Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam, Domine Deus, Rex cœlestis, Deus Pater omnipotens
Ὑμνοῦμέν σε, εὐλογοῦμέν σε, προσκυνοῦμέν σε, δοξολογοῦμέν σε, εὐχαριστοῦμέν σοι, διὰ τὴν μεγάλην σου δόξαν. Κύριε Βασιλεῦ, ἐπουράνιε Θεέ, Πάτερ παντοκράτορ, Κύριε Υἱὲ μονογενές, Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, καὶ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα.
We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.
Addendum: 17th January. I noticed today that I omitted to comment on the fact that the Greek adds the Trinitarian formula here and is thus translated:
We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty, the Only Begotten Son, Jesu Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
I am reluctant to divide this up as minutely as I have the previous installments since reductionism is notoriously misleading and in some cases, downright dangerous. Of course, I have the whole Gloria in mind, but this section hangs naturally together following the Gospel verse that begins the hymn.
In our Mass, part of our sacrifice is that of praise and thanksgiving. Of course we re-present the sacrifice of Christ at the Altar in order to enjoy full communion with the whole Church (Militant, Suffering and Triumphant), but we also bring with us the people who we are in order to offer to God what we can. We remember King David refusing to give anything to God which cost him nothing, and we try to give what we can in addition to the edifying one perfect oblation of Christ.
The Gloria gives us five actions to perform before the face of Almighty God the Heavenly Father and King: praise, bless, worship, glorify, give thanks.
I get the impression that, these days, these five actions can get somewhat confused. That isn't too great a problem really, since our whole relationship with God should be looking to transcend any clarification and nomenclature, but it does us good to make sure that what we offer to God is as full as we can make it.
We praise thee: The Greek "Hymnoumen" of course gives us the root of hymn which is precisely what the Gloria is. I suppose that the verse could be translated "We sing thy praises." It puts us in mind of those times when we are just so overcome with a joyful emotion that we want to burst into song, even if our singing is like a glass door scraping along concrete. Singing is such a personal activity, and yet we should be working towards doing just that and harnessing that rather numinous yet peculiarly joyful (if not necessarily happy) emotion that only singing can invoke.
We bless thee: Blessing always seems to be a top down activity, something that should only come down from God to His little Creatures. Our little ones come forward at the Mass for a blessing and it is something that fathers are supposed to do with their children. Yet the Greek literally means "to speak well of". We can hear God's blessing for His only-begotten Son thundering around creation: "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" This is a blessing, a statement of deep pleasure. We may be infinitely lower than God, but we can still issue statements of taking pleasure in Him and what He does for us.
We worship thee: I have heard of priests make the mistake of saying that they worship Our Lady. I very much doubt if they actually meant that. What they were (hopefully) alluding to is the nature of what worship is, literally a worth-ship. Clearly Our Lady has worth in the Church, but she is categorically not to be the object of worship in the same way as God. Indeed, I hope the phrase "I worship Mary" has been replaced by much clearer and more rightly-intentioned statements. I value the role of Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin in Creation in that her "yes" enabled the incarnation of God. To worship God is to ensure that He takes the greatest place of worth in our thinking, speaking and action, in our daily lives, in our possessions, in our philosophies, in our sciences - no exceptions. To be a Christian is to be eccentric, because God is at the centre of the life of a Christian.
The Greek term (προσκυνοῦμέν) however, colours our action of worship because it literally means "to kiss towards" though it is probably better translated as doing homage or reverencing. Are we to blow kisses to God? You can imagine the look on the priest's face if he were to turn and see the congregation all blowing kisses in what appears to be his direction. Again, the indication is that the act of worship is something deeply personal and intimate and yet something we need to do in the presence of others. Is it wrong to love God so much that we should want to kiss Him? Surely we should be loving God more than that! Look at how much He loves us.
We glorify thee: I have really mentioned this earlier. In glorifying God, we are responding to the impact that he has on our lives. In glorifying God, we look at our own life and see just how much He is responsible for who we are now.
And after contemplating what God has done...
We give thanks to Thee for thy great glory! Exactly. We consider the impact of God in our lives and we are grateful for it, showing our gratitude again by submitting ourselves to Him.
All of these five actions are about recognising God as Almighty, as Lord, as Heavenly (in the sense of transcendent, perhaps?) King, as Father, and reacting to His use of those different qualities of Himself that He reveals to us.
We praise the Lord.
We bless the Father.
We worship God.
We glorify the Almighty.
We give thanks to the Heavenly King.
All these actions are unified in the Being of God.
Of course, the Gloria occurs in the liturgy (literally the work of the people) of Mass in which we participate in the seven liturgical actions of Christ: - taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread and taking, blessing and giving of wine and water. At Mass, these seven actions are present in the four actions of the Offertory, the Eucharistic Prayer, the Fraction and the Communion, each one prefigured in the Hymn that is sung at the beginning of the liturgy.
It is important, in this increasingly secular day and age, that we take stock of just how we are praising, blessing, worshipping, glorifying and thanksgiving that we not only do at Mass, but in our lives.
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