bring, lay or put together” in the sense of “establish, build, construct, compose, describe” and, strangely, “hide” is never to be confused with condio, condire, condivi, condítum: “to put fruit in vinegar, wine, spices, etc., to preserve, pickle”. Our English word “condiment” comes from condio. BEWARE! This gets confusing because since “to lay up”, as in to pickle or preserve, can also be expressed by condo! There is a connection between the words.
Incautious people might sing the Vespers hymn in such a way that we lift our hearts and minds to the merciful Pickler, rather than the merciful Creator. The inattentive singer of vespers sings us an image of a cosmic cook sealing stars into Ball jars or sprinkling fresh herbs through the heavens.
Lutherans know well this hymn (though not perhaps this translation which I like):
Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people’s everlasting Light;
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear thy servants when they call.Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death an universe,
Hast found the med’cine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruin’d race.Thou cam’st, the Bridegroom of the Bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a Virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.At whose dread Name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow
And things celestial thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.O thou, whose coming is with dread
To judge and doom the quick and dead,
Preserve us, while we dwell below,
From ev’ry insult of the foe.To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One,
Laud, honour, might, and glory be
From age to age eternally. Amen.
My point today is not really about this hymn. It is about how imprecise we have become in our use of language. The increasing use of unprecedented is unprecedented. We have become victims of our own laziness. This is especially true of the media. My wife and I routinely correct the pronunciations of the news media talking heads (who were once chosen for their ability to speak with precision and without the color of accent ). We are tired of meteorologists who do not know how to pronounce temperature. There is no humor left in the way we talk and instead it is evidence of an education in which spelling and grammar do not count anymore. It is sort of like those who do not follow directions because they have never been taught cursive.
Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the faith. We do not even notice how many heretical or at best, questionable, statements are made in sermons and Bible study. We do not speak of God with the precision God speaks to us of Himself. We are supposed to honor everyone's pronouns but we refuse to honor God's. Who we think God is carries more weight than what God says about Himself in His Word. So undoubtedly people complain that I am too picky and laugh at the suggestion that words matter. For want of a comma along there is a radically different meaning in what we say or write. It is all coming home to roost especially in a faith which esteems words so very highly. This is really rather sad but it is even worse. It is destructive to our ability to communicate and God's ability to communicate to us. Words matter. No where is this more telling than when it comes to a collect. So often the way the collect is prayed destroys any semblance of what it is saying so that it is hard for anyone to say "Amen" at the end and mean it. That is why we must be clear. The "Amen" is not perfunctory (the way it was misunderstood in the hymns of the old The Lutheran Hymnal) but the voice of faith indicating that what was said was heard, is believed, and has been prayed. For that, language matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment