Once we finish praying the Lord’s Prayer together as a congregation, the priest does this little prayer, called the Embolism, which comes from the Latin embolismus, meaning “insertion.” It’s basically a little insertion (so they word fits) between the Lord’s Prayer and the Doxology, which we’ll talk about later. The Embolism goes like this:
Current Text:
Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Beginning Advent 2011:
Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Again, these “changes” that are coming soon to a Liturgy near you are being put in place so that what we say in English today most closely matches the meanings of the Latin we replaced in the 1960s.
The Embolism builds on that last petition we make in the Lord’s Prayer: “…but deliver us from evil.” God has the power to keep our minds and hearts focused on his will and away from those “counterfeits” the devil places in our lives…we just need to ASK for his help and his grace. This prayer that the priest prays on behalf of the whole congregation (notice he says “us” and “we” instead of “me” and “I”) does just that—it asks God for help in keeping us focused on what’s right.
As for the “safe from all distress” line, I have an analogy that I like to use with my CCD students. I tell them to think about when they are at a friend’s house because they told their parents that THAT’s where they’d be (for you guys reading this blog, you may have to dig back in your memory banks to retrieve that little bit of experiential knowledge). Then I tell them to think about what would happen if their friend said, “Hey, let’s go over to _______’s house,” or, “Hey, let’s go over to the Sock Hop,” or whatever the devil these kids are into these days. (Don’t worry…I know the kids aren’t into sock hops anymore…socks just get way too dirty to be hopping around in. I mean, have you ever LOOKED at the bottom of your socks after just walking around your house for a couple minutes? It’s enough to make you want to stop what you’re doing and start mopping right then and there. Imagine hopping around in your socks all night, probably in some dirty, stinky school gym…your socks would be FILTHY!!!) The first thing that SHOULD go through your head when that happens is, “Wait, I should call mom first to ask her if it’d be ok for me to go over to _________’s house or to the Sock Hop.” The problem is that most of my students agree that their action of choice would be to just go without asking permission because they think that their parents would tell them, “No,” and the kids just want to have fun, and they KNOW they won’t do anything wrong and they’ll be fine, and their parents just don’t want them to have any fun, and their parents hate them and wish they were someone else’s kid.” (Nearly verbatim rant by one of my students, by the way.) Well, obviously, when you look at the situation objectively, the parents just want to know where their kids are so that they can be sure of their safety—not because they don’t want them to have fun, but because they want them to have the “right kind” of fun.
Then I tell my students to think about how they feel when they decide to go somewhere without telling their parents first. Can they REALLY have as much fun as they thought, or are they too worried about how much trouble they’ll be in if they get caught to have as much fun as they could be having? They unanimously agree that their worry of being caught would be more powerful than their enjoyment level of whatever they would be doing. If they would just pick up the phone and call their parents, sure their parents might say, “No,” and the never-ending parent-child battle would ensue, but if their parents WOULD say, “Yes,” then they could go where they had asked to go KNOWING that it was ok, and they wouldn’t have any worry, anxiety, or despair about their fate if they would get caught.
This is the same principle the priest hits on in the Embolism. Sure God’s laws may not seem “totally rad” at times, but there are REALLY good reasons for them. If we know what we’re doing is wrong and sinful, then we WILL be filled with anxiety in our lives. If we know what we’re doing is right and in line with the will of God, then we’ll feel much more happy and free and at peace. See, just like our parents, God wants us to be safe and happy—but even more so, because he’s God, and is infinitely more perfect than our parents…not because our parents are bad or mean, obviously, but because God is just that good. And just like our parents, God doesn’t try to be our “buddy” when it comes to laying down the law of what will keep us safe and most happy. Some of us get hooked on particular sins that we really like or feel “entitled” to, and after justifying to ourselves why WE think they shouldn’t be sins, we convince ourselves that they’re not, and do the things we want, anyway. These people, though, are NOT (I GUARANTEE you) as happy as they COULD be, because they’re not following God’s law. There is always a part of them—no matter how small that part may be at times, and no matter how small the rest of the world may convince them to MAKE that part of themselves—that questions their judgment, and keeps them in a state of spiritual unrest.
So let’s just make this Embolism our solemn prayer for ourselves so that we can eventually realize that God DOES want us to be happy and enjoy life. Let’s also pray for the faith to accept that if God says something is bad, it is—even if we can’t understand why it is. When we can accept this, we can apply God’s law to our lives, and we can live our lives freely KNOWING that we won’t be steered wrong and that what we’re doing is going to let us receive our eternal reward in Heaven.
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