Three seminarians were leaning over a table when I walked into the lounge.
"Verbum erat apud Deum," one seminarian read. “The Word was—uh, what’s
apud?”
“With,” I said.
“The Word was with God!” he said. “Yeah! Want to help translate the Vulgate into English?”
I saw a black, leather-bound Latin Bible on the table. It was beautiful.
“I can’t take any more Latin today,” I said. I went back to my room to finish my own translations.
Sometimes I wonder why I’m wasting time on a dead language. Then again, Latin has a kind of longevity. It’s been around for thousands of years, so we can read ancient speeches, poetry and philosophy in their original form. And since Latin is a dead language, its meaning doesn’t change with culture. After all these centuries,
fides is still
fides, even if the world has forgotten what faith is.
Latin has a kind of universality too. Anywhere you go in the western world, doctors and lawyers probably know a little Latin. Maybe you couldn’t order a sandwich in Latin, but you could probably find someone with whom to discuss medicine or
habeas corpus.
I still wonder why I’m studying Latin. Ancient Greek and Hebrew are even older and just as dead. Latin hasn’t been the language of international relations for more than 300 years. And Latin is difficult. It’s slow. The vocabulary rarely means what I expect it to mean, and the syntax is messy. Every word starts with a familiar root, but there’s always a jumble of letters tacked onto the end. The translation exercises feel mundane and repetitive.
But there’s also something divine about working with the language—somehow, my work reflects God’s work in my life. When I look at a confusing Latin sentence, I wonder how I can pull the words together to make sense of it all, but I also remember how God pulls together details from my confusing days to work something good in me. Sometimes, after I drudge through an incoherent string of Latin, I find that the verb at the end brings out the meaning of the whole sentence. And sometimes my prayers seem incoherent until, as I prepare for bed, God reveals himself in a new way and brings meaning to my day all at once.
I still wonder why my life doesn’t make sense yet. I wonder why God hasn’t already revealed Himself to me completely. I wonder why I’m staring at Latin exercises for an hour without finding any meaning. But when the meaning suddenly appears, I wonder how I missed it for so long. The chaos becomes ordered, and the light shines in the darkness. Once I’ve seen what a sentence means, I can’t forget it. I’ve learned the secrets of the sentence —how one letter can make a difference, or how two distant words share a mysterious connection. And I know my Latin better because it was hard to learn.
The same is true in my spiritual life. I can pray for an hour, looking for God. When he suddenly appears, I wonder how I missed him for so long. Once I’ve seen him, I can’t forget him. I don’t know everything about him, of course. But he’s shown me himself for one moment, and I love him for it. I love him better because he was hard to find.
Mr. Fassero is a pre-theology seminarian for the Diocese of Richmond.