Arx firma Deus noster est,
Is telum, quo nitamur;
Is explicat ex omnibus
Queis malis implicamur.
Nam cui semper mos,
Iam ter terret nos:
Per astum, per vim,
Saevam levat sitim;
Nil par in terris illi.

In nobis nihil situm est,
Quo minus pereamus:
Quem Deus ducem posuit,
Is facit ut vivamus.
Scin quis hoc potest?
Iesus Christus est,
Qui, dux caelitum,
Non habet aemulum:
Is vicerit profecto.

Sit mundus plenus daemonum,
Nos cupiant uorare;
Non timor est; uictoria
Nil potest nos frustrare.
Hem dux saeculi!
Inuitus abi!
In nos nil potes,
Iam iudicatus es;
Vel uocula te sternat.

Hoc uerbum non pessumdabunt,
Nec gratiam merebunt;
In nobis Christi Spiritus
Et munera uigebunt:
Tollant corpus, rem,
Mundique omnem spem:
Tollant! iubilent!
Non lucrum hinc ferent;
Manebit regnum nobis.

Let ev’ry race and ev’ry language tell
Of Him who saves our lives from death and hell (LSB 837, stz. 5).

This includes Latin, as I believe. I promised that I would list some resources for praying the offices in Latin from Lutheran sources. The list below is incomplete, as I am still myself figuring this whole thing out. The following have been of great use to me:

• B. T.G. Mayes, The Brotherhood Prayer Book: Second Revised Edition. This is a must and the best resources for the offices available in English. One could actually use this and just plug in bits of the ordinary in Latin for a mixed Latin/English office.
• _____, Sacrosanctae Ecclesiae Confessionis Augustanae Preces. This is a handy little pdf (free!). It is text-only, but still a great source.
• Matthaeus Ludecus, Vesperale et Matutinale, 1589 (reprint available and sample). This is *the* book to have for Lutheran Latin offices. It’s a bit pricey, but well worth the cost and is of high quality. When I get really comfortable with this book I hope (DV) to have time to use this book to put together a sort of BPB Latin suppliment.
• Latin Psalter. If you download Dr. Mayes’ pdf above you’ll have the Neo-Vulgate translation of the psalms which is pretty good. There are several Latin translations of the psalms. Our Lutheran forebears generally used the vulgate, which is good reason for doing so. I myself am partial to the so-called “Piana” (harder to find) because it’s actually a translation from Hebrew, and its Latin makes sense.
• A Roman Breviary. This can serve as a handy reference, and many used copies are available. You may prefer one with rubrics in enlgish (there exists a nice edition with commentary by Parsch).

Beatum confessionis Augustanae diem sit uobis!
Happy Augsburg Confession day!

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.

For the few of us who lament the loss of Latin in use among Lutheran Churches, it’s nice to see that there are strong “aftertastes” of a Latin speaking church yet remaining among us.

Oh, and it goes without saying that, though the English translations are very good, the beauty and brevity of the Latin is unsurpassed.