Should We “Despise Earthly Goods”?

A Liturgical Lesson for Lent

The Church in her traditional Roman Rite frequently prays that we may receive the grace to “despise” (or, as Lauren Pristas says would be a better translation, “look away from”/“not be captivated by”) earthly goods and to long for those of heaven, our true and lasting home. To take a few of many examples, the Postcommunion for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus reads:

May Thy holy mysteries, O Lord Jesus, produce in us a divine fervour, whereby, having tasted the sweetness of Thy most dear Heart, we may learn to despise earthly things and love those of heaven: Who livest and reignest...

The Postcommunion of the Second Sunday of Advent says:

Filled with the food of this spiritual nourishment, we suppliantly entreat Thee, O Lord, that through our participation in this Mystery Thou wouldst teach us to despise earthly things and to love heavenly ones. Through our Lord…

In the same vein, the Collect for St. Casimir (March 4):

O God, Who amidst the delights of royalty and the blandishments of the world, didst strengthen holy Casimir with the virtue of constancy: grant, we beseech Thee, that by his intercession Thy faithful may despise earthly things, and ever aspire to those of Heaven. Through our Lord…

Fr. Antoine Dumas, relator of the Coetus (18b) in charge of reforming prayers and prefaces, published a piece in 1971 called “The Orations of the New Roman Missal” in which he explained:

Concern for the truth required adaptation in the case of numerous orations, as we have said above. For example, many texts, for a long while too well known, put heaven and earth into radical opposition—from whence the antithetical couplet oft repeated in the former missal: terrena despicere et amare caelestia [to look away from/refuse to obey earthly things and to love heavenly things], which, although a right understanding is possible, is very easily poorly translated. An adaptation was imperative that, without harming the truth, took account of the modern mentality and the directives of Vatican II. Thus the prayer after communion for the second Sunday of Advent quite justifiably says sapienter perpendere [to weigh wisely] in place of the word despicere [look away from or refuse to obey] which is so often poorly understood.¹

As a result of the Consilium, the modern rite of Paul VI (i.e., the Novus Ordo) removes all such language, as being too “negative.” We now have a more positive evaluation of the goods of this world, etc. etc. This is one of the most poignant instances of the general problem with the entire project of aggiornamento assigned to Vatican II, namely, that it took the form of a turning to the world, which resulted in nothing other than worldliness, as we have been able to see with the unraveling of decades.

The temptation has always been there. Our period is not the first time amor mundi has infiltrated. The Renaissance was thick with sensuality, profanity, nepotism, simony, and every sort of moral aberration. Fortunately, the Counter-Reformation, with immense effort, put an end to the majority of such scandals. What we need today is exactly the opposite of what the German bishops or the Roman curia are looking for: a second and more sweeping Counter-Reformation—this time, one that is opposed to the liturgical reform that enshrines the optimistic utopian secularism of the 1960s.

The key insight that was apparently missing from the reformers’ none-too-capacious brains was given its most perfect enunciation by the pagan philosopher Aristotle….

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