Preces Quotidianae
The Vanity of My Days
The prayer opens with a scriptural lament that life has been spent in vanity and anxiety.
Psalm 40 9 My days have wasted away in vanity, and my years in anxiety in my heart.
Handed Over to My Desires
A confession from Romans that God has allowed the speaker to follow sinful desires.
(Rom.✦ 1. 28.]✦ — "You handed me over to the desires of my heart, so that I would do what was not right.✦1
The Agony of Sin
The speaker describes the physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of sin: no health, shame, trembling, and the bitterness of forsaking God.
And now there is no health in my body because of your wrath, nor2 peace in my bones because of my sin. Add to this the shame of face that is constantly before my eyes, and the disgrace that covers my face.3 Moreover, my heart is tossing, and I tremble—4 the trembling of the flesh before Your eternal judgments;5 Finally, a bitterness more bitter than death: to have forsaken God and to be forsaken before Him.✦
From Speechlessness to Prayer
After self-accusation and the cry for deliverance, the speaker, having nothing left, turns to the only remaining act: prayer.
Woe to me, a deserter, that I should have done these things.6 See, Lord, how vile I have become, and already my soul abhors my life.7 I went rigid with the greatness of my grief.8 Isaiah9 3110 1511 And what can I say now?✦ or how am I to open my mouth? What will I answer, when I myself have done these things?12 To which of the saints will I flee for refuge? Wretched and unhappy man—who will free me from this body of death?✦13 Since I have nothing left that14 I can do or say—this alone remains,15 And.16 Prayer.17 [unreadable printer's mark]18
Read the original Latin
Psal. xl. 9. Defecerunt in vanitate dies mei, et anni in anxietate cordis.
(Rom. i. 28.] — "Tradidisti me in desideria cordis mei, ut ea facerem qu: non convenirent.
Et jam non est sanitas in carne mea ἃ facie 1irze 'Tuze, nec. pax ossibus meis a facie peccati mei.
— Adde huie confusionem faciei qu:e mihi, ob oculos versatur, et ignominia qu:e vultum obtegit.
Porro cor meum fluctuans, et tremo-
i rem carnis ab seternis judiciis Tuis;
Denique amaritudinem supra mortem amaram, dereliquisse Deum, et derelictum esse apud Eum.
V: mihi desertori ut ha:c facerem. Ξ Vide, Domine, quam vilis factus sum, et jam abominatur anima mea vitam meam. Obrigui pr&: magnitudine doloris. Is. xxxi. 15. Etquid dicam jam ? aut in quo aperiam os meum ?
quid respondebo, cum ipse hzc fecerim ? Ad quem Sanctorum confugiam? Miser et mfelix homo, , quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus? Cum non habeo ultra quod
agam dicamve, hoc solum restat,
AND. PRECE&. 9 G
Scripture echoes
- ↩Rom.1.28 — And just as they did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a disapproved mind, to do what is not fitting.
- ↩Rom.1.28 — And just as they did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a disapproved mind, to do what is not fitting.
- ↩Rom.1.28 — And just as they did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a disapproved mind, to do what is not fitting.
- ↩Ps.22.1 — For the Director. Upon the Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.
- ↩John.12.27 — Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But it was for this very reason that I came to this hour.
- ↩Rom.7.24 — Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Notes
- 1 ↩Source reads "qu:" before "non convenirent"; translated as intended "quae" ("the things which").
- 2 ↩Normalized Latin is OCR-corrupt (`ἃ facie 1irze 'Tuze`); read as `a facie irae Tuae` (Ps 37:4 Vulg. / 38:3).
- 3 ↩Normalized from corrupt OCR: huie→huic; qu:e→quae (twice). Parallel objects of Adde favor reading ignominia as ignominiam; sense is unchanged.
- 4 ↩Source ends mid-phrase with a trailing hyphen (tremo-), almost certainly a line-break or OCR truncation; sense of completed clause is not recoverable from this section alone.
- 5 ↩Source is fragmented/corrupt: 'i rem carnis ab seternis judiciis Tuis;'. 'seternis' read as 'aeternis'. With previous section ending 'tremo-', the most plausible cross-boundary reading is 'tremorem carnis ab aeternis judiciis Tuis' ('the trembling of the flesh before Your eternal judgments'). Alternative: 'in rem carnis...' ('concerning the matter of the flesh...').
- 6 ↩Normalized from corrupted reading 'V: mihi desertori ut ha:c facerem' as 'Væ mihi desertori ut hæc facerem' (Væ / hæc).
- 7 ↩Leading non-Latin character 'Ξ' treated as noise and omitted from the translation.
- 8 ↩Normalized from 'Obrigui pr&: magnitudine doloris' as 'Obrigui prae magnitudine doloris'.
- 9 ↩Standalone 'Is.' is almost certainly the book abbreviation for Isaiah in a broken citation line, continued by s5–s6 as chapter and verse.
- 10 ↩Roman numeral 'xxxi' read as chapter 31 in the split citation Is. xxxi. 15.
- 11 ↩Verse number in the split citation Is. xxxi. 15.
- 12 ↩Source reads 'hzc'; translated as intended 'haec' (these things).
- 13 ↩Source reads 'mfelix' and a doubled comma; translated as intended 'infelix' (unhappy).
- 14 ↩Sentence is incomplete in the printed section; continues in the next section ('agam dicamve...').
- 15 ↩Continues the unfinished clause from PrecesPriv.1.265.9.s4 (Cum non habeo ultra quod…): full sense is roughly ‘Since I no longer have anything I can do or say, this alone remains…’.
- 16 ↩Source reads only English 'AND.' with a period. It does not look like continuous Latin prose; likely a compositor catchword, running head, or OCR/import artifact. Rendered as plain 'And.' without inventing surrounding sense from neighbors.
- 17 ↩Normalized source is 'PRECE&.' Possible readings: heading/incipit PRECE(S) ('prayer(s)'); ablative prece ('with/by prayer'); or prece + & as typographic et. Chosen as a bare heading-like 'Prayer' because the form is uppercase, truncated, and non-sentential; not expanded into a full clause.
- 18 ↩Source '9 G' is not Latin lexical content. It most likely is a signature/gathering mark, page fragment, or OCR debris. No doctrinal or syntactic sense can be recovered from the unit alone.
Preces Privatae (Private Devotions) companion
A prayer for every moment, already on your phone
Chosen Portion puts a curated historic prayer in front of you each day — so the words are there before the moment arrives.
Chosen Portion is the digital descendant of the carried prayer book: the short daily prayers this collection preserves, delivered one a day to your pocket.
- One short, memorable prayer delivered daily — build your repertoire a card at a time
- Prayers matched to real situations: fear, gratitude, decisions, grief, sleep
- Save favourites into your personal pocket collection you can open anywhere