Preces Quotidianae
The Wounded Heart Pleads for Mercy
Opening the daily prayer, the soul confesses its deep wound, turns wholly to God, and begs for mercy and healing from His heavenly throne.
Lord, I have recognized the wound of my heart—and look!✦ I turn to you with my whole heart, and with all my strength. And now you, Lord—from your dwelling place, and from the throne of the glory of your kingdom, in1 heaven, hear the prayer and petitions of your servant; 1 Aeg.2 viii.3 And look with favor again on your servant, and heal his soul.4 God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Luke 18.
Sinner, Servant, Son
From the confession of being the first of sinners, this pericope embraces the prodigal's cry and request to be made one of the Father's hired servants.
18. Be merciful indeed to me, the first of sinners.5 1 77.✦6 1. 15. Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son: make me like one of your hired servants. Luke✦7 15. 18. Make me one of them — even if the last, even if the least of all.
Mourning Turned to Joy
A lament rises from the edge of corruption, asking whether dust can praise God, then trusts in His mercy and asks that mourning be changed into joy.
What good is there in my blood, while I go down into corruption?8 Will dust praise you? Or will it proclaim your truth? Hear me, Lord, and have mercy on me; Lord, be my helper. Turn my mourning9 into joy for me.10 [illegible]11
A Litany of Daily Faults
The final pericope lists the inward and outward failings that daily need confession: imagination, anxious care, error, guilt, injustice, envy, and more.
Imagination; anxious care,12 Error, self-justification,13 Guilt, fault, indignation, sin, fear, transgression, desire,14 Injustice, envy, abomination, vengeance.15
Read the original Latin
Cognovi, Domine, plagam cordis mei, Et, ecce! convertor ad te in universo corde meo, Et in totis viribus meis. Et nunc tu, Domine, ex habitaculo tuo, et ex solio glorie Regni tui in. Coelo, exaudi orationem et preces servi tui; 1 Aeg. viu. Et repropitiare servo tuo, et animam ejus sana. Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori, Luc. xviii.
18. Propitius quidem esto mihi peccatorum primo. 1 77. 1. 15. Pater, Peccavi in ccelum, et in te; jam non sum dignus vocari filius tuus: fac me sicut unum de mercenarii tuis, Lwc. xv. 18.
Unum facito, etiamsi ultimum, etiamsi inter omnes minimum. Qu: utilitas in sanguine meo, Dum descendo in corruptionem ? Nunquid confitebitur tibi pulvis ? aut annuntiabit veritatem tuam ? Audi, Domine; et miserere mei: Domine, fias adjutor meus. Converte planctum meum
in gaudium mihi, JPsae/. xxx.
TImaginationem | ( Sollicitudinem,
Errorem, | Defensionem,
Reatum, Culpam, | | Indignationem, Peccatum, ἰ 4 Timorem, 'Transgressionem, | | Desiderium,
Injustitiam, | | ZEmulationem, Abominationem, — J | Vindictam.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Kgs.8.38;2Chr.6.29 — every prayer, every plea that is made by any person—by all your people Israel—when each one knows the affliction of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this house, 2Chr.6.29 — whatever prayer, whatever supplication there may be from any person or from all your people Israel, when each one knows his own affliction and his own pain, and spreads out his hands toward this house—
- ↩1Tim.1.15 — The saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
- ↩Luke.15.18 — I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.'
Notes
- 1 ↩Source 'glorie' read as gloriae (genitive of gloria). Sentence ends mid-phrase with 'in'; the sense continues into the next unit as 'in heaven'.
- 2 ↩Trailing '1 Aeg.' is treated as a printed biblical-reference abbreviation, not prose; form looks corrupt (possibly 1 Reg. or similar).
- 3 ↩Printed 'viu.' is most plausibly a corruption of Roman numeral 'viii.' (chapter/verse 8), completing the preceding citation fragment.
- 4 ↩repropitiare is imperative of renewed propitiation/favor; rendered 'look with favor again' rather than stiff 'be propitiated again,' keeping the mercy-restoration sense.
- 5 ↩peccatorum primo taken as 'first/chief of sinners' (echo of 1 Tim 1:15), not 'for sins first'.
- 6 ↩Opaque citation fragment; may be a corrupted book label before chapter/verse '1. 15.' (commonly 1 Tim. in this prayer pairing).
- 7 ↩Normalized ccelum → caelum; mercenarii → mercenariis (sense); trailing Lwc. taken as Luc. (Luke).
- 8 ↩Source abbreviation 'Qu:' is read as 'Quae' (standard Psalm wording: Quae utilitas in sanguine meo...).
- 9 ↩Clause is incomplete in this section; next section continues 'in gaudium mihi' (into joy for me).
- 10 ↩Reads as the natural continuation of the preceding petition 'Converte planctum meum' (Ps 29:12 Vulg.: convert[e/isti] planctum meum in gaudium mihi). Trailing 'JPsae/.' looks like a corrupt/garbled psalm citation or apparatus mark, not liturgical wording; left untranslated.
- 11 ↩Source text is only 'xxx.'—a placeholder or total corruption with no recoverable Latin sense.
- 12 ↩Source reads 'TImaginationem | ( Sollicitudinem,'. Treated as corrupt layout/OCR for Imaginationem and Sollicitudinem (accusative labels in a daily-prayer list).
- 13 ↩Defensionem in this confessional catalogue is rendered as the moral fault of self-justification/excuse-making (defending oneself), not legal defense.
- 14 ↩Normalized list ignores OCR noise in the source line (ἰ 4; stray apostrophe before Transgressionem). Pipe marks treated as layout separators, not lexical content.
- 15 ↩Normalized from corrupted print/OCR: ZEmulationem → Emulationem/Aemulationem (envy, jealous rivalry); stray J before Vindictam treated as non-lexical markup.
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