Prevenient

Some people have said to me that they are uncomfortable with the word 'prevenient' in the Prayer over the Offerings for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It has no place in ordinary speech, they say. It may be helpful to reflect a little on the underlying Latin word praevenire, which means 'to go in front of', and occurs quite often in the Missal. We shall meet it, for instance, in the Collect for Saturday in the Third Week of Advent, which begins:

May your grace, Almighty God,

always go before us and follow after . . .

Before 1970, this was the Collect for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. In the sixteenth century it found its way into the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, where it began:

Lord, we praye thee that thy grace maye alwayes preuente and folowe us.

Clearly, at that time 'prevent' could mean 'go before and enable' rather than 'go before and impede' as it does to us.

In the Mass of the Epiphany the Prayer after Communion begins:

Go before us with heavenly light, O Lord . . .

On the second day of Lent, praevenire is translated in our official version with the verb 'prompt':

Prompt our actions with your inspiration, we pray, O Lord.

So if you are uncomfortable with 'prevenient' in today's Mass, think of the sixth line of today's Prayer over the Offerings as meaning simply:

. . . on account of your grace going before her . . .