Preces Quotidianae
Daily Petitions
A litany of daily concerns, failings, and needs, from personal promise and desire to scandal and the lack of advocates.
My promise, Their desire, Not to free yourself for worldly affairs,1 Compassion for those in their last extremity, undertaking a noble deed, doing good,2 That someone was scandalized by me,3 I am left without anyone to speak for me.
Evening Commendation
Commending oneself and all that one has into God's hands, asking that sleep and waking be guarded from this time on and forever.
Into your hands, Lord, I commend myself—my spirit, soul, and body. You created them and redeemed them, Lord, God of truth.4 And with me, those who are mine and all that is mine; you gave them to me, Lord, in your goodness.5 Genesis 336 5 Guard my sleep and my rising. Psalm7 139 1 From this time on and forever.8
Night Watch
Remembering God upon the bed, searching the spirit, and seeking to rise still in God's presence.
To remember You upon my bed—to search out my spirit, Psalm 77.9 6.✦ To rise and still be with You. .10
Peaceful Sleep
Lying down in peace and resting at once, trusting the Lord alone to establish one in hope, as the Psalm verifies.
In peace I will sleep and rest at once; for You, Lord, alone✦1112 You will establish me in hope.13 Ps. 4. 8.
Read the original Latin
Meum promissum,
Ipsorum desiderium,
Non vacare prw negotiis,
In extremis suis condolentia, Preclarum facinus aggredi, Benefacere,
Scandalum a me accepisse,
Advocatis destitui.
In manus tuas, Domine, me ipsum commendo, Spiritum, animam, corpus meum, Creasti, et redemisti iila, Domine, Deus veritatis. Et mecum meos meaque omnia; donasti mihi illa, Domine, in Tua bonitate. Gen. xxxin. 5. Custodi dormitionem meam, et resurrectionem meam, Psal. cxxxix. 1.
ex hoec nunc et usque in seculum. Memorem esse Tui super stratum — ad scopandum spiritum meum, Psal lxxvii. 6. exsurgere et adhuc esse tecum. . In pace in id ipsum dormiam et requiescam ; Quoniam Tu, Domine, singulariter
in spe constitues me. Psa/. iv. 8.
Scripture echoes
Notes
- 1 ↩Source reading 'prw' is unintelligible Latin; sense is taken from the clear core Non vacare … negotiis (vacare + dative: to have free time for / devote oneself to).
- 2 ↩facinus with preclarum is taken as ‘noble deed’ (not ‘crime’); in extremis suis is read as people in final/extreme distress, often the dying.
- 3 ↩scandalum a me accepisse uses the perfect infinitive without an explicit subject; in Christian moral usage, scandalum accipere means to take scandal (be offended or led astray by another's example), so a me marks the source of the scandal as the speaker. Rendered as a list-item circumstance matching neighboring infinitival phrases.
- 4 ↩Source reads 'iila'; treated as corrupt 'illa' ('them'), referring to spirit, soul, and body.
- 5 ↩'meos meaque omnia' continues the act of commendation from s1: people/dependents and possessions placed with the self into God's hands.
- 6 ↩Source 'xxxin.' read as corrupt 'xxxiii.' (33), fitting Gen 33:5 with the neighboring verse marker '5.'
- 7 ↩'dormitionem... resurrectionem' in night-prayer register primarily means lying down to sleep and rising again, while also admitting an eschatological echo.
- 8 ↩Source has "hoec" and "seculum"; read as the standard formula "ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum" (from this time on and forever).
- 9 ↩"ad scopandum spiritum meum" follows the Vulgate sense of examining/searching the spirit (cf. scopebam spiritum meum); the dash links remembering God in bed with interior self-search.
- 10 ↩Source sentence is only a bare period; no independent Latin clause to translate. Preserved as punctuation pending source cleanup.
- 11 ↩"in id ipsum" (in idipsum) is a dense Vulgate idiom; rendered "at once" for undivided/single rest rather than the stiffer "in the selfsame."
- 12 ↩Clause is truncated at "singulariter"; the next section continues "in spe constitues me" (Psalm 4 close).
- 13 ↩Source reads future constitues; standard Vulgate Ps 4:9 has perfect constituisti ('you have established'). Rendered from the supplied reading; likely a citation of that psalm line continuing the previous section.
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