A Real Feast

First, the carnal banquet! - my sister put on a lavish Indian dinner for Father's Day, at which the whole family partook of her culinary skills. (A commemoration was also made of the vigil of eldest son's peregrination...) All agreed the perfumed and fragrant curries were very pukka.

Second, some spiritual nourishment: it was an old Anglican custom to learn the Collect of the week (that is, of the Sunday), and a praiseworthy practice it was, for the prayers learnt, processed through that admirable translator though heretical traitor, Cranmer, were for the most part gems of Latin divinity. For this reason, reading to-day's Roman Collect for the 14th after Pentecost, I betook myself to my annotated B.C.P., and found this English version (for the 15th after Trinity; the difference in numbering dates back before the Reformation to the Use of Sarum):

Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy: and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is, I would wager, a very good rendering of the Latin. Of ourselves, we but fail and fall; therefore, knowing the Lord ever attent to our prayers as His Church rightly assembled in the Holy Ghost, and glad to put forth His mercy in answer as was predetermined from all ages, we cast all our cares upon Him, that we may be strengthened and freely moved by grace to eschew evil and pursue the goods that will profit us unto everlasting life, by the merits of Christ.