Satis temporis in legendo Psalmum CXXX (Hebraice) hac quadrigesima comsumpsi, qui ultimus Psalmorum Paenitentiae positus est. cogitaui quoque quomodo hic psalmus carmine elegiaco reddi posset, quam exercitationem patres nostri Lutherani magni momenti aestimauerunt (de quibus breui dicam). ecce Psalmus CXXX a me Latine redditus, sub quo uersio adest Helii Eobani Hessi, poetae clarissimi tempore Reformationis.

PSALMI CXXX IMITATIO (revised)

Clamo ex infernis tibi maestus; nonne libenter
       audis? ausculta! te ueniamque peto.
si nigra seruares delicta et crimina nostra,
       iram quis posset iudiciumue pati?
at tibi delicti uenia atque remissio grata;
       quare reddendus cultus honorque tibi.
expecto Dominum; psyche manet anxia curis.
       in sermone Dei uota fidemque loco.
opperitur psyche Dominum; studiosius ardet
       quam uigil auroram nocte uidere cupens.
uos, o Israel, Domino confidite semper!
       namque in perpetuum permanet eius amor.
est fauor uber eum penes atque redemptio larga.
       ipse suos redimet; diluet omne nefas.
Gloria sit Patri; redimit qui Filius omnes,
        illi sint laudes; Spirituique Deo.

Helius Eobanus Hessus, Psalterium Davidis, loc. cit.:

There are many reasons why I think it important to pray in Latin, but primarily I will speak now about its didactic function. You see, language, if it is to be truly language, must be used. Maybe we’ll never be able to use Latin like we do English, or German when in Germany, but we can still use it. If we don’t use a language, it becomes more like math than language. Consider how most of us (myself included) are with Hebrew. We know the rules of Hebrew, and so we tackle a verse of Hebrew as if it were sudoku: find the three letter root, look for the preformative, what’s that schwa doing there?, etc. I am not saying that this method is invalid, or even bad, but it really treats language more like math or sudoku than language.

With Latin, however, things don’t have to be this way. We can teach and learn Latin in a way that encourages its use: to translate Latin into English is one thing, not to need English at all while reading Latin and just actually read (not translate) Latin directly is quite another. This was the way of our forefathers.

My thesis is that if you want Latin to be more language and less sudoku you have to use it yourself. You have to force your brain to move into a different way of operating. Your mind must store Latin not as tools to translate a code into English so that you can understand it, but it must store Latin as something that can be immediately understood. I believe that one way to achieve this is audio, hence the recordings on this site.

Still another way to accomplish this is to write it and speak it. Get a composition book and work through it. Get a couple friends together and try to speak Latin to each other. It really can be done; I promise.

Still, there is definitely one person who understands Latin better than any of us: Jesus. He hears prayers in Latin. Prayer is a fantastic way to use Latin. Use a Latin collect (get them here), understand it, then make the words your own in prayer. I believe that you will be surprised at how effective this is over a long period of time. But you can go further. You can actually pray an office or two in Latin (or part in Latin, part in English). In my next post I will list necessary Lutheran resources for doing so.

Finally, I think that my second proposition, that praying in Latin is Lutheran, needs little defending. Of course I am not saying that to be Lutheran you must pray in Latin, only that to use Latin and pray in Latin is something not foreign to Lutheranism but rather quite congenial to it, as our own confessions say. Praying in any foreign language reminds us that we are not alone. The catholic Church always prays with us, in all her various tongues.

If we were to ask a plain man what is the object of learning a language, he would almost certainly say ‘to speak it’. And surely he would be right, right in several ways…because here he lays his finger on the characteristic feature of language, namely that it is something spoken. Language is speech…This is the primary
thing in language, all else is secondary. It may be objected that there are languages, e. g. ancient Egyptian, which nobody can speak or learn how to speak. But such languages are not real languages, they are fragmentary or fossil languages, or (in the true sense) dead languages. There are some who maintain that Latin is such a language, that we cannot know the rhythm of or even the pronunciation of it…

We shall assume then that anybody learning a language is learning it for the purpose of using it, that is, primarily, for the purpose of speaking it. The question now arises, How is he to learn it? And the answer is that the best way to learn to speak it is to practise speaking it ; and, generally, the best way to learn to use it is to practise using it, by speaking it, singing it, reciting it, acting it, writing it, and doing with it whatever else a man does with a language that he knows.

From Andrew, S. O., Lingua Latina – Praeceptor: A Master’s Book, 7-9.