The Concept of Merit in the Western Rite

By Fr. David McCready

Today, by the mercy of God, as we celebrate the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, she who merited to bear Our Saviour,[1] I begin this study, asking that, through her prayers, what I write may be true and in accordance with the Orthodox Faith, the Faith revealed to us by her Divine Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be all glory for ever. Amen.

Introduction

In the sacristy of one of the churches of the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, there exists an altar missal from which a careful hand has excised every mention of the word ‘merit.’ Such an assault on the venerable liturgical heritage of the Elder Rome appears contrary to the Orthodox phronema, which is ever respectful of what has been handed down to us by tradition (1 Corinthians 11, 23). But merit language is not simply part of our liturgical patrimony: it is part of the theological and spiritual inheritance which we have received from the great Fathers of the Latin church, including St Cyprian, St Ambrose, St Leo, St Benedict, and St Gregory the Dialogist. Shall we also take a pen and strike through their writings?

In this study, I want to look first at the use of merit language in the Latin of the patristic period, concluding that, although it has a wide semantic range, yet, nonetheless, in many cases, it should be interpreted strictly. Second, I will examine how this strict merit language is used by some of the major Latin Fathers, before arguing that their teaching on merit accords on a number of points with that of the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine tradition. I will then close by examining the use of strict merit language in the liturgy of the western rite, contending that this language should be retained as part of our Latin patrimony, fully congruent with the teaching of eastern Orthodoxy.[2]

Merit Language in Patristic Latin

1.1. The Verb Merereo(r)

The English verb ‘to merit’ comes from the Latin mereo(r), a verb curious for having both an active and a deponent form.[3] The compounds promereo(r), demereo, and commereo also exist. The first is used of both punishment and reward, the second only of reward. [4] Demereo is neutral in the patristic period, only later coming to be used in a negative sense. Its employment by the Fathers is, however, rare. Commereo almost always means to merit something bad, as in Baalaam’s answer to his donkey’s question, ‘Why did you hit me,’ to which the seer replies in the Vulgate, Quia commeruisti, ‘Because you deserved it’ (Numbers 22, 29).

Although all four verbs derive from the Greek μείρομαι, ‘to receive an allotted portion,’ they have no exact equivalent in Greek, which is one reason why a doctrine of merit did not develop in the east. Nonetheless, we will argue that Greek does have certain terms which correspond to the idea of merit, most notably the noun ἀξία, ‘worth’ and the adjective ἄξιος, ‘worthy,’ as well as the verbs ἀξιόω and καταξιόω, meaning ‘to deem worthy.’ [5] Also to be noted is the word μισθός, which means ‘reward.’

Mereo(r) has a wide range of meanings in ancient usage, including in the writings of the Fathers. As Gösta Hallonsten notes: ‘The use of mereo(r) by … the Latin Fathers … refers to a much broader field of meaning than that which the doctrine of merit … seems to indicate,’[6] a point underscored by the Vatican document Comme Le Prévoit, issued in 1969, as the Roman liturgy was being translated into the vernacular, which made special mention of mereri as needing particular care and attention when being rendered from the Latin.[7]

At its weakest, the verb mereo(r) is, in the words of Jan Nicolaas van den Brink, ‘superfluous’ and ‘redundant,’ being used simply for the sake of style, a pleonasm which it is better to ignore in translation.[8]As an example, we might cite St Ambrose’s words about the Syro-Phoenician woman, Impetrare meruit quod poposcit, where the meruit is clearly redundant, the sentence meaning simply: ‘She obtained what she sought.’[9] This redundancy ought not to surprise us. The Fathers were skilled rhetoricians, whose works were designed to be read aloud and thus they employed an elevated, rhythmic style, including what Christine Mohrmann has termed ‘periphrases with mereri.’[10] The same is true of the liturgy, which is marked by what Antoine Chavasse has called ‘a hieratic language … with a received vocabulary, with its own themes and its traditional turns of phrase.’[11] As Mary Pierre Ellebracht notes: ‘It must always be borne in mind that [the liturgical prayers] were chanted aloud by the celebrant in the name of the congregation. Hence, rhythm is one of the most important factors contributing to the recurrence of … periphrastic constructions and other stylistic formulae.’ [12] Thus, words like as mereo(r) were often used not to convey theological truth so much as to produce a cadence which ‘in many cases is identical in form with the Ciceronian.’[13] Mereo(r) may thus be compared to such words as ‘vouchsafe’ or ‘deign,’ used in certain English ‘traditional language’ devotions, words which add no meaning to the prayer in which they appear, but which serve, rather, to provide rhythm and sonority.

Mereo(r) is also often used, to quote Fr. Antoine Dumas, as ‘no more than an auxiliary, analogous to “can,” without any notion of merit or demerit.’[14] He is speaking specifically of the liturgy, but what he says applies also to the Fathers, in whose writings mereo(r) frequently has the sense of ‘can’ or ‘could’ or ‘might,’ or ‘should.’[15] An instance is furnished by St Gregory the Great in the Dialogues: peteret ut sanari merertur, ‘he might pray that she should be healed.’[16] Another example is given by St Paulinus of Nola: Sorte pia Dominus meus mortuuos, ut sibi vivam et mereor semper vivere Viventis vitam, ‘My Lord died a holy death that I might live to Him and should ever live the life of the Living One.’[17] From the liturgy, one might cite the antiphon for Prime on Quinquagesima, which thus paraphrases the Gospel verse, Luke 18, 41: Cæcus clamabat ad eum, ut lumen recipere mereretur, ‘The blind man cried out to Him, that He might receive light.’ In this last instance we have a good example of how in relation to prayer mereo(r) is used as a kind of formule de politesse in supplicating God. In these cases, it can almost, as Bakhuizen van den Brink suggests, be translated as ‘if that should be granted to us;’ ‘God-granting,’[18] and thus, as Hallonsten notes, it has ‘almost the opposite meaning’ to that which ‘merit’ possesses in modern English. [19]

Mereo(r) can likewise mean ‘to acquire’ or ‘to obtain,’ as when St Ambrose says of St Paul, apostolus esse meruit, which clearly means, to translate literally, ‘he obtained to be an apostle.’[20] More specifically, mereo(r) can also mean ‘to acquire or to attain by prayer.’ Thus, for example, expounding the parable of the unmerciful servant, St Augustine says, Rogabat … dilationem, meruit remissionem: ‘He asked for a delay, and he obtained forgiveness.’[21] This usage does not, however, appear in the western liturgy, at least in the mass.

Mereo(r) can also mean that by which one merits or deserves a reward, in other words it can mean ‘to serve.’ [22] More often, however, the Fathers prefer to use promereor in this way, as, for example, in St Cyprian’s description of the prophetess Anna: Rogans et vigilans perseverabat in promerendo Dei, ‘Praying and watching, she persevered in serving God.’[23] Likewise, one may cite what St Augustine writes of Tobit: sepeliendo mortuos Deum promeruisse, ‘[he is said] to have served God by burying the dead.’[24]

Thus, to quote Hallonsten,‘The word mereo(r) is not necessarily as sign of the idea of merit.’[25] Nonetheless, at the same time there is, as Bakhuizen van den Brink says, ‘no question that mereri in Christian literature should very often be translated as “to merit,”’[26] that is, ‘to deserve something,’ good or bad. As an example of the latter, one may cite St Augustine in De Diversis Quaestionibus, where he says of Pharoah, that ‘he merited punishment,’ meruit poenam.[27] As an example of the former, let us cite the words of St Maximus of Turin concerning the good thief: Recte ergo meretur paradisum, qui crucem Christi non putavit esse scandalum sed virtutem, ‘Rightly therefore did he merit paradise, who thought the cross of Christ to be not scandal but strength.’[28] Clearly, Maximus is saying here that, by his confession, the thief deserved the reward of paradise. This strict use of the word mereo(r) by the Latin Fathers will form the topic of the second part of this paper. For the moment, let us note that there is often a certain ambiguity as to how mereo(r) should be rendered. This is true of a number of the quotations cited above, which are patient of more than one translation. Or, to take another example, St Jerome says of the dying thief: Credidit in cruce et statim meretur audire, amen, amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in paradiso.[29] Does this mean that ‘he believed and merited to hear …,’ or should the meretur be omitted in English as simply redundant, used by Jerome only for style: ‘He believed … and he heard?’ Or, to take another example, when Tertullian says of the sinful woman meruit veniam,[30] is he saying that she ‘obtained pardon,’ or that she ‘merited pardon,’ or is he just employing meruit here for stylistic effect? A more modern illustration of the same difficulty is provided by one of the twentieth century’s most erudite ecclesiastical Latinists, Sr. Mary Gonzaga Haessly, who in her translation of the Sunday collects renders mereamur in the collect for Advent I as ‘may’ and the same word in the collect for Advent II as ‘may merit …’[31]

1.2. The Noun Meritum

The noun meritum also derives from the Greek, from the word μέρος, ‘an allotted portion,’ but, as with mereo(r), there is no exact equivalent in Greek. Also like mereo(r), meritum is often redundant in translation, being used simply for style. For example, when Sulpicius Severus says that Pharoah favoured the Israelites ob meritum Joseph, this is better rendered as ‘for Joseph’s sake,’ rather than ‘on account of Joseph’s merits.’[32] Similarly, the statement of St Ambrose, that when Sampson lost his hair, et meritum virtutis amisit, the better translation would be ‘he also lost his strength,’ instead of ‘he also lost the merit of his strength.’[33] An example in the liturgy is the phrase merito castitatis, which appears in the collect of the mass Me Expectaverunt for virgin martyrs. [34] This could mean ‘by the merit of their chastity,’ indicating that their chastity was meritorious, although it could also be a pleonasm, to be rendered simply as ‘by their chastity.’[35]

Sometimes, merita can be used as metonymy for the relics of the saints.[36] Thus, for example, Maximian, bishop of Ravenna from 546 to 577, is said to have erected a church in honour of the protomartyr, Stephani meritis et nomine sacra, ‘holy by the merits and name of Stephen.’[37] Likewise, from Ravenna we have an inscription which relates how Smaragdus, exarch from 585 to 589, and then again from 603 to 611, was inspired by his meritis, clearly meaning the relics of the saints housed in the chapel which he helped embellish.[38] In the liturgy, at least in the missal, we have but one example of this, in the secret for the martyr Nicomedes: beati Nicomedis Martyris tui merita præclara suscipiens, ‘receiving the illustrious merits of Your blessed martyr Nicomedes,’ which only makes sense if merita here means relics.

Meritum can also mean ‘dignity’ or ‘office.’[39] St Hilary, for example, speaks of those who are appointed ad sacerdotii meritum, ‘to the dignity of the priesthood,’[40] while St Leo, complaining of men unworthily admitted to the episcopate, uses the term sacerdotale meritum in the same sense.[41] The word is not used only of the clergy, however. St Jerome, for instance, talks of inter angelos merita diversa, ‘different ranks amongst the angels.’[42] This usage does appear in the missal, for example in the secret for the first mass of All Souls, and in the daily mass for the dead, where it is asked that to those to whom God has given fidei christianae meritum, may likewise be given its reward. Meritum here can perhaps be translated ‘merit,’ but it seems better to construe it as ‘the dignity of the Christian faith.’ This is certainly its meaning in the secret [43] for a deceased priest, which asks, Cui sacerdotale donasti meritum, dones et praemium, ‘to whom You have given the dignity of the priesthood, may You also give its reward.’

Meritum can also mean the work we do to deserve something. Tertullian, for example, speaks of the pagans not growing religionis meritis, ‘by the works of [their] religion.’[44] Likewise, in his De Opere, Cyprian can balance operationibus iustis with misericordiae meritis: ‘By works of righteousness God is satisfied, by works of mercy sins are cleansed.’[45] One finds this usage quite often in the missal. For instance, the collect for St John Chrysostom speaks of ‘the church which You have willed to illuminate with [his] glorious merits and teachings,’ while that for St Ephrem uses a similar construction invoking the saint’s ‘wonderful learning and shining merits.’ In both cases, merita clearly means the good deeds of the saints, rather than merit in the strict sense. [46] Elsewhere, in the same vein, merita is linked to imitation. Thus, the collect for St Venantius seeks that ‘we who venerate his merits, may imitate his constancy of faith,’ [47] while in the collect for Ss Philip and James we ask that ‘as we rejoice in their merits, so may we be instructed by their examples.’[48] Similarly, in the collect for Ss Sergius, Bacchus, Marcellus and Apuleius, which dates back to the pre-schism Gelasian Sacramentary, we have the petition: Nos … beata merita prosequantur: et tuo semper faciant amore ferventes, which seems best translated as: ‘May the blessed examples [of Your saints] accompany us, and make us always fervent in our love for You.’[49]

Despite these examples, when used in the missal, meritum most often denotes a ‘deserving act,’ as in the collect for the Wednesday after Laetare Sunday, which begins, Deus, qui iustis praemia meritorum … praebes, ‘O God, You grant to the righteous the reward of their merits,’ the meriti merces, as St Ambrose expresses it, the ‘reward of merit.’[50] Sometimes this merit can be negative. For instance, St Augustine says of Saul of Tarsus: Si merita quaeris, damnationis sunt, ‘If you look for any merits in his life, they are merits of damnation.’ [51] Likewise, in De Diversis Quaestionibus, the same saint can speak of meritum praemii … meritum supplicii, ‘the merit of reward … the merit of punishment.’[52] Only with the passage of time does meritum come to denote almost exclusively an act deserving of reward, with demeritum being used for an act worthy of punishment. We will examine the use of meritum in the strict sense in the second part of this paper.

1.3. The Question of Satisfaction

1.3.1. Satisfaction as Repentance

Annexed to the question of merit is that of satisfaction, and it seems good to treat the topic here in general, before looking at specific examples in the writings of the Fathers. We may note that it is not, however, a theme of the traditional western liturgy, being found only twice, once in the blessing of the ashes at the beginning of Lent, then in the collect for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. [53]

As with the language of merit, the language of satisfaction has a wide range of meanings. These can include: ‘to make amends,’ ‘to apologize,’ ‘to seek pardon,’ ‘to compensate,’ and, more broadly, ‘to obey God’ or ‘to serve God.’ As with the English ‘satisfy,’ satisfacere can also mean ‘to satiate,’ and ‘to content,’ as in Mark 15, 15, where the Vulgate has volens populo satisfacere, satisfacere being used to translate the Greek ἱκανὸν ποιῆσαι, which itself is a Latinism. [54]

The clue to understanding satisfaction in relation to sin lies in the ancient adage, satisfactio pro solutione est.[55] This refers to a debt which is discharged to the satisfaction of the creditor, without the full amount being paid. It is, literally, to ‘do enough’ for the debt to be remitted. And this ‘enough’ may simply be to ask forgiveness with ‘a broken and a contrite heart,’[56] as in the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Καί ἄφες ἡμῖν τά ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν. This idea, that repentance may be enough to satisfy for sin, is well exemplified by St John Chrysostom, when he says in a homily: Οὐκ ἀνέμεινε τὴν ἀπόδοσιν ὁ φιλάνθρωπος, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἔξομολογησιν λύσιν ἐποίησε τοῦ ὀφλήματος, ‘The Lover of Mankind did not wait for restitution, but made confession to loose the debt [of sin],’ which Migne renders confessionem debiti solutionem fecit.[57]

Satisfaction language, is, therefore, first of all, language about repentance. Very often, the verb satisfacere is used as the equivalent of paenitere, ‘to repent,’ and exomologesin facere,‘to confess,’[58] while the noun satisfactio is frequently ‘identical with repentance.’[59] As an example, one may cite Tertullian’s description of the prodigal son: Recordatur patris satisfacto redit, meaning, ‘He recalled his father, and, having repented, he returned.’ [60]

Satisfaction language can also be used of the reconciliation which repentance brings, as when St Patrick says of the soldiers of Coroticus, per paenitentiam effusis lacrimis satis Deo faciant; ‘through repentance they must with many tears be reconciled to God.’[61] Here, rather than being an accounting metaphor, satisfaction has to do with the mending of personal relationships, as in the Vulgate rendering of II Kings, 19, where Joab counsels David, Satisfac servis tuis, ‘Make up with your servants.’ In this sense, satisfaction for the Fathers includes the total extirpation of the sin which hinders our friendship with God, an idea summed up in the scholastic axiom, attributed to St Augustine: ‘Satisfaction means to cut off the causes of sin, and not to indulge in whatever sin suggests,’[62] the equivalent of Ambrosiaster’s ‘True repentance is to cease from sin,’[63] or the dictum of St Gregory the Great: ‘Repentance is to weep for evils done, and no more to do those things for which we weep’ [64]

Aut poena aut satisfactio is an adage associated with Anselm’s theory of atonement. But we can also give it a patristic gloss. Our choice is ‘either punishment or repentance,’ the very words of Our Lord, ἐὰν μὴ μετανοῆτε πάντες ἀπολεῖσθε (Luke 13, 3).

1.3.2. Satisfaction as Penalty

The western Fathers teach that repentance involves more than simply ‘saying sorry to God.’ As they point out, He Himself has demanded ‘works worthy of repentance;’ [65] He has demanded that we weep and mourn and fast [66] and, most especially, that we give alms.[67]

Why? Later scholasticism will say that there is a temporal punishment due to sin, which needs to be undergone even once the guilt of sin has been forgiven. But primarily for the Fathers, eastern as well as western, exterior acts are commanded by God to make visible what St Augustine terms the ‘hidden contrition of the heart,’[68] to show the genuineness of repentance, in contradistinction to those who ‘call themselves penitents, but are not;’ ‘penitents living badly,’ as he terms them, [69] those such as St Ambrose chides, who:

walk around in quite different attire, when they ought to be weeping and groaning because they have defiled the robe of sanctification and grace: women loading their ears with pearls, and weighing down their necks [with chokers], who would do better to bend themselves to Christ rather than to gold, and who ought to be weeping for themselves, because they have lost the heavenly pearl.[70]

In the same vein, from the east we hear Chrysostom lamenting those who abstain from food but not from sin, [71] while canon 12 of Nicaea I speaks of those who ‘give evidence of their repentance by deeds, … with tears … and good works.’

But also, to quote Tertullian, ‘Exomologesis is a discipline by which we prostrate and humble ourselves,’[72] humility being that virtue which best obtains the forgiveness of our sins. [73] To cite St Cyprian’s words about the publican in Luke 18:

Sanctificari hic magis meruit qui sic rogavit, qui spem salutis non in fiducia innocentiae suae posuit, cum innocens nemo sit, sed peccata confessus humiliter oravit, et exaudivit orantem qui humilibus ignoscit: He merited rather to be sanctified who prayed like this, who placed his hope of being saved not in confidence about his innocence – since no one is innocent – but prayed humbly confessing his sins, and He heard him praying Who shows forgiveness to the humble.[74]

This said, the Fathers also speak of satisfaction as punishment, as for example, St Ambrose, when he says: Satisfactione peccati poena dissolvitur, ‘By satisfaction, the penalty of sin is paid.’[75] In this quotation, however, Ambrose is talking about punishment in the mitigated sense of a financial penalty: the satisfactio is sicut qui pecunias solvunt, debitum reddunt, ‘like those who pay money, repay a debt.’[76] The idea is that through our good deeds, we can make up for our sins, something which is, as Gary A. Anderson has demonstrated, ‘deeply rooted in the Bible.’[77] One may think, for example, of Daniel 4, 27, where, in the Septuagint and Vulgate, Nebuchadnezzar is called upon to ‘atone for his sins by alms and for his iniquities by acts of compassion.’ Likewise, Tobit 12, 9: ‘Alms purge away sins,’ or Proverbs 13, 8: ‘The ransom of a man’s soul is his wealth.’[78] From scripture the idea passed, to quote Anderson again, into ‘every aspect of Greek- and Latin-speaking Christianity,’[79] as well as into the Syriac tradition.[80] Thus, already in the immediate post-New Testament period we find both in Barnabas and the Didache the teaching that alms are a ‘ransom for sins.’[81] And so, as Anderson contends, the argument that the language of debt and repayment ‘begins with Tertullian and is dependent on a uniquely Latin understanding of human culpability [is] incorrect.’[82] To see this, one has only to look at that great exemplar of the Greek tradition, St John Chrysostom, who speaks of ‘heaven [as] a business.’[83] We can go, he says, to the ‘marketplace of almsgiving,’ and ‘buy salvation’ there.[84] ‘Almsgiving pays the debt [of sin],’ he teaches, in words almost identical to those of Ambrose in the Commentary on Luke quoted above.[85]

Thus, in some cases, when the Fathers speak of ‘punishment’ in relation to sin, this should be understood in an attenuated way as the paying of a penalty incurred by debt. Nonetheless, as we will see, several of the Latin Fathers do speak of punishment for sin in more severe terms. However, it should be noted that this penal vocabulary, like the vocabulary of debt, is mingled in the same authors with therapeutic and medicinal language, as well as the image of cleansing, a reminder that all these things are metaphors. The Fathers were not academic theologians, setting out a system. In treating of satisfaction, they did not, indeed, speak as dogmaticians at all, but as preachers and pastors, making free use of different forms of expression as they sought to lead souls to salvation.

We are now in a position to conclude this section by looking at how the only two instances of satisfaction language in the mass of St Gregory are to be understood. The first comes in one of the blessing prayers for the ashes at the start of Lent, in which it is said of God, Satisfactione placaris, which simply means that our relationship with Him, broken by sin, is healed by repentance. The second instance comes in the collect for the Sacred Heart: Satisfactionis exhibeamus offícium, ‘May we show forth the duty of satisfaction,’ ‘satisfaction’ which once again is merely the equivalent of ‘repentance.’[86]

1.4. The Primacy of Grace

In light of ‘the accusation that our prayers [about merit] are Pelagian,’[87] one final introductory point needs to be made. In strict justice, God owes us nothing. When we have done everything that is required of us, we are still unprofitable servants.[88] But, because God is good and the friend of man, He makes Himself the rewarder of those who seek Him diligently.[89] As the scripture says – and there is no more scriptural teaching than the doctrine of merit rightly understood:[90] ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘He will render to each according to their works’ (Romans 2, 6).

With this key ‘merit’ text goes another, Proverbs 19, 17, ‘Whosoever has pity on the poor lends to the Lord,’ a verse on the basis of which the Fathers speak of God as making Himself our debtor. We will see this in the western Fathers at whom we are going to look, but it is found in the east as well. St John Chrysostom, for example, argues that ‘If God borrows from us, he is our debtor,’[91] while in his fourteen Oration, ‘On the Love of the Poor,’ St Gregory the Theologian says the exact same thing.[92] For Greeks or Latins both, however, if God is our debtor, He is, as Bakhuizen van der Brink expresses it, ‘our debtor only by His own grace,’[93] because He Himself has mercifully promised to repay the good we do. As Hallonsten puts it: ‘The gap between human works and God’s reward is overcome through God’s self-binding.’[94]

But how do we do good works in the first place? The Latin tradition is adamant: we can only do good works by the grace of God. For the Fathers, it is always the case that ‘by grace we are saved: it is the gift of God’ (Ephesians 2, 8). Everything depends on Him, on Him enabling us to do the good, and then accepting and rewarding as our own what we could not have achieved without His help. As St Augustine expresses the paradox: Quae certe merces est operum bonorum, gratia Dei,’ ‘What is certainly the reward of good works, is the grace of God.’[95] Or, to quote an ancient prayer from the Verona Sacramentary, no longer in use: Quod praestas unde sit meritum, proficere nobis largiaris ad praemium,‘What You supply as the source of merit, may You grant to advance us to its reward.’ [96]

There are numerous examples of this doctrine in the missal now in use. One is furnished by the collect for Advent I, probably composed by St Gregory the Great. [97] Addressed to Christ, it runs:

Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: ut ab imminentibus peccatorum nostrorum periculis, te mereamur protegente eripi, te liberante salvari: Stir up, we pray, O Lord, Your power and come, that, from those threatening dangers which arise from our sins, we may merit, by Your protection to be delivered, and by Your liberating to be saved.

The deponent mereamur is joined to the passives eripi and salvari, ‘divine passives’ indicating the action of God, to show that our merit depends on His grace. Another example is the secret for the Annunciation, which asks that ‘through the power of His saving Resurrection we may merit to come to eternal joy.’[98] We merit not by our strength, but by His power. Or, again, to quote the ninth-century secret for the consecration of churches: Ad aeterna praemia, te adiuvante, pervenire mereamur, ‘May we merit to come to eternal rewards with Your help.’[99] Besides these examples – a few of many – we may note that every prayer of the Roman rite ends with the formula Per Dominum Nostrum Iesum Christum, ‘Through Our Lord Jesus Christ.’ [100] We ask through Him for grace, and through Him it is that we receive ‘every good and perfect gift’ (James 1, 17).

Merit Language in Specific Latin Fathers

2.1. Tertullian (160-240)

2.1.1. Merit in Tertullian

Hallonsten concludes his magisterial study of merit in Tertullian with the affirmation: ‘The words in the merit-group are not used in Tertullian in such a way that one can speak of a theory of merit.’[101] Tertullian is ‘not the creator or anticipator of the western theory of merit,’ he insists.[102] Nonetheless, the passages which we cite below are clear, as is the link between Tertullian and the north African Fathers who follow him, Cyprian and Augustine, both of whom can be seen as developing Tertullian’s teaching.

Tertullian speaks about merit in relation to this life. ‘God,’ he says, ‘measures out His goodness according to each man’s merit, giving it to the worthy, withholding it from the unworthy.’[103] However, his main focus is on the future, on what in his Against Marcion he terms the retributio meritorum, the ‘reward of merit,’ which will occur when ‘we … all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that each one may receive what we have done in the body, whether good or bad,’ a quotation from 2 Corinthians 5, 5, another of the patristic ‘proof-texts’ for the doctrine of merit. [104] We find the same teaching in the Apology, where he describes the Last Day as utriusque meriti dispunctionem, the ‘account-taking of each one’s merits, ’[105] when each will ‘receive from God the judgment on their good or contrary deserts.’[106] For, he says, ‘God has appointed rewards (praemia) for those who keep His commandments, … to those who serve Him the recompense (retributionem) of eternal life, but to the profane, fire equally eternal and enduring.’[107]

If the righteous all receive eternal life, however, Tertullian nonetheless speaks of a difference of reward among them. Quoting another standard text, Luke 10, 7, ‘The labourer is worthy of his wages,’ he asks: ‘To whom is this better applied than to God as Judge? For this is what judgement is: to make the labourer worthy of his wages.’[108] Another text he quotes is 1 Corinthians 15, 23, that each must rise in ‘their own order,’ arguing that this order is according to merit.[109] Or, appealing to John 14, 2, he demands: ‘How is it that there is a difference of mansions in the Father’s House, if not because there is a variety of merits?’[110] Or, as he puts it elsewhere: ‘The greater the struggles, the greater the rewards that follow.’[111]

Merit, thus, for Tertullian has above all to do with our speranda merces, the recompense which His servants trust that their good Master will give them, [112] He Who is mercedis repromissor, the ‘promiser of reward,’[113] and who by this promise makes Himself our debtor. [114] But God not only rewards. He is auctor as well as remunerator,[115] recompensing what He first Himself has given us. As Tertullian says with regard to theosis:

We shall be even gods, if we shall merit to be among those of whom He declared, “I have said, Ye are gods,” and, “God stands in the congregation of the gods.” But this comes of His own grace, not from anything in us, because it is He alone who can make gods.’[116]

Like all the Orthodox Fathers, however, Tertullian also insists on the importance of our free will, a concept which is fundamental to the idea of merit. Because God has granted freedom of the will to human beings, they can make a choice to do good or evil. And it is from this choice that merit follows. ‘Actions are bound to merits,’ as Tertullian says, Facta devincta sint meritis, [117] God in justice rendering good to those who choose to do the good, punishment to those who chose to do what is evil.[118] But we can chose not only to do good things, but better things as well, things which will, therefore, be more greatly rewarded, ‘sacrifices pleasing to God,’ such as fasting, virginity, and, above all, martyrdom.[119] As Tertullian tells his wife, two words which sum up his whole teaching: Virtus coronatur, ‘Virtue will be crowned.’[120]

2.1.2. Satisfaction in Tertullian

Tertullian associates the idea of merit with that of satisfaction, which generally in his writings has the sense of repentance. [121] Out of love for sin-prone humanity, God has engaged – Tertullian uses the verb spopondit – ‘to grant us forgiveness through repentance,’[122] and to it He ceaselessly ‘calls and exhorts us, swearing by Himself and saying, “As I live … I desire the repentance of sinners, not their death.”’[123] And so, Tertullian says, ‘If you have offended God, you can still be reconciled to Him. You have one Whom you can satisfy, and Who is willing to be satisfied.’[124] In saying this, Tertullian draws heavily on the three parables of Luke 15, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son – the last especially. Deum … tam pater nemo, he declares, tam pius nemo: ‘No one is a Father like God, no one so loving as He,’ He Who will receive back His wayward son, if only he repents.[125]

It is true that Tertullian speaks about ‘replacing God’s indignation, and expunging our eternal punishment by temporal afflictions,’[126] concluding that ‘in as much as we do not spare ourselves, so much God will spare us.’ [127] But we need to look carefully at the text where this is written, On Repentance, 9. The subject of what he is talking about is not our exterior acts, but our exomologesis, as he terms it, using the Greek word, which he elsewhere defines as ‘asking for forgiveness – because whoever seeks forgiveness confesses their sins.’[128] In On Repentance, this definition is expanded to include all that is involved in the process of repentance:

Exomologesis is that by which we confess our sin to the Lord, not indeed as if He were ignorant, but inasmuch as by confession satisfaction is settled; by confession repentance is born; by repentance God is appeased.[129]

But all this can only happen if we are sincere. ‘Where there is no change, repentance is necessarily vain,’ Tertullian says.[130] It is ‘to put out a hand to take some merchandise, but to be unwilling to pay the price for it; for repentance is the price which God has set for the forgiveness of our sins,’[131] a commercial metaphor certainly, but precisely that, a metaphor, just as elsewhere Tertullian uses the metaphor of healing. [132] But it is a metaphor, nonetheless, for something real and genuine. This is the key to understanding Tertullian, the aim of whose life and writing was, quite simply, holiness.[133] And this demanded not only interior repentance, but penitential acts, something on which Tertullian perhaps insists so much because of the intimate connection which he sees as existing between the body and the soul.[134] We must ‘fast and pray, groan and weep, crying out night and day to the Lord God,’[135] not, to reiterate, as some kind of compensation for the wrongs we have done, but as a visible manifestation of our inner contrition, the translation into action of what afflicts our consciences.[136]

2.2. St Cyprian (d. 258)

2.2.1. Cyprian and Tertullian

From Tertullian it is only natural to turn to St Cyprian, since as Jerome reports, claiming to have heard it from Cyprian’s own secretary: ‘He was accustomed never to pass a day without reading Tertullian,’ whom he refered to as ‘the Master.’ [137] Thus, it is not surprising that we find in Cyprian many of the same themes as in Tertullian, including the same overwhelming concern for true and genuine holiness.

2.2.2. Merit in Cyprian

A figure who in ancient times was greatly venerated by the eastern churches, [138] as he is still today, St Cyprian is notable for his profound knowledge of the scriptures, on the basis of which, following Tertullian, he speaks about merit above all in relation to the eschaton, when ‘the eternal prize of the heavenly kingdom will be received.’[139]As he puts it in his treatise De Opere:

What, dearest brethren, will be the glory of the labourers … when the Lord begins to judge His people, and distributes to our merits and good works the rewards which He has promised, giving heavenly things for things earthly, eternal things for things temporal, great things for things that are small! [140]

Then, he says, ‘we will merit well from Christ the Judge, and count God our debtor,’[141] for, ‘when one has mercy on the poor, they lend to God: and who gives to the least, gives to God.’[142] Here Cyprian uses the verb foenero, which has the force of lending with interest, the act of a usurer, the same as in De Opere 16: ‘By almsgiving to the poor we are lending to God, for what is given to the least is given to Christ.’ Cyprian even goes so far as to speak not only of merces, rewards, and divina praemia, divine recompenses, but also of tituli, entitlements.[143]

Cyprian shares the image of God as debtor with Tertullian, but it is one which he bases firmly on scripture. When he talks of the topic, direct quotations or allusions to Biblical texts abound: Proverbs 19, 17; Isaiah 58, 6-9; Tobit 12, 8; Matthew 25, 31-46. Referencing the latter, for example, Cyprian says that, according to the Lord Himself, what is given to the poor is given to Him, and He Himself has promised to recompense it. [144] Therefore, Cyprian continues:

Let us take heed [to this teaching], so that we may merit of the Lord [promerendo Domino]. Let us give to Christ earthly garments, so that we may receive heavenly raiment. Let us give the food and drink of this age, so that … we may come to the heavenly banquet … [145]

Like Tertullian, too, Cyprian has a doctrine of supererogation. In his view, some works are better than others, and thus, when freely chosen, they are more deserving of reward: things such as martyrdom, voluntary poverty, and virginity, all of which he himself embraced. So, speaking of virginity, for example, he writes:

The Lord does not command this, but He exhorts us to it. He does not impose it as a yoke of necessity, but leaves it up to our free will. But, in telling us that there are many mansions in the Father’s House, He shows that some dwellings are better than others, and these better dwellings you are seeking, denying the lusts of the flesh to obtain a greater prize in the heavenly places.[146]

2.2.3. Merit and Sin in Cyprian

Cyprian lived in an age of crisis for the church. The persecution of Diocletian, which began in 303, and in which Cyprian himself was to perish, saw many Christians fall away from their faith. What was to be done with these lapsi, if they wanted to return to the church? For Cyprian, the answer was clear. They needed to make satisfaction, by which he, again like Tertullian, meant nothing other than repentance. [147]

Like Tertullian also, Cyprian held that repentance needed to be, in Graeme Clarke’s phrase, ‘authenticated.’ [148] In contrast to those who, while claiming to be contrite, sat around in bathhouses, or gorged themselves at banquets, [149] those who were truly sorry for their sins needed to ‘run the way of repentance … with prayers and lamentations,’ [150] ‘weeping for their sins.’[151] For this is what God has prescribed, Cyprian insists. ‘What those who sin need to do, the divine teachings tell us.’ [152] ‘He has given us precepts. He has instructed His servants what they ought to do, promising a reward to those who labour and punishment for the unfruitful.’ [153] To quote De Lapsis:

He Himself has taught us how to act. ‘Turn to me,’ He says, ‘with all your heart,’ and, at the same time, ‘with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments.’ [154]

But not only fasting and praying and lamentation were called for, but good works of every kind, almsgiving especially, righteous deeds by which, says Cyprian, ‘we satisfy God.’ [155] This may sound legalistic, but, once again, as with Tertullian, Cyprian is speaking metaphorically, the forensic image being but one of several which he employs. Good works are also remedia, remedies, [156] ‘spiritual medicines to cure our wounds, [157] ‘the true medicine that comes from satisfaction.’[158] They likewise cleanse us, an image which Cyprian most naturally uses in relation to tears. ‘The guilt of sin is washed away by weeping,’ he says;[159] the repentant ‘cleanse their wounds with their crying.’[160] Or, quoting Sirach 3, 30, he speaks of ‘the flame of sin [being] quenched by [all kinds of] almsgiving and works of righteousness.’[161]

What we do not find is the idea of ‘an arithmetic compensation for sin’ – the words of Adhémar d’Alès quoted by Bakhuizen van der Brink. ‘It would be completely wrong to interpret Cyprian [in this way],’ d’Alès concludes. ‘The texts of [his writings] do not suggest any such thing.’[162] Nonetheless, for Cyprian, we can be said to merit the mercy of the Lord, promereri misericordiam Domini.[163] Meritis peccata purgari, he teaches, ‘By the merits [of our works of mercy], our sins are purged’[164] Operibus iustis Dominum promeretur, ‘[He who repents] merits by his righteous works [forgiveness] from the Lord.’[165]

2.2.4. The Application of Merit to Others in Cyprian

Cyprian also believed that for sinners, ‘the merits of martyrs and the works of the righteous are of great avail before the Judge.’[166] Thus he wrote in the De Lapsis, in which he asserts that the merits of the saints will be of benefit only ‘when, after the conclusion of this life and the end of the world, Christ’s people will stand at His Judgement Seat.’[167] Elsewhere, however, we find him conceding that even in this life the merits of those who have suffered for Christ can help those who have lapsed. This was a popular belief in Roman Africa, where confessors habitually wrote libelli pacis, letters of peace, on behalf of the fallen, asking that the bishops forgive the lapsi for their – the confessors’ – sake.[168] Cyprian accepted the practice, while being fully aware of the abuses to which it was prone.[169] Especially he insisted that pardon was not automatic: it depended on God;[170] and, also, that it had to be sought with the genuine repentance about which we have spoken above.[171]

2.2.5. Merit and Prayer in Cyprian

We turn next to the topic of merit and prayer in Cyprian, a topic important for a right understanding of the western liturgy, where prayers and merits are often spoken of in combination.

Cyprian conceives of the church as a brotherhood, in which all the members help each other, not only materially, but also spiritually, not least of all by praying for one another, a prayer confined only to the present world, but also availing in the world to come. As he writes in a well-known passage:

Let us remember each other in our prayers, in harmony and unity of mind, in this world and in the next, always praying for each other, relieving our anxieties and afflictions by mutual love. And if one of us should, by the Divine goodness, leave from here more quickly, may our love be preserved before the Lord, the prayer of the departed never ceasing on behalf of his brothers and sisters, beseeching the Father’s mercy. [172]

Cyprian teaches that prayers are more effective if they are accompanied by the merit of good works.[173] As he says:

Our prayers ascend quickly, which the merit of our good work impose on God. … Those who heed what God wants to be done, merit to be heeded by Him. … . [174]

Thus, for example, writing to those suffering for the faith, he asks their prayers on his behalf, ‘for what do you ask of the Lord’s mercy which you do not merit to obtain?’ [175] But also, the prayer of the righteous can aid the unrighteous, as the just ‘pray and weep even for those who do not pray and weep for themselves.’[176]

2.2.6. Merit and Grace in Cyprian

For Cyprian, grace is always primary. Always, ‘the crown comes down from God’s condescension,’[177] with Him rewarding us not because we strictly deserve it, but because He loves us and wants therefore to reward what we do for the love of Him – things which we have achieved only by His grace. ‘He rewards in us what He Himself has given, and honours in us what He Himself has accomplished.’[178] Nonetheless, we cannot agree with Bakhuizen van der Brink when he suggests that there is no real doctrine of merit in Cyprian, that for him ‘to merit’ means simply ‘to obtain’ – and to obtain by the mercy of God.[179] He adduces in defense of this assertion a letter to the Mauretanian bishop Jubaian, in which Cyprian cites 1 Timothy 1, 15 using the phrase misericordiam merui, which cannot but be rendered as ‘I obtained mercy.’[180] With this we agree. But when Bakhuizen van der Brink cites the closing words of De Lapsis: nec iam solam Dei veniam merebitur, sed et coronam, and renders them as ‘he will obtain from the Lord not only pardon, but also a crown,’ we cannot follow him.[181] Like all the Fathers, and the ancients before them, and the church in later times, Cyprian can use merit language imprecisely, but, as we have shown in the passages cited above, he also employs it in the strict sense, indicating something we deserve. And that it is how we would understand it in the words just quoted: ‘he will merit from the Lord not only pardon, but also a crown.’ It is the conclusion to which the whole argument of the De Lapsis leads.

3.3. St Augustine (354-430)

3.3.1. Introduction

As it is natural to turn from Tertullian to Cyprian, so from Cyprian it is natural to turn to Augustine. For, as Bakhuizen van den Brink has remarked, ‘nearly all Cyprian’s main theological concepts recur in Augustine,’[182] Augustine who cites Cyprian more than any other writer, except the sacred authors.[183]

Augustine has become a controversial figure in Orthodoxy, and in some points he is certainly not to be followed. We must apply to him the test which he himself has set:

Whatever you perceive to be true in my writings, hold fast and attribute to the Catholic Church; whatever you perceive to be false, spit out, and forgive me who am but human.[184]

Augustine is spoken of as a saint and doctor of the church by both the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils, and is held up as an authority both in the Lateran synod of 649, as well as by the Council of Constantinople in 1166-67. He is also recognized as a saint by both the Greek and Russian churches, as well as by our own Vicariate.[185]

3.3.2. Merit and Grace in Augustine

As may be expected, Augustine roundly declares that ‘only grace can create merit,’[186] grace which by definition is unmerited. For, ‘if grace is not gratuitous, it cannot be grace.’ [187] And so, he insists: ‘When anyone enumerates their merits, what are they enumerating but [God’s] gifts?’ [188] God’s gifts, which yet He rewards as our own work, because it we ourselves who do them, with His help. And this accomplishment, He rewards because He has promised to do so, which is why, following Cyprian and Tertullian, Augustine speaks of God as having made Himself our debtor, our debtor ‘not by owing but by promising,’ non debendo sed promittendo.[189] To Him we can say: ‘Give what You have promised, because we have done what You have commanded,’ bold words to which Augustine quickly adds: ‘But You, also, You have done this, because You have aided the labourers.’ [190]

[191]

3.3.3. Satisfaction in Augustine.

For Augustine it is a principle that sin cannot go unpunished. For ‘if sin remains unpunished, that is unjust; therefore, without doubt it must be punished.’[192] Punished either ‘by man repenting or God judging.’[193] For ‘what is repentance, if not anger at one’s self?’[194] This anger which moves us to satisfy God: Irasceris cordi tuo, ut satisfacias Domino tuo, he says, ‘You are angry with your heart, that you may satisfy your Lord,’[195] meaning, for Augustine, as for Cyprian and Tertullian, ‘that you may be reconciled’ with Him, offering to Him a contrite and humble heart, crushed and broken.[196] But such reconciliation demands of us works worthy of repentance, what Augustine terms in the Enchiridion, ‘befitting satisfaction:’[197] fasting, praying, and, again, as with his African predecessors, above all almsgiving. [198]

4.4. St Ambrose (c.339-97)

4.4.1. Merit in Ambrose

Although Augustine draws heavily on St Cyprian, as we have noted, he was also greatly indebted to St Ambrose of Milan, to whom we next turn.

For Ambrose, merit already existed in the Old Testament. Abraham, for example, by his obedience, ‘merited as his reward that he should keep his son.’[199] But now, ‘in the Gospel the Lord promises a fuller reward to the merits of the saints,’[200] for now, ‘heaven is opened to virtue.’[201] To quote the De Sacramentis: ‘The reward is in heaven, but the meriting of the reward is here.’[202]

As with the other authors at whom we have looked, Ambrose teaches that this reward is not the same for all. Not all are equal in merit, and ‘where there are differences of merit, there are differences of reward.’[203] ‘All indeed shall rise again, but, as says the Apostle, “each in his own order.” The fruit of the divine mercy is common to all, but the order of merits is distinct.’[204] ‘There is a first mansion in the Father’s house, a second, and a third, wherein each one will rest according to their merits.’[205]

In contrast to this, sinners merit damnation. ‘Is it not plain,’ Ambrose asks, ‘from the story of the rich man and Lazarus, that rewards and punishments await us after death according to our merits?’[206]As he says in his commentary on Luke:

[Christ] distinguishes the merits of the righteous and of the wicked, and, for the quality of our deeds, He, the true and just Judge, decrees either punishments or rewards.[207]

4.4.2. Merit and Sin in Ambrose

Ambrose teaches that our merits make up for our sin. Thus, for example, he says that the merits of a daughter offered to God as a nun redeem her parents’ faults. [208] Or, with reference to the healing of the paralytic in Luke 5, he teaches that ‘those who are spiritually sick ought to seek intercessors to make petition for them. For the Lord forgives some by the merit of others.’ [209] But also, according to Ambrose, ‘all that we do is, so to say, balanced in the scales,’[210] with the result that our own good deeds can outweigh our demerits and obtain forgiveness for them. This is true for our less grave sins, ‘which are often taken away by our good works.’[211] But it is true for graver sins as well. As he says of David: ‘By his merits he ousted his sin.’[212] To quote from one of his letters:

The balance depends on each of us according to our merits. A little movement, either from good works or from degenerate behaviour, and it is often inclined this way or that. If evil deeds bend it one way, woe am I; but if good [bend it the other], forgiveness is at hand. For no one is free from sin; but where good preponderates, sins are taken away, overshadowed, covered. Therefore, in the Day of Judgement, either our works will come to our aid, or they will plunge us into the depths, as if weighed down by a stone. [213]

Like the other Fathers at whom we have looked, Ambrose insists especially on the benefit of almsgiving. ‘You have sold yourself to sin,’ he tells the rich, ‘redeem yourself with your works, with your money.’[214] In this regard, too, he speaks of God as our debtor. ‘In the Day of Judgment,’ he says of the one who is merciful, ‘he will receive salvation from the Lord, Whom he will have as his debtor for the mercy he has shown.’[215]

4.4.3. Merit and Prayer in Ambrose and Meriting for Others

‘The Father is accustomed to heed not only prayers but also merits.’[216] For, ‘in us growth in virtue merits the love of God.’[217] Ambrose thus teaches that the merits of the saints add to the efficacity of their prayers on behalf of others,[218] a teaching which he states repeatedly. For instance, he writes of Moses:

The greater the sin, the more worthy must be the prayers that are sought [for their forgiveness]. For it was not any one of the common people who prayed for the Jews, but Moses, when, forgetful of the covenant, they worshipped the head of the calf. Was Moses wrong? Certainly, he was not wrong in praying, who both merited and obtained that for which he asked. For what should such love not obtain as that of his, when he offered himself for the people and said: “And now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the Book of Life.” [219]

Of Moses, too, he says that ‘by his merits, food came down from heaven and drink from the stony rock,’[220] and that ‘by his pious merits he found a walkway for himself and the fathers through the waves.’[221] Likewise, David. ‘David wept,’ says Ambrose, ‘and merited that the divine mercy should remove death from the people who were perishing.’[222] And so, too, the prophets: ‘their merits procured heavenly aid for the fathers,’ meaning the people of the Old Testament. [223] And now, under the New Testament, it is the same thing, as the saints pray for us, working those miracles of which Christ spoke, when He said: ‘You shall do greater things than these,’ a promise which is fulfilled, Ambrose contends, ‘by the efficacity of the martyrs’ merits,’[224] those who ‘have merited to share the life of the angels.’[225]

Hence, for Ambrose merits may avail for others. As he says of those helped by the collection mentioned in 2 Corinthians 8: from their ‘spiritual abundance’ they could aid those who had aided them, who, though materially rich, suffered ‘poverty of spiritual merit,’ inopiam meriti spiritualis, and could ‘collect grace for them,’ conferat ei gratiam. [226]

4.4.4. Merit and Grace in Ambrose

Unlike St Augustine, but like, for example, St John Chrysostom, [227] and, we would argue, St Paul,[228] Ambrose makes the foreknowledge of our merits the basis of our predestination. Quoting the Apostle’s words in Romans 8, 29, he comments: ‘God predestined the reward of those whose merits He foreknew.’[229] And yet, Ambrose insists, ultimately, we are saved ‘not according to our merits, but by the mercy of God.’[230] As he puts it in his commentary on Psalm 118:

Which of us is able to stand without God’s mercy? What can we do to be worthy of the heavenly rewards? … By what human merit will this corruptible flesh put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality? By what labours, by what penances, can we wash away our sins? [231]

But God does in fact recompense our righteous actions, and forgive us because of our good works: ‘[He] is accustomed to reward us more than we merit.’[232]

[233]

4.5. St Leo the Great (r. 440- 461)

4.5.1. Merit in Leo

Another western saint much esteemed in the east is St Leo the Great, pope of the Council of Chalcedon.

As with all the other Fathers at whom we have looked, Leo speaks much about merit. This is because he often talks about the works of piety: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which he sees as procuring for those who practice them a heavenly reward. This is especially true of almsgiving: ‘Food given to the poor is the purchase-price of the heavenly kingdom,’ he declares, ‘because whosoever gives to the poor gives to Christ.’ [234] Or, as he puts it in another sermon: ‘He sets up for himself a treasure-house in heaven, who here feeds Christ in the person of the poor.’ [235] Or, again: ‘Whoever offers to God the sacrifice of good works merits to receive from Him the reward of the heavenly kingdom.’[236] Nor does it matter if, according to our means, our alms are great or small; if they are given with a generous spirit, they are of ‘equal merit.’[237] ‘In the scales of divine justice, it is not the size of your gift, but the liberality of your spirit which is weighed,’ Leo teaches.[238] For – the standard trope – ‘Which of those who do good works can deny that Christ claims these work as being done to Himself? Your fellow slave is helped by your good works, but it is the Lord Who will repay.[239]

Although ‘we are taught by many passages of the divine scriptures how great is the merit of almsgiving, and how excellent its virtue,’[240] it is not, according to Leo, the only way by which we merit. Through conformity to Christ in general, that is, through ‘abstaining from every evil, and following after what is pure and righteous, we merit to share the blessedness He promises.’[241] As Leo puts it in a Paschal sermon:

Let us run with the steps of faith, by the works of mercy, in the love of righteousness, that keeping the day of our redemption spiritually, not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, we may merit to be partakers of Christ’s Resurrection.[242]

4.5.2. The Merit of the Saints in Leo: Merits and Prayers

Leo speaks of the merits of the saints, those of St Peter above all. ‘Let us,’ he says, ‘keep vigil next to the blessed Apostle Peter, by whose merits and prayers we believe that we will be helped.’[243] Or, elsewhere: ‘His prayers will support us, as also his merits.’[244] Or, again: ‘By his merits and prayers for us we are confident that God’s mercy will be granted to us in all things.’[245] Along with Peter, Leo also invokes the patronage of St Paul, both apostles being in a special way the patrons of the Roman church:

About their merits and virtues, which pass all power of speech, we must not make distinctions, because they were equal in their election, alike in their toils, undivided in their death. But as we have proved for ourselves, and our forefathers maintained, we believe, and are sure that, amid all the toils of this life, we shall always be assisted in obtaining God’s mercy by the prayers of these special patrons, that we may be raised by the Apostles’ merits in proportion as we are weighed down by our own sins.[246]

4.5.3. Merit and Sin in Leo

Leo sees our good works as a way of balancing out our faults. ‘By showing mercy, we obtain mercy,’ he says.[247] He also speaks of good works as ‘medicinal remedies,’[248] and as a means of washing away sin. ‘Let no one err,’ he says, ‘let no one doubt, that they are restored after many sins to the lustre of regeneration, who seek to be cleansed by the purification of good deeds.’[249] ‘If we wish to cleanse our souls from the defilements of sin, let us not neglect to give alms to the poor, so that on the Day of Retribution we may be helped by our works of mercy to merit mercy.’[250] Or, combining both medicinal and detergent metaphors, he tells his hearers:

Besides the laver of regeneration in which the stains of all our sins are washed away, this divine remedy has been given for human weakness, that, should the smirch of transgression be contracted in this mortal life, it may be blotted out by almsgiving. For, almsgiving means works of charity, and charity covers a multitude of sins. [251]

4.5.4. Merit and Grace in Leo

In a letter condemning the Pelagian heresy, Leo calls God’s grace ‘the source of merits.’[252] ‘By that which He gives us, we merit to receive what He promises,’ the pope asserts.[253] For this reason, we ought to ‘glory in the Lord rather than in our own labour.’[254] Even though we may ‘merit to become from earthly, heavenly,’ yet always ‘we must glory concerning our progress not in ourselves, but in the Lord,’ since everything depends on His grace and mercy.[255] And by this grace and mercy God will also, at the last, grant us more than we deserve, our heavenly reward a gift of His clemency rather than a recompense of justice.[256]

4.6. St Gregory the Great (r. 590-604)

4.6.1. Merit in the Moralia

Another Pope much honoured by the Orthodox is St Gregory the Dialogist, St Gregory the Great, as he is known in the west.

In his Moralia, Gregory repeatedly underlines the fact that the actual worth of our merits is nothing in the eyes of God. Under His scrutiny, ‘all human righteousness is unrighteousness,’[257] meaning that ‘we cannot rely on our own merits.’ [258] ‘All the virtue of our merits is but vice if it be strictly judged,’ the pontiff says,[259] and so, although it is good to do good works, and our righteous acts are certainly good things, yet we should esteem them as nothing,[260] and place no reliance on them.[261] There is no place for human pride; all of us must say with Job: ‘Even if I grow in virtue, it is not by my merits but by pardon that I am restored to life.’[262] And such is the understanding of anyone who is holy, Gregory says, for coming nearer to God they perceive in His Light how wretched they are.[263] This, too, is exemplified by Job, who:

because he transcended in merits every other human being was challenged by his merciful Creator and Teacher to compare himself with Him, so that, having understood how unlike Him he was, he might be humble. [264]

And this is how we are saved, Gregory affirms, by humility and contrition. As he puts it: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is seized by our tears of repentance, rather than as something due to us by our merits.’[265]

And yet, despite this negative attitude, Gregory can also speak of merit in more positive terms. For example, to his strictures about our righteousness being unrighteousness, he adds this proviso: our righteousness nonetheless ‘receives value from the Judge’s merciful love.’ [266] And so, even in the Moralia, he can write of ‘a life of virtuous merits,’[267] and of ‘making a provision of merits,’[268] language which reflects that which he uses elsewhere in his works.

4.6.2. Merit in Gregory More Generally

Gregory can write very favourably about merit. For example, he speaks of the beggar Servulus, ‘poor in material things, but rich in merit;’[269] of the disciples, who after the Resurrection, ‘merited to be anointed with the unction of the Holy Spirit;’[270] of ‘one whose faith in God is strong [earning] all the more merit by his faith;’[271] of ‘faith [having] no merit where human reason furnishes tangible proofs,’[272] nor ‘any merit, if not joined to a virtuous life.’[273] He warns the bishops of Numidia that ‘the strict Judge’ will approve those who hold episcopal rank not on account of their orders, but ‘by the merits of their works’[274] – like the Patriarch of Alexandria, Eulogios, whom Gregory describes as ‘resplendent with the merit of a good life.’[275]

Thus, as with his predecessors, Gregory can speak of us as labourers awaiting their pay. Commenting on Job 7,1, he says that this is how the wise man is, like the hireling, ‘longing for his days to pass the quicker, that he may attain without delay to the reward of his toil.’[276]

This reward differs according to our different deservings. ‘As here one surpasses another in merit, there one excels another in reward,’ he writes. [277] Nor is this respect of merits reserved only for the age to come. Already here and now, unlike humans, who look at external appearance, ‘the Almighty God examines the life of men solely on the quality of their merits.’[278] This is why we often have bad rulers, Gregory notes: they are given to us ‘according to our merits.’[279]

4.6.3. Merit and Prayer in Gregory

In the book of Job, the protagonist intercedes for his friends. [280] Commenting on this, Gregory says that, in the same way, the church intercedes for repentant heretics, ‘that they may find the remedy of salvation by her merits.’ [281] And the same is true of the church above, the church of the saints. Their prayers avail for us. As Gregory says:

Let those who cannot place any confidence in their own works, fly to the protection of the holy martyrs, and weep before their sacred bodies, and entreat, at their intercessions, to merit pardon for themselves.[282]

Gregory also speaks of the merits of the living as being of help to others, himself included. For instance, writing to the emperor’s kinsman Theotistus, he speaks of him reaping a reward for his good works, merits in which, Gregory says, he hopes to have a share.[283] In a similar vein, in a letter to the already-mentioned Eulogios of Alexandria, we find him asking:

Remember me in your holy prayers, to the end that the Lord, through your intercessions, may absolve me from the bands of my sins, since my own merits do not avail me.[284]

The plea is later repeated in another letter to the same Patriarch:

I ask you to intercede for me … that I, who cannot accomplish anything by my own merits, may by yours be enabled to attain to [heaven].’[285]

Or, again, in another letter to the same Eulogios:

As you have received so much more merit, it is with so much more power that you can obtain the things for which you pray. I beseech you therefore to intercede the more earnestly for me a sinner, [that] … what I am not able to obtain by my own supplications, I may trust to gain through the prayers of Your Beatitude. [286]

4.6.4. Merit, Supererogation, and Sin in Gregory

Although neither is a common theme in his writings, Gregory believes that we can increase our merits through works of supererogation, and also use them to outweigh our sins. As he writes to the emperor’s sister Theoctista:

There are two reasons holy men abstain even from lawful things. Sometimes that they may increase their merits before Almighty God; but sometimes that they may wipe away the sins of their former life.

When the three children who were brought under the tutelage of the King of Babylon, asked for vegetables to eat, being unwilling to partake of the king’s meat, it was not because it would have been sinful for them to eat what God had created. They were unwilling, rather, to take what it was lawful for them to take, so that their virtue might be increased through abstinence.[287]

David, also, who had taken to himself another man’s wife, and had been sorely punished for his sin, desired long afterwards to drink water from the cistern of Bethlehem. But when his most valiant warriors brought him some, he refused to drink it, and poured it out instead, as a libation to the Lord. It would have been lawful for him to drink it, had he been so minded; but, because he remembered having done what was unlawful, he laudably abstained even from that which was lawful. And he, who to his guilt, previously feared not to shed the blood of dying soldiers, afterwards considered that, were he to drink the water, he would have shed the blood of living soldiers, said, ‘Shall I drink the blood of these men who have put their lives in jeopardy?’[288]

Accordingly, when good husbands and wives desire either to increase merit or to do away with the faults of the past, it is lawful for them to bind themselves to continence and to aspire to a better life. [289]

[290]

What the pontiff says here, however, needs to be balanced with his insistence on the need for God’s grace:

All virtue of human action is powerless to wash out the guilt of sin, except He spare us in His merciful kindness, rather than pressing down [upon us] with the strict justice of His judgement.[291]

4.6.5. Merit and Grace in Gregory

Following Augustine, Gregory teaches that grace both precedes our merits, and also enables us to merit, God rewarding the works which He has granted us to perform. ‘What have we given,’ he demands,

that we should merit to receive Christ? It is by grace that we are redeemed! What we deserved of God was punishment. But if humanity merited one thing in justice, it is something else that we have received through grace.

And he goes on to cite the example of St Paul, quoting I Corinthians 15, 10: ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am.’ ‘But,’ Gregory continues,

as by God’s inspiration, the works of virtue were generated in Paul’s heart, so that action should follow from his free will, an action to which, after this life, an eternal recompense should correspond, he adds straight away: ‘And His grace was not made void in me.’[292]

Or, as the same doctrine appears elsewhere more pithily: ‘It is by God’s grace that merits are bestowed.’[293]

Unlike the other Fathers at whom we have looked, Gregory does not use the language of debt with regard to God. In fact, he explicitly denies that God is our debtor. [294] Nonetheless, he is adamant:

The good which we do belongs both to God, and to ourselves. It is God’s by His prevenient grace, ours by the co-operation of our free will. If it were not of God, why are we always giving Him thanks? But, if it were not our own, why do we hope to be rewarded? [295]

A similar statement is found in the Homilies on Ezekiel: ‘God’s grace preventing us and our free will following, means that what is the gift of God Almighty becomes our merit.’ [296] And yet, in His goodness and love, God disregards this synergy, and treats the good we do as if it were ours alone: ‘The good we have done by His grace, on the Day of Judgement, He will so reward in us, as if it had proceeded only from ourselves.’ [297]

4.6.6. Merit in the Dialogues

Some scholars dispute the authenticity of the Dialogues, but, whatever their provenance, they are highly esteemed in the east, having early been translated into Greek by Zacharias, the last of the ‘Byzantine popes’ (r. 741- 52).

The Dialogues often talk about merit. For instance, describing a miracle wrought by the monk Libertinus through the intercession of his deceased abbot, Honoratus, Gregory says that it was accomplished ‘both by the merits of Honoratus and the prayers of Libertinus,’ merits being rendered in the Greek version by ἁγιότης.[298] Or, relating another miracle, one performed by a pious man called Constantius, Gregory marvels, ‘How great were his merits,’ his δικαιοσύνη, in the Greek translation. [299] Likewise, Gregory says, ‘what merit’ had the monk Eutychius – ‘merit’ again translated δικαιοσύνη. [300] Another miracle is said to have been performed by the merit of an unnamed ‘man of God,’ by his ἁγιωσύνη, [301] while the monks Eleutherius and John are described as having been ‘equal in merit on earth,’ equal in δικαιοσύνη, and ‘therefore it was given to them to live together in one heavenly mansion.’[302] This reference to John 14, 2 leads Gregory to comment:

[Christ] was speaking about His chosen ones when He said, ‘In My Father’s House, there are many mansions.’ If there were no distinction of rewards in that blessed abode, there should be but one mansion and not many. As it is, the heavenly mansions are numerous, in order to keep the ranks of good souls distinct and to allow them to enjoy the companionship of those of like merits. Yet, it is said that all those who labored each received a silver piece, though now they are separated into distinct groups with many dwellings. Thus, the bliss which they enjoy is one and the same, but the reward they earn for their different degrees of good works is unequal.[303]

Finally, we may quote Gregory’s contention that King Reccared was able to bring the Visigoths to Orthodoxy by the help of the merits of his martyr-brother Hermenegild.[304] Pope Zachary translates merita here as δικαιώματα, which may also be translated as ‘righteous acts,’ as in Revelation 19, 8 and Romans 5, 12.

4.7. St Benedict (480-547)

4.7.1. Merit in Benedict

O laudanda sancti Benedicti merita gloriosa …particeps factus præmiorum æternorum.[305] These words from Matins for the saint’s feast on March 21st well serve to introduce this and the following section, which look respectively at merit and reward in Benedict of Nursia, whose Rule, composed around 530, may be counted amongst one of the most influential documents of human history.

Merit language first appears in the Rule in the Prologue, which concludes that the goal of the monastic life is ut regno eius mereamur esse consortes.’[306] We have seen that mereri has a range of meanings, and some would doubtless want to construe mereamur here simply as ‘may,’ ‘that we may be sharers of His Kingdom.’ Others might want to opt for the translation, ‘that we may obtain His Kingdom.’ Myself, however, I would argue that here mereamur is best rendered in the strict sense, ‘that we may merit to be sharers of His Kingdom.’ The reason for this choice is that it best fits the context. The context, first, of the Prologue itself, which is all about labouring and striving in order to reach Heaven. As Benedict has already said a little earlier on:

Our loins girt about with faith and good works, led by the Gospel, let us pursue our path, that we may merit to see Him Who has called us to His Kingdom. For, if we wish to enter into this Kingdom, we will in no wise do so, unless we run by good works. [307]

But, second, it better fits the context of the Rule more generally, in which Benedict often speaks of merits. Thus, he says, the abbot ought to be loving towards all, dealing with each ‘according to their merits.’[308] For, he explains, this is the way that God deals with us. ‘Only in this are we distinguished before Him: if we be found better than others in good works and that we be humble.’[309] In regard to those who live in the monastery, the saint says that the deans are to be chosen not according to rank but ‘according to the merit of their life and the wisdom of their teaching.’[310] Likewise, those who are priests are to be promoted to an office in the community not on account of their ordination, but rather pro vitæ merito.[311] Indeed, Benedict says, status for any member of the community is to be determined only ‘according to the merit of their life.’ [312]

4.7.2. Reward in Benedict

From the above we conclude that for Benedict merit means something deserving of reward. And reward, merces, is another word which figures repeatedly in the Rule. Thus, to work in the kitchen leads to ‘a greater reward;’[313] by tending to the sick, especially those who are thankless, ‘a greater reward is acquired.’[314] The monk who undertakes ascetical exercises without the blessing of his spiritual father ‘acts out of presumption and … and not in a way deserving of reward.’[315] People offer alms to the monastery ‘for their reward.’[316]

Despite such language, Benedict is nonetheless insistent that:

Those who fear the Lord are not to be puffed up by their own good observance, but, realizing that the good that is in them is not be wrought by themselves but by God, they should magnify the Lord working in them and say with the prophet: ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Thy Name give the glory.’ Just as also the apostle Paul attributed nothing to himself concerning his own preaching, but said: ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am.’ And, again, the same apostle said: ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.’ [317]

Hence Benedict’s saying, already quoted, that God distinguishes between us only on the basis of our good works and our humility: si meliores ab aliis in operibus bonis et humiles inveniamur.[318]

4.8. Summary

It is evident that merit language, used in the strict sense, is a staple ingredient of western patristic Christianity, beginning with Tertullian, and found in many of the Latin Fathers most venerated in the east, such as St Cyprian, St Ambrose, St Leo, St Gregory the Dialogist, and St Benedict. Let us sum up what they say.

In the Greek translation of St Gregory, merit is rendered as ‘holiness’ or ‘righteousness.’ And we would argue that this is is how merit is to be best understood in the Orthodox context, as a holiness or righteousness that is of a different degree in different people: some are more holy, some less so, and God will reward them accordingly in the age to come. [319]

But what God rewards is His own gift. It is His grace which enables us to will and to do the good which He then recompenses.[320] Nor is this recompense given in strict justice: the source of reward is not so much in ourselves as in the goodness and love of God, Who has promised to recompense us for our labours, thus making Himself our debtor.

Because of their righteousness, the saints are pleasing to God, and for this reason their prayers are more acceptable to Him. [321] This is likewise true of the righteous on earth, whence, the joining of merit and prayer.

Good works serve to show the genuine nature of repentance, [322] but also the Fathers use a number of metaphors – repayment of debt, cleansing, healing, even punishment – to say something more about our works of righteousness, almsgiving especially: that they serve in some way to satisfy God, but which is meant our reconciliation with Him. The Fathers also speak of the merits of the righteous, and especially the merits of the saints, as availing to find pardon for the sins of others. [323]

Merit in the Greek Fathers and in the Byzantine Tradition

5.1. St Clement of Alexandria (c. 150- c. 215) and the Phrase κατ᾽ ἀξίαν

Although the word merit does not exist in patristic Greek, the eastern Fathers are clear that, in the words of St Clement of Alexandria: ‘There are with the Lord both rewards and many mansions, corresponding to men’s lives.’[324] God, says Clement, is ‘the Judge who recompenses,’[325] ‘rendering to each κατ᾽ ἀξίαν.’[326] This construction is often employed by the Greek Fathers and Liddell and Scott translate it as ‘according to desert or merit,’[327] while Migne frequently renders it pro meritis. It is part of the definition of justice given by Aristotle, both in the Ethics [328] and in the Politics,[329] a definition taken up by Clement in the Paedogogus,[330] while in the Stromata he says that ‘God distributes all things to all κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, because His dispensation is just.’ [331]

On account of this divine justice, the righteous ‘await with expectation the recompense which will certainly be rendered by the One Who has promised to bestow on the labourers the reward that is meet,’[332] ‘the mansion due to them.’[333] Like the Latin Fathers, Clement uses the metaphor of financial transaction to describe this remuneration, as when he speaks of ‘those who through almsgiving, purchase immortality for money, and who, by giving the perishing things of the world, receive in exchange an eternal dwelling in the heavens.’[334] Nonetheless, this reward is not something the righteous should seek: ‘He who is enrolled amongst the labourers ought not to desire any recompense,’ Clement teaches.[335] Nor should they become proud of their good deeds. ‘For he that vaunts his righteousness, receives only glory from men as his reward.’[336]

5.2. St Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-386)

St Cyril of Jerusalem points to the labourer and says, ‘He is ready to work hard, if he has the prospect of his efforts being rewarded.’[337] The same for the soldier. ‘He makes ready for battle, if he expects the spoils of war.’ [338] And so it is with the Christian, Cyril continues: ‘The expectation of recompense strengthens the soul to do good works.’[339] This recompense which, like Clement, St Cyril links to the virtue of justice:

You yourselves have different sorts of servants: some are good, and some are bad. The good you honour, and the bad you punish. Or, if you are a judge, you praise the good and reprimand the bad. Is then justice to be observed by mortals, and not by the King of all? Is there no recompense of justice with Him? [340]

For Cyril the answer is clear. ‘He will render to the righteous their reward in full.’ [341]

5.3. St John Chrysostom (347-407)

The idea of reward also appears in our great Antiochian saint, St John Chrysostom. ‘In the end,’ Chrysostom says, by which he means on the Last Day, ‘we will find ourselves with only our works, and by them we will be either condemned or crowned.’ [342] Crowned, because ‘grace does not exclude the reward which belongs to our willing.’ [343] This reward, which it befits God to give. As Chrysostom exclaims:

If you, a sinner, are merciful and loving towards your servant, will the infinite goodness of God, His ineffable kindness, that so-great gentleness, leave uncrowned His servants, Peter and Paul, and James, and John, those who every day for His sake suffered hunger, and were bound, and scourged, and submerged in the sea, thrown to wild beasts, given over to death, suffering other things too many to mention?

The judge, in the Olympics, proclaims and crowns the victor; the master rewards the servant, and the king the soldier – whoever it is, rewards him who has done him service, with what good things he can. And shall God alone, after those so great toils and labors, repay them with no good thing small or great? [344]

Or, as he puts it elsewhere, more briefly: ‘If God is just … He will render to each κατ’ ἀξίαν’ – pro meritis, as Migne translates. [345]

Because, like Clement and Cyril, Chrysostom sees the reward of the righteous as an act of justice, he, too, can say like so many of the Latin Fathers, that ‘when we do good works, we have God as our debtor,’ ὀφειλέτης. [346] But, also like the Latin Fathers, Chrysostom is clear that, in reality, everything depends on God. ‘Our good deeds come not from ourselves, but from His grace.’ [347] Ultimately, we are saved ‘because He is good, not because we are worthy.’[348]

One of the most striking aspects of Chrysostom’s preaching is the place he gives to good works in the remission of sins, the equivalent of the western teaching on satisfaction. For him repentance is indeed a healing, but one accomplished by bitter drugs, πικρὰ φάρμακα.[349] We also find in Chrysostom the doctrine of supererogation. ‘Many go beyond the commandments,’ he says. ‘Virginity is not commanded, but many embrace it. Poverty is not commanded, yet many give their possessions away.’[350] Those who make a deliberate choice of these things merit a reward, he argues – for even if he does not use the word, the concept is there. ‘“If you achieve it, I will crown you,”’ he depicts Christ as saying, adding the explanation that ‘things done by obligation and under orders have but a small reward, but what is accomplished by free will and deliberation receives brilliant crowns.’[351] ‘Free choice,’ he says, ‘means great reward.’[352]

5.4. St Basil the Great (300-379)

With regard to repentance and good works, St Basil says many of the same things as the western Fathers. For him, ‘this age is the time for repentance and the remission of sins,’[353] which means ‘weeping bitterly and all the other things that repentance demands, showing them forth from the heart.’[354] ‘It is not enough for the repentant simply to renounce their sins,’ he says; ‘they must also bring forth fruits worthy of repentance,’[355] working in synergy with God, Who gives efficacity to our labours, [356] showing forth His power in our weakness. [357]

At the start of his homily On Envy, Basil begins by saying that ‘God is good and the Giver of good things to those who are worthy,’ ἀξιοῖς, meaning the righteous in this age. But most often his focus is on the eschaton, which he terms the time of ‘the just judgement of recompense,’ ἀνταπόδοσις.[358] The prefix ἀντί carries with it the idea of equivalence or proportionality, and, although Basil is keen to stress that viewed strictly, the reward of the righteous is ‘not a debt for works done,’ but comes ‘from the grace of the most munificent God,’[359] nonetheless, it is because God is just that ‘He renders to each their reward according to the worth of their works,’ κατὰ τὴν τῶν ἔργων ἀξίαν.[360] And for this reason, Basil can say, in the translation of Sister Monica Wagner, that ‘we merit the kingdom of heaven,’ [361] καtαξιωθῶμεν, which Migne translates promereamur.[362]

Basil employs the construction κατ’ ἀξίαν, as in one definition he gives of justice: δικαιοσύνη ἕξις ἀπονεμητική τοῦ κατ’ ἀξίαν, ‘justice is the disposition which distributes to each according to their due.’[363] However, he also uses the construction πρὸς ἀξίαν in the same sense, as in the answer to his question in the Shorter Rules: ‘What is just?’ ‘It is,’ he says, ‘what is given to each according to the worthiness of their deeds,’ δίκαιον δὲ τὸ πρὸς ἀξίαν τῶν ἔργων ἑκάστῳ ἀποδιδόμενον. [364] Likewise, he declares at the end of his Homily on the Famine and the Drought that ‘the just Judge renders to each πρὸς ἀξίαν.[365] Similarly, in the preface to the Longer Rules, he says: ‘God is good, but also He is just. But to him who is just belongs recompense according to merit’ – for how else can one reasonably render in English ἡ πρὸς ἀξίαν ἀντίδοσις? [366]

But if ‘each will receive his own reward, according to his own labour,’ [367] ultimately for Basil, as for all the Fathers, no one is saved but ‘the kindness and benevolence of the good God, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the operation of the Holy Spirit.’[368]

5.5. The Aid and Intercession of the Saints in Eastern Orthodoxy

From what we have seen, it may be concluded that the eastern Fathers teach a doctrine not dissimilar to that of their western contemporaries. They hold that God rewards the works we do κατ’ ἀξίαν,’ a phrase which can reasonably be translated as ‘according to their merit.’ But there is more than just this basic convergence. The Byzantine tradition also speaks of applying to sinners the righteousness of the saints. To quote Fr Ed Hughes in his paper ‘Regarding the Merits of the Saints:’

[The liturgical texts of the Byzantine rite] assert that the good deeds of the Saints, the deeds which distinguished them as Saints, can be applied to our own lives, for our own salvation, as if it were we ourselves that had performed these good deeds. …

When it is a martyr, the Byzantine prayer usually reads ‘Through the sufferings of Thy Martyr, O Christ God have mercy on us…’ or if an ascetic, ‘Through the abstinence of Thine Ascetic, O Christ God, have mercy on us…’ Of course, it is more usual to read or hear: ‘Through the prayers of the Saints…,’ but nevertheless this use does exist, and is clearly something else than asking the Saints’ prayers or intercessions. [369]

In this connection, one may mention the story in the tenth-century Life of St Basil the Younger of how the saint used his ‘great spiritual wealth,’ depicted as a bag full of gold, ‘to redeem’ the soul of his dead servant Theodora, his good deeds helping to outweigh her sins. [370] Against the fact that this, I believe, the only Byzantine text which speaks in this way should be set the fact of its great popularity and wide distribution not only in the empire but throughout the medieval Orthodox world.

Likewise akin to the Latin tradition is the eastern teaching that the intercession of the saints avails for us because they are, as Chrysostom says, ‘God’s friends, who were pleasing to Him, and who have great boldness before Him.’ [371] This boldness is the παρρησία which Adam enjoyed with God before the Fall, and which now belongs to the saints, ‘derived from [their] virtue and good works.’[372] And, among the saints, it belongs especially the martyrs, who, having had παρρησία before their persecutors, now speak freely with God, so making their intercessions efficacious. [373] To quote Chrysostom again, in a panegyric for the martyrs Bernice and Prosdoce:

Now that they are dead, they have greater boldness with God, more than when they were alive. Already they have borne the wounds of Christ, and when they show forth these wounds, they can obtain all that they seek from their King. Since, then, they enjoy such power, and so great friendship with Him … let us, by them, seek the mercy of God. [374]

And we ourselves, he says elsewhere, we ‘will also be able to enjoy more liberty of speech and be deemed worthy of God’s most abundant philanthropy … through the prayers and intercessions of those who are acceptable to Him.’ [375]

The word used in the Greek tradition for intercession is πρεσβεία, the same word as for ‘rank’ or ‘dignity,’ because the saints intercede for us as those who have attained a special status in the eyes of God by reason of their sanctity. So, for example, speaking of his father, St Gregory the Theologian says: ‘I am certain that his intercession is of more avail now than his instruction was in former days, since now he is closer to God …’[376]

First in rank, closest to Christ and most pleasing to Him, is the Theotokos. As St Gregory Palamas says in a homily for the Dormition: ‘To the degree that she is nearer to God than all …, by so much has the Theotokos been deemed worthy [ ἠξίωται] of greater audience.’ [377] Or, to quote St Germanos, also in a homily for the Dormition, addressing Mary: ‘Whatever you desire of Him, He gives to you with a son’s affection.’[378]

These last words recall the prayer of the sixth hour in the Byzantine tradition:

Seeing that we have no boldness on account of our many sins, beseech for us Him Who was born of you, O Virgin Theotokos; for the supplication of the Mother is of much avail to win the Master’s favor.

Likewise, at the same office:

Apostles, martyrs, and prophets, holy hierarchs, saints and righteous, having fought the good fight and kept the Faith, You have boldness toward the Saviour. Intercede for us with Him for He is good, and pray that He might save our souls.

The point is that the prayers of the saints avail because of their pleasingness to God, or, to put it otherwise, because of their merit.

5.6. Summary

The Greek and Latin Fathers both agree that our salvation is ‘from ourselves,’ ἐφ’ ἡµῖν.[379] It depends on our free choice, co-operating with the grace of God. And as ‘it is the choice of the good which makes an action praiseworthy,’ to quote St Gregory the Theologian, [380] so the free choice of the good makes us worthy of a reward. God, because He is just, and because it is the just thing to do, recompenses our good works, dealing with each κατ’ ἀξίαν, a phrase which we can render with Liddell and Scott and other translators as ‘according to merit.’

The use of αξία, ‘worth,’ as well as the adjective ἄξιος, ‘worthy,’ and the verbs ἀξιόω and καταξιόω ‘to account worthy’[381] is of particular note. When employed in the passive, the latter two verbs can be rendered in Latin mereri, which in turn is often translated in the western rite liturgical books as ‘to be worthy’ or ‘to be accounted worthy,’ raising the question as to the relation between ‘worth’ and ‘merit.’ Although the two are distinct, a close correspondence exists between them.

The Greek tradition also speaks of the application of the righteousness of the saints to sinners, as well as of the intercessions of the saints being pleasing to God, because the saints themselves are pleasing to Him by their righteousness, or, as we might also again put it, by their merits.

Thus, we contend, the Greek Fathers, too, have a doctrine of merit akin to that held in the west.

Merit in the Western Liturgy

6.1. Introduction

Having looked at the writings of the Latin Fathers, we now have a hermeneutical key to unlock the meaning of the western liturgy,[382] which is the work of some of the very saints we have studied, and of others like them. They provide us with a dictionary and grammar which enable us to understand the meaning of the words and phrases used in the mass.

The western rite has two recognized mass books. The first is the Orthodox Missal, published in 1995 with the blessing of Metropolitan Philip; the second the English Missal, an Anglo-Catholic tome, first produced in 1912. Both are based on the Roman Missal of Pius V, to which we will most often refer in what follows, as we look, first, at merit language in the unchanging parts of the mass, then at the propers, the formulae which vary with each particular celebration.

6.2. The Preparatory Prayers

The language of merit already appears in the priest’s preparation, in which he asks:

Aures tuae pietatis, mitissime Deus, inclina precibus nostris, et gratia Sancti Spiritus illumina cor nostrum: ut tuis mysteriis digne ministrare, teque aeterna caritate diligere mereamur.

The meaning of the mereamur here is ambiguous. One might see it as redundant, merely an aureate way of saying ‘may.’ Such is the understanding of the Orthodox Missal, which translates the prayer without mentioning merit at all,[383] something which is typical of its approach: it minimizes the use of merit language. One might also translate: ‘ …. that we might be counted worthy to serve Your holy mysteries and love You with an everlasting love;’ or, ‘that we might merit ….’ It is an ambiguity which we will see throughout the preparatory prayers, and, indeed, throughout the missal as a whole.

The collect which follows the Aures is omitted from the preparatory prayers in the Orthodox Missal, no doubt because of its use in the Tikhon Rite, where it is known as the ‘collect for purity.’[384] In substance, this collect dates back at least to Alcuin (d. 804), but was changed by the Reformers, who were hostile to the notion of merit, which the original prayer contains in its closing petition, ut te perfecte diligere et digne laudare mereamur, a plea which confronts us with the same ambiguity as the Aures. The same problem arises with the ‘Ambrosian’ prayer Ad Mensam, which asks that purificatus mente et corpore, digne degustare merear Sancta sanctorum, which the Orthodox Missal renders as, ‘I may be made meet worthily to taste the Holy of Holies.’[385]

The preparatory prayers also include a prayer in honour of St Joseph, which asks in futuro saeculo praemium habere mereamur aeternum, which again has the same ambiguity. Nonetheless, that we may merit reward in heaven is a common theme amongst the Fathers, and this inclines one to suggest that here at least it would be better to understand mereamur in the strict sense: ‘May we merit to have an eternal reward in the age which is to come.’ The same prayer also contains, earlier on, the phrase, suis manibus reverenter tractare meruit et portare, which again we would argue should be translated: ‘He merited to touch reverently with his hands and to bear’ the Infant Jesus. The reason for this choice is that there is an evident anticipation of our meriting: ‘As he merited … so may we merit:’ ut, sicut … tractare meruit … ita mereamur.

6.3. The Vesting Prayers

Having made his preparation, the priest puts on his vestments. As he does so, he says a series of prayers, one for each item. Of these prayers, two mention merit. The first is the prayer for the maniple,which dates back at least to the eleventh century: Merear, Domine, portare manipulum fletus et doloris; ut cum exsultatione recipiam mercedem laboris.[386] Once again, several translations are possible, but a good case can be made for translating merear here in a literal sense. The maniple originated as a sudarion or sweatband used by labourers in the fields, and thus represents the priest’s toil in the service of the Lord. The prayer itself is inspired by the Vulgate rendering of Psalm 125, verse 5: ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,’ so that in the background we have that image which we have so often encountered in the writing of the Fathers when they talk about merit: the image of the labourers who await their recompense, the reward which God has promised to give them.

The prayer for the stole is ninth century in origin:

Redde mihi, Domine, stolam immortalitatis, quam perdidi in prævaricatione primi parentis: et, quamvis indignus accedo ad tuum sacrum mysterium, merear tamen gaudium sempiternum.[387]

Again, there is ambiguity, but once more applying the hermeneutic of tradition, we may argue that while the priest is not worthy to offer the holy sacrifice, yet God ‘supplies what is lacking,’ [388] first making him an ‘apt minister of the New Testament,’[389] then rewarding the service for which grace alone has befitted him, thus meaning that merear here should be rendered literally. On the other hand, comparing the prayer for the stole with that which follows it, the prayer for the chasuble, a different conclusion may be reached. The chasuble prayer asks: Domine, qui dixisti: Iugum meum suave est et onus meum leve: fac, ut istud portare sic valeam, quod consequar tuam gratiam,[390] and it could be contended that merear in the stole prayer is the equivalent of consequar here, since the two can be synonymous. [391] In this case, the stole prayer would be construed as asking simply that the priest may obtain eternal blessedness.

6.4. The Prayers at the Altar

Having vested, the priest goes to the foot of the altar, where he says another set of prayers. Then, ascending the altar steps, he says quietly, Aufer a nobis, quaesumus, Domine, iniquitates nostras: ut ad sancta sanctorum puris mereamur mentibus introire. This prayer is very ancient, being found in the Leonine, Gelesian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, although they do not all use it in the same way. The Gregorian employs it in relation to the translation of relics for the consecration of a church; in the Leonine and Gelasian, it appears as a collect for the days between Quinquagesima and the beginning of Lent. [392] Its mereamur could be periphrastic, a term of reverence, meaning simply ‘may,’ as in the translation of the Orthodox Missal, ‘…that we may enter the holy of holies with pure minds.’[393] On the other hand, it could signify that the unworthy priest is actually being purified to enter the sanctuary, [394] God’s grace enabling the ‘unprofitable servant’ to stand before His holy table, as in the priest’s prayer at the Trisagion in the rite of St John Chrysostom:

You have granted us, Your humble and unworthy servants, to stand even at this hour before the glory of Your holy Altar of sacrifice and to offer to You due worship and praise.

Having ascended the altar, the priest kisses it, and says the following prayer, which dates back to the eleventh century:

Oramus te, Domine, per merita sanctorum tuorum, quorum reliquiæ hic sunt, et omnium sanctorum: ut indulgere digneris omnia peccata mea.[395]

The Orthodox Missal has chosen to translate merita here as ‘prayers,’ [396] but merits and prayers are not the same. They are two different words for two different things, as in another formula used historically at this point, Precibus et meritis: ‘By the prayers and merits of the Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and of all the saints, may the Lord bring us to the kingdom of heaven.’[397] This formula also dates from the eleventh century, but, as we have seen, the conjunction of prayers and merits is very much older. [398] Thus, if there is a place in which merita should be translated as ‘merits,’ it is surely here, as for the first time in the celebration the priest touches the holy table, filled with a sense of his own unrighteousness, and so appeals to the righteousness of the saints, asking that, ‘for their sakes,’ to use the Biblical term, [399] the Lord will show him mercy. It is, again, like the closing petition of the Trisagion prayer of the eastern rite:

Forgive us every transgression both voluntary and involuntary; sanctify our souls and bodies; and grant us to serve You in holiness all the days of our life: through the intercessions of the holy Theotokos and of all the Saints who from the beginning of the world have been well-pleasing to You.

6.5. The Canon

The canon, or eucharistic prayer, as used today in the Vicariate is, ‘except for one or two things, that which was fixed by Gregory the Great,’ although its origins date from the time of St Damasus (366-384).[400]

Near the beginning of the canon, there is a prayer called the Communicantes, which makes mention of the Theotokos, then gives a list of saints, after which it continues, Quorum meritis precibusque concedas, ut in omnibus protectionis tuæ muniamur auxilio, which the Orthodox Missal renders: ‘Through whose prayers grant that in all things we may be guarded by the help of thy protection,’[401] omitting the term meritis altogether, despite the fact that there is a good case for holding that the Communicantes was composed by St Leo the Great, to whose sermons its language is similar,[402] not least in the conjunction of merits with prayers.[403]

The Communicantes can be seen as forming a pair with the Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus, said towards the end of the canon. Here again the priest makes mention of the saints, this time asking, intra quorum nos consortium, non æstimator meriti, sed veniæ, quaesumus, largitor admitte: ‘into whose company we pray Thee of Thy mercy to admit us, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences.’[404] This prayer, which speaks of ‘us sinners,’ may well be taken to refer to the priest and his ministers,[405] although it applies to us all. As the Latin tradition clearly teaches, strictly viewed our merit is worthless; in reality, our salvation is not a reward of merit, but solely the gift of God’s grace, He from Whom we dare not ask but partem aliquam, a ‘small portion’ of the inheritance of the saints. [406]

One might also interpret merita in the Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus as a reference to our demerits, so that we are asking God not to deal with us as we truly deserve, [407] but rather ‘according to the multitude of His mercies,’ as the beginning of the prayer says. This again accords with the ensemble of the Latin tradition, according to which, in St Augustine‘s words, pro suo merito, ‘by merit,’ humanity deserves God’s just punishment, but God is ‘not only just but also merciful,’ and ever shows to us indebitam misericordiam, ‘a mercy which we do not deserve.’[408]

6.6. The Use of the Verb Mereo(r) in the Propers of the Mass

The ordinary of the mass is that which always remains the same; the propers are those chants and prayers which change which each different celebration. The proper prayers often employ merit language, although in different ways.[409]

6.6.1. Mereo(r) Used Periphrastically

As already noted, mereo(r) is often used periphrastically for the sake of style. Perhaps the two most striking examples of this in the liturgy occur in the Exsultet, sung at the Paschal Vigil, a composition which dates back to somewhere between the fifth and seventh centuries: O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum Redemptorem meruit habere, ‘O happy fault which merited to have such and so great a redeemer,’ and: O vere beata nox quae sola meruit scire tempus et horam in qua Christus ab inferis resurrexit, ‘O truly blessed night which alone merited to know the time and hour in which Christ rose again from the realm of the dead.’[410]

The plea from the common of doctors, also used for the votive mass of St Joseph, ‘that we may merit to have N. for our intercessor in heaven, whom we venerate here on earth,’ also seems to use mereri periphrastically, although in this case as a form of reverent supplication, rather than for purely rhetorical reasons. [411] The same is true in regard to the absolution prayer, Non Intres. It begins by stating, nullus apud te justificabitur homo, nisi per te omnium peccatorum ei tribuatur remissio: ‘in Your sight no one can be justified, unless he obtain from You the remission of all his sins.’ But then it asks for the deceased, mereatur evadare iudicium ultionis, ‘may he merit,’ if we translate literally, ‘to escape the judgement of vengeance.’ That an appeal to merit should follow such a stark avowal of unworthiness is extraordinary, but the paradox is quickly resolved by seeing this as a prime instance of mereri being employed, as so often, in a way which has nothing to do with merit in the strict sense. The context demands that mereatur here be translated as supplicatory, an appeal to the divine mercy: ‘May he escape the judgement of vengeance,’ something which can only be achieved gratia tua illi succurrente, ‘by [God’s] grace coming to his aid.’[412]

6.6.2. Mereo(r) Used in Malam Partem

Mereo(r) is also used several times in malam partem. For example:

Flagella tuae iracundiae, quae pro peccatis nostris meremur, averte: Turn away Your wrathful scourges which we merit for our sins.[413]

Absolve, quaesumus, Domine, nostrorum vincula peccatorum: et, quidquid pro eis meremur, propitiatus averte: Absolve, we pray, the bonds of our sins, and mercifully turn away that which we merit because of them.[414]

Mala omnia, quae meremur, averte: Turn away the evils that we merit. [415]

Ut simul nos et a peccatis omnibus exuas; et a poenis, quas pro his meremur, eripias: That You would forgive us our sins and deliver us from the punishments which, on account of them, we merit. [416]

In all these cases, the translation ‘deserve’ rather than ‘merit’ would appear to be more appropriate from the stylistic point of view. It is the option chosen in each case by the English Missal.

6.6.3. Mereo(r) Used in the Strict Sense

There are numerous passages in the missal where, in line with the teachingof the holy Fathers, mereo(r) can be interpreted in the strict sense. Haessly has pointed to the collect for Pentecost XIII as a prime example of this: Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum: et, ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.[417] ‘We pray,’ she says, ‘not only that we may obtain what God has promised, but also that we may merit this reward.’ ‘God, she writes:

gives us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, but we are free to reject or accept them, and, once we have accepted them, to advance in them, and inasmuch as we do so, He will reward us as deserving of His promises. [418]

The same idea occurs in a number of collects which link heavenly reward to earthly action. For example:

Dignis conversationibus ad eius mereamur pervenire consortium: By fitting actions, we may merit to come to share His fellowship. [419]

Qui, pro … fídei dilatatione, de terreno regno ad cælestis regni glóriam meruit pervenire: Who for the spreading of the faith, merited to come from an earthly kingdom to the glory of the heavenly kingdom.[420]

Sicut ipse dominicae passionis imitator fuit, ita nos, per eius vestigia gradientes, ad gaudia sempiterna pervenire mereamur: As he was himself an imitator of the Lord’s Passion, so may we, following in his footsteps, merit to come to eternal joys.[421]

Sancto igne dulcissimas caritatis tuae succensi, in templo sancto gloriae tuae repraesentari mereamur: Set afire with the holy flame of Your most sweet love, we may merit to be presented in the temple of Your glory.[422]

Ad lucem indeficientem pervenire mereamur: We may merit to come to the unfailing Light.’ [423]

Oblatis hostiis, quaesumus, Domine, praesenti famulae tuae perseveratiam perpetuae virginitatis accommoda: ut, apertis ianuis, summi Regis adventu, regnum caeleste cum laetitia mereatur intrare: By these gifts we offer, Lord, grant Your handmaiden perseverance in perpetual virginity now, so when the doors are opened at the coming of the great King, she may merit to enter with joy into the heavenly kingdom.[424]

The same language is found in several prayers of the Paschal season. Thus, for example, already anticipating Easter, the collect for Palm Sunday asks:

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui humano generi, ad imitandum humilitatis exemplum, Salvatorem nostrum carnem sumere et crucem subire fecisti: concede propitius; ut … et resurrectionis consortia mereamur: Almighty and Eternal God, Who has caused Our Saviour to take on flesh and suffer the cross as an example of humility to be imitated by the human race, mercifully grant that … we may merit also to be partakers in His Resurrection. [425]

In other words, by imitating Christ in His humility, we deserve to share His glory.[426] Similarly, during the Vigil it is asked that ‘we may merit to come to eternal joys,’[427] a prayer repeated in the collect for Bright Wednesday: ut … pervenire ad gaudia æterna mereamur.[428] Likewise, on the Saturday in Albis, the Saturday of Bright Week, the collect asks, ‘… that we, who have kept the Easter festivities with veneration, may merit by them to come unto eternal joys.’[429]

This is matched by the prayer at the start of Lent, said at the blessing of the ashes:

Ut, qui nos cinerem esse, et ob pravitatis nostrae demeritum in pulverem reversuros

cognoscimus; peccatorum omnium veniam, et praemia paenitentibus repromissa,

misericorditer consequi mereamur: That we, who know ourselves to be but ashes, and that by reason of the demerit of our sin we must return to dust, may merit to obtain by Your mercy the forgiveness of all our sins and the rewards promised to the penitent.[430]

Mereamur here seems to balance demeritum, meaning that there is a stylistic argument for saying that it should be translated as ‘may we merit.’ But also, the prayer must be interpreted in light of the patristic teaching that our good deeds can ‘merit’ the ‘reward’ of forgiveness. Satisfactione indulgentiam promereri, as St Leo says; [431] Mereri Dei misericordiam, to quote St Cyprian.[432] The same prayer also states that we put ashes on our heads causa … promerendae veniae, which we may translate with the Orthodox Missal as ‘for the meriting of pardon,’[433] a phrase which should be understood in the same patristic sense.

The same is true for the oratio super populum for Sitientes Saturday:

Deus, qui sperantibus in te misereri potius eligis, quam irasci: da nobis digne flere mala, quae fecimus; ut tuae consolationis gratiam invenire mereamur: O God, You choose to have mercy on those who hope in You, rather than be angry with them: grant us worthily to weep for the evils we have done, so that we may merit to find the grace of Your comfort. [434]

Likewise, the collect ‘to obtain compunction of heart:’

Educ de cordibus nostris duritia lacrimas compunctionis; ut peccata nostra plangere valeamus, remissionemque eorum, te miserante, mereamur accipere: Draw from the hardness of our hearts tears of compunction, that we may bewail our sins, and merit to obtain, by Your mercy, their remission.[435]

Mention may also be made of the oratio super populum for the Friday after the Second Sunday in Lent:

Da, quaesumus,populo tuo salutem mentis et corporis: ut, bonis operibus inhaerendo, tua semper mereatur protectione defendi: Give to Your people, O Lord, health of mind and body, that adhering to good works, they may always merit to be defended by Your protection.[436]

Another type of prayer where mereo(r) is used in the strict sense are those in which appeal is made to the merits of the saints, in order that we ourselves may merit. Thus, for instance, the collect for Ss Abdon and Sennen, having appealed to their ‘interceeding merits,’[437] asks that ab omnibus mereantur adversitatibus liberari: that ‘ [Your servants] may merit to be delivered from all adversities.’[438] Likewise, in the collect for St Scholastica, it is asked: Da nobis eius meritis et precibus ita innocenter vivere; ut ad aeterna mereamur gaudia pervenire. There is a move from the merits of the saint to our meriting. Her merits availing for us, we ourselves become capable of merit.[439] The same movement is described in the collect for St Titus: ‘ Grant by his merits and prayers, that living piously and uprightly in this present time, we may merit to come to the heavenly homeland.’[440] The merits of the saint help us to live a life pleasing to God, a life which is therefore itself is meritorious, deserving of heaven – but only because this is granted by God, His concession: concede.[441]

6.7. Merita in the Propers of the Mass

Whereas the use of mereo(r) in the texts of the mass is often ambiguous, this is not the case with the noun meritum, most often employed in the plural, merita.

6.7.1. Meritum as Neutral and Negative

Meritum can be neutral, as in the traditional collect for Maundy Thursday, which, speaking of Judas and the good thief, says that each received diversa stipendia meritorum, ‘differing rewards according to their merits.’[442] Merita can also be used in the negative sense, as in the collect for Laetare Sunday, the Sunday of mid-Lent, which asks: Concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus; ut qui ex merito nostrae actionis affligimur, tuae gratiae consolatione respiremus: ‘Grant, we ask, O Almighty God, that we, who are justly afflicted on account our merits’ – that is, our demerits – ‘may draw breath by the comfort of Your grace.’ [443] This prayer is first found in the Gregorian Sacramentary, and may very well be the composition of St Gregory himself, its antithetical construction characteristic of his style.[444] But, also, there are similarities with his sermons, which often speak of the ‘afflictions’ of the time in which he lived. ‘We see cities destroyed, towns cast down, the countryside bereft of people, churches ruined,’ he laments,[445] afflictions which he construes as divine punishment: pro nostris culpis atque offensionibus affligamur.[446] The only escape, he teaches, is repentance, to return to God, knowing that to do so will be to receive His mercy: ad ipsum vos tota mente convertite, qui et iuste quem vult permittit affligi, et confidentem in se misericorditer liberabit. [447]

6.7.2. The Inadequacy of Human Merit

Like the Fathers, the liturgy teaches that strictly speaking ‘we have no merits of our own on which we can depend,’ and so we must throw ourselves entirely on the mercy of God.[448] We saw this with the Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus, but we find it, too, elsewhere, beginning with the priest’s preparatory prayers, in which he confesses that God has called him to the priesthood, ‘not by my merits, but only by Your mercy,’ nullis meis meritis, sed sola dignatione misericordiæ tuæ. As he puts it in the Ad Mensam prayer ascribed to St Ambrose:

Ad mensam dulcíssimi convívii tui, pie Dómine Jesu Christe, ego peccator de propriis meis méritis nihil præsumens, sed de tua confídens misericordia et bonitate, accedere vereor et contremisco: To the table of Your most sweet banquet, O loving Lord Jesus Christ, I, a sinner, presuming nothing on my own merits, but trusting in Your mercy and goodness, approach with fear and trembling.[449]

The same thought occurs in the collect of the votive mass for the priest himself :

Nullis suffragantibus meritis, sed immensa clementiæ tuæ largitate cœlestibus mysteriis servíre tribuisti: For by no pleading of my own merits, but by the boundless compassion of Your goodness You have granted to serve these heavenly mysteries.

Similarly, in the Exsultet, the deacon confesses: [N]on meis meritis intra Levitarum numerum dignatus est aggregare: ‘Not by any merits of my own, has He numbered me amongst His Levites.’[450]

No doubt, the most striking examples of this teaching about our unworthiness and lack of merit appear in the services for the dead, where naked, so to say, before God, the soul can only plead, ‘O Lord, do not judge me according to my acts, for I have done nothing worthy in Your sight.’[451] Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, as the Dies Irae so memorably expresses it, ‘What shall I, poor wretch, say then’ – that is, on the Day of Judgement. To quote the already-mentioned absolution prayer, Non Intres, ‘Enter not into judgment with Your servant, O Lord, for in Your sight no one living shall be justified, except they obtain of You the remission of their sins.’ [452]

[453]

6.7.3. The Merita of the Saints Avails for Us

If we cannot rely on our own deservings, we may yet appeal to those of the saints, that ‘what we may not have by any merits of our own, we may obtain by [their] patronage.’ [454] An example of this is furnished by the collect for St Joseph the Betrothed: ‘May we be helped by the merits of the spouse of Your Most Holy Mother, so that what our ability cannot obtain, may be granted by his intercession.’ This prayer is interesting because of the link which it makes between merits at the beginning and intercession at the end.[455] The righteous Joseph [456] can obtain for us by his supplications what we cannot by our own, because of his pleasingness to God. We see the same thing in the secret for many martyr-bishops, which asks that ‘we who have no confidence in our own righteousness, may be helped by the merits of those who have been pleasing to You.’[457] Another example is the collect for Sexagesima, where those ‘who trust in no doings of their own’ ask for the ‘protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles.’ [458] This collect is very old, and may well be the work of St Gregory the Dialogist, who in the Moralia speaks in a similar way of those who, ‘trusting in no doings of their own, fly to the protection of the holy martyrs, … [and] entreat, at their intercessions, to merit pardon.’ [459]

Because of this appeal to the merits of the saints, we find the liturgy employing the phrase suffragantibus meritis, a phrase which goes back to St Leo and St Ambrose.[460] An example is the collect for the feast of St Jerome: ‘By his interceding merits may we come with Your help to do those things which he taught by word and deed.’ [461] An alternative formula intercedentibus meritis appears in the collect for St Basil, [462] as well as in the already-cited collect for Ss. Abdon and Sennen.[463]

Sometimes an appeal is made simply to the saints’ merits, without any qualifier (suffragantibus/intercedentibus), as in the following examples:

Sit nobis, Domine, sacramenti tui certa salvatio: quæ cum beatorum Martyrum tuorum Cosmæ et Damiani meritis imploratur : Let us, O Lord, be assured of salvation by Your sacrament, this salvation which we implore by the merits of Your blessed martyrs Cosmas and Damian.[464]

Deus, qui nos beati Saturnini Martyris tui concedis natalitia perfrui: ejus nos tríbue meritis adjuvari : God, Who has given to us to celebrate the feast of Your blessed martyr Saturninus, grant us to be helped by his merits.[465]

Beati Marcelli Martyris tui atque Pontificis meritis adjuvemur, cujus passione lætamur: May we be helped by the merits of Your martyr bishop Marcellus, in whose passion we rejoice. [466]

Ipsíus méritis illǽsum abíre concéde: Grant him by [St Peter’s] merits to go forth unharmed. [467]

Such saintly intercession is deemed experientially effective. Several times one finds repeated the formula, which first appears in the Leonine Sacramentary,[468] quorum se meritis de tribulatione percepisse cognoscit auxilium: God’s people know that, in time of trouble, they have received help through the merits of the saints. [469]

6.7.4. The Merita of the Saints and the Eucharistic Oblation

Sometimes, the appeal to the merits of the saints is made in relation to the eucharistic sacrifice. Examples include:

In cujus honore sollemniter exhibetur, ejus meritis efficiatur acceptum: May [our sacrifice] be made acceptable by his merits, in whose honour it is solemnly presented. [470]

Munera nostra … beatæ Maríæ Magdalenæ gloriosa merita tibi reddant accepta: May the glorious merits of blessed Mary Magdalene make our gifts pleasing to You.[471]

Fiant grata suffragiis … digna perficiantur et meritis: May [our gifts] be rendered pleasing to You through their intercession … and made worthy through their merits. [472]

Adding to these examples, are a number of prayers which employ the phrase dicatas meritis: ‘[sacrifices] dedicated by their merits.’ Apearing already in the the Leonine Sacramentary,[473] it is employed in masses of the martyrs, those who above all conformed themselves to the eucharistic oblation, giving their bodies to be broken for Christ, shedding their blood for His sake. [474] It means that the merits of the saints applied to the gifts make them pleasing to God.[475]

6.7.5. Merits and Intercession: Merits and Prayers

We have seen that merits and prayers have been joined together since patristic times. This conjunction is often found in the missal, most often in the form meritis et intercessione. Thus, for example, in the collect for St George, we find the phrase meritis et intercessione laetificas. This might be read as a hendiadys, corresponding to the suffragantibus meritis mentioned above,[476] but it seems more likely, in line with patristic usage, that two things are in fact meant, the translation thus being,‘You make us joyful by the merits and intercession of blessed George,’ rather than, ‘You make us joyful by his interceding merits.’ [477]

Other examples of meritis et intercessione include, but are not limited to, the following:

Meritis et intercessione beatæ Vírginis Mariæ in cœlum assumptæ, ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur: By the merits and intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary assumed into heaven, may we be led to the glory of the Resurrection.[478]

Ejus meritis et intercessione … ad cœlestem patriam pervenire mereamur: By his merits and intercession … may we merit to come to the heavenly homeland.[479]

Ejus meritis et intercessione, cœlestis gloriæ facias [nos] esse participes : By his merits and prayers make [us] to be partakers of celestial glory.[480]

We also find the formula meritis et precibus, as in the following examples:

Ejus meritis et precibus a gehennæ incendiis liberemur: By his merits and prayers may we be set free from the fires of hell.[481]

Da nobis ejus meritis et precibus ita innocenter vivere; ut ad æterna mereamur gaudia pervenire: By her merits and prayers grant us to live so innocently, that we may merit [mereamur] to come to eternal joys.[482]

6.7.6. Summary

Following the Fathers, the liturgy uses the language of merit, employing it in a strict sense. This is true for the verb mereo(r), although its meaning is often ambiguous. By contrast, we find the noun meritum used frequently in a clear and unequivocal way, often in prayers composed prior to the schism, sometimes by saints whose sanctity and wisdom is acknowledged throughout the whole Orthodox church, eastern and western.

Conclusion

Our conclusion must be that merit language used in the strict sense forms an integral part of the prayers of the western liturgical tradition, as it does the teaching of the western Fathers, including those most venerated in the east. At the same time, we find an analogous teaching in the writings of the eastern Fathers, and in the Byzantine tradition. This is not to say that mereo(r) or meritum always means merit, nor that they always need to be translated as such. Indeed, the verb mereo(r) is often ambiguous in its meaning, and can be rendered in a number of different ways. Nonetheless, there are very clear instances where ‘to merit’ in the literal sense is the right translation, both on linguistic grounds, but also as an integral part of the western theological and spiritual patrimony. This is even more true of the noun meritum, which very frequently is employed by the liturgy in the strict sense, sometimes in the oldest extant prayers of our tradition. This is why it is our humble opinion that in any future liturgical projects the use of merit language should be retained, so that we may remain true to the that which we have received from our Fathers, a gift to be shared with our eastern brothers and sisters, as a witness to the unity of our Faith which is neither Greek nor Latin, but universal, ‘an oecumenical Orthodoxy,’ as Bulgakov says, ‘freed from all provincialism.’[483]

By the Divine Providence which watches over all things, as Solomon says (Wisdom 14, 3), even the most minute circumstances of our lives, I bring this paper to completion of the feast of our Father amongst the saints, St Leo the Great, the Pope of Chalcedon, one of the great teachers of the doctrine of merit. By his merits and prayers, and through the intercession of the Our Most Glorious Lady, the Ever-Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, may all that I have written be true and conform to the Orthodox Faith, to the glory of our Great God, the All-Holy Trinity.

[1] Antiphon, Regina Coeli: Quia, quem meruisti portare, resurrexit, sicut dixit: ‘For He Whom thou didst merit to bear, is risen as He said.’ Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

[2] That the western tradition concerning merit is fully scriptural will be demonstrated in the footnotes.

[3] For the fullest treatment of mereo(r) and meritum, see the relevant articles in the Theasaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) online at: https://publikationen.badw.de/en/thesaurus/lemmata#58887, accessed 02/09/ 24.

[4] So St Isidore, Differences, 1.361.

[5] See §§. 5.1; 5.6.

[6] Gösta Hallonsten, Meritum bei Tertullian:Überprüfung einer Forschungstradition, (Malmö: Gleerup, 1984), p. 28.

[7] Comme-le-Prevoit.pdf (liturgyoffice.org.uk), accessed 02/08/24. The note on mereri is to be found in §. 17.

[8] Jan Nicolaas Bakhuizen van den Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ Studia Patristica, 3, (1961), pp. 333-340, pp. 337; 338. See, also, Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 45.

[9] On the Christian Faith, 5.3.48.

[10] Christine Mohrmann, ‘A Propos des Collectes du Psautier,’ Vigiliae Christianae, 6. 1, (1952), pp. 1–19, pp. 7; 15. The phrase also occurs in her Liturgical Latin, (Washington, D.C.: CUAP, 1957), p. 77.

[11] Antoine Chavasse, ‘Messes du Pape Vigile (537-555) dans le Sacramentaire Léonien,’ Ephemerides

Liturgicae, 66, (1952), pp. 142-215, p. 165.

[12] Mary Pierre Ellebracht, Remarks on the Vocabulary of the Ancient Orations in the Missale Romanum, (Nijmegen-Utrecht: Dekker & Van Der Vegt, 1963), p. 199.

[13] Mary Gonzaga Haessly, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal, (Cleveland, OH: Ursuline College for Women, 1938), pp. 8-9. See, also, Cally Hammond, The Sound of Liturgy: How Words Work in Worship, (London: SPCK, 2015).

[14] Antoine Dumas, ‘Pour Mieux Comprendre les Textes du Missel Roman,’ Notitiae, (May 1970), pp. 194-213, p. 206, online at: http://www.cultodivino.va/content/cultodivino/it/rivista-notitiae/indici-annate/1970/54.html, accessed 01/31/24.

[15] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 39.

[16] Dialogues, 3.25.

[17] Poem 26, 205.

[18] Bakhuizen van den Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ p.337.

[19] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 24.

[20] On the Christian Faith, 5.3.48.

[21] Sermon 83.1.1.

[22] One may note an equivalent in English. The soldier is literally ‘one who receives his wage.’ One may think, also, of meretrix, which derives from the same idea.

[23] On the Lord’s Prayer, 36.

[24] City of God, 1.13. Allusion to Tobit 12, 12.

[25] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 49.

[26] Bakhuizen van den Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ p. 335.

[27] Eighty-Three Questions, 68.5.

[28] Sermon 74.3.

[29] Letter 125.1.

[30] Against Marcion, 4.18.9.

[31] Haessly, Rhetoric, pp. 25, 27. Both collects are the handiwork of St Gregory the Dialogist (Thierry Maertens, ‘L’Avent: Genèse historique de ses thèmes bibliques et doctrinaux,’ Mélanges de Science Religieuse, 18, (1961), pp. 47-110.

[32] Sacred History, 1.13.

[33] On Virginity, 12.71.

[34] A collect is a prayer at the start of each mass, which changes with each Sunday or other celebration. This collect, which is used for Ss Emerentiana, Dorothea, Margaret of Antioch, and Christina, appears well before the schism. For the prayers which date from this period, I will reference Eugene Moeller, Jean-Marie Clément, and Bertrandus Coppieters’t Wallant, Corpus Orationum, ten vols., (Turnholt: Brepols, 1992), abbreviated as C.O.: here C.O., 3125., the idea being to show that many ‘merit’ prayers belong to the time when east and west were one.

[35] The English Missal renders as ‘by the merit of her chastity’ (p. [29]). The prayer is not in Orthodox Missal, which contains only the ‘propers’ for Sundays and the most important feasts. For these two missals, see below, §. 6.1.

[36] Ellebracht, Remarks, p. 163. See also TLL, Mereo(r), col. 822.

[37] Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, 72, online at: Frances Trzeciak, Cult of Saints, E05812 – http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E05812, accessed 01/ 26/ 24.

[38] Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis 98, online at: https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.13874909.v1, accessed 01/26/24. The actual founder of the chapel was Bishop John II of Ravenna (r. 578-595), described in the inscription which Agnellus is quoting as antistes meritis animoque, ‘a bishop by his merits and his character.’

[39] See TLL, col. 820.

[40] On the Trinity, 8.1.

[41] Letter 12.1.

[42] Against Rufinus, 1.23. The passage does include, however, a discussion of ecclesiastical rank.

[43] The ‘secret’ is a prayer said silently by the priest at the offering of the gifts.

[44] Apology 25.17.

[45] On Works, 5. For satisfaction, see below, §. 1.3.

[46] The English Missal translates ‘glorious merits’ (pp. 580; 687).

[47] Qui ejus merita veneramur, fídei constantiam imitemur. The English Missal renders as ‘merits’ (p. 661).

[48] Quorum gaudemus meritis, instruamur exemplis. This collect dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 1841), and may well be the work of St Gregory himself, as Dom Henry Ashworth has argued (‘Gregorian Elements in some Gallican Service Books,’ Traditio, 13, 1957, pp. 431–43, p. 441). The English Missal translates: ‘As we rejoice in their meritorious intercession, so may we learn to follow them in all virtuous and godly living’ (p. 655). There is a similar collect for martyr-bishops (from the mass Statuit Ei): Quorum gaudemus meritis, accendamur exemplis, ‘May we be enflamed by the examples of those in whose merits we rejoice.’

[49] The English Missal omits the commemoration of these saints.

[50] Inscription of St Ambrose on the tomb of his brother Satyrus, whom he buried next to the body of St Victor the Moor, so that the martyr’s relics might cleanse Satyrus from his sins,

https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.13869404.v1, accessed 02/22/24.

[51] Sermon 168.4.4.

[52] Eighty-Three Questions, 68.5.

[53] See the conclusion to §. 1.3.2.

[54] Gösta Hallonsten, Satisfactio bei Tertullian: Ueberprüfung einer Forschungstradition, (Malmö: Gleerup, 1984), pp. 118-120.

[55] Justinian, Digest, 46.3.52.

[56] Psalm 50, 19.

[57] Homily 7 on Repentance, 3 (PG 49, col. 326).

[58] Hallonsten, Satisfactio, p. 145. Hallonsten is talking specifically about Tertullian, but his words apply to the Latin Fathers more generally.

[59] Hallonsten, Satisfactio, p. 150. As he puts it a little earlier on, from the evidence ‘it can be seen that satisfactio, exomologesis, and paenitentia mean the same thing’ (Satisfactio, p. 143).

[60] On Modesty, 9.16.

[61] Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, 7.

[62] Satisfactio est peccatorum causas excidere et peccatis aditum non indulgere. Compare St Basil in his first canonical epistle: ‘The truer remedy is to depart from sin’ (Letter, 188.3).

[63] Vera poenitentia, cessare a peccato, On the Epistles of St Paul, 2 Cor 2, 7.

[64] Poenitentia est ante acta peccata flere, et flenda non iterum committere, Homily 34 on the Gospels, 15.

[65] Matthew 3, 8; Acts 26, 18-20.

[66] Joel 2, 12.

[67] Daniel, 4, 24; Tobit, 4, 7-10. Gary Anderson’s remark about later Judaism and early Christianity applies especially to the Fathers. For them: ‘Repentance without the giving of alms… is unimaginable’ (Sin: a history, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 143). See, also, Roman Garrison, Redemptive Almsgiving in Early Christianity, (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1993).

[68] Enchiridion, 17.65.

[69] Sermon 232.8. Compare, also, below, the teaching of St Cyprian, §. 2.2.3.

[70] On Repentance, 2.9.88.

[71] Homily 6 on Repentance, 1.

[72] On Repentance, 9.3.

[73] See, for example, 4 Kings 22, 19; Sirach 35, 21; Luke 1, 48; 18, 14.

[74] On the Lord’s Prayer, 6. One could also translate ‘he obtained.’ See above, §.1.1.

[75] Commentary on Luke, 7.156.

[76] Commentary on Luke, 7.156.

[77] Anderson, Sin, p. 45.

[78] This verse gives Peter Brown the title of his book of redemptive almsgiving in the patristic west, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity, (Harvard, CT: Harvard University Press, 2015).

[79] Anderson, Sin, p. 131.

[80] Anderson, Sin, pp. 120-132.

[81] Barnabas, 19.10; Didache, 4.6. We may also notice in these two early texts an adumbration of the idea of merit. God is described as ὁ τοῦ μισθοῦ καλὸς ἀνταποδότης, ‘the good requiter of the reward,’ (Barnabas, 19.11; Didache, 4.7).

[82] Anderson, Sin, p. 44.

[83] Homily 3 on Repentance, 2.

[84] Homily 7 On Repentance, 6.

[85] Homily 3 on Repentance, 1.

[86] Little matter that this was not the meaning of the prayer when originally composed, for, like the whole missal, having been brought into Orthodoxy, it must be read in an Orthodox way. Not least of all, when it comes to hermeneutics, ‘Context is king.’

[87] Michael Brummond, ‘“In Crowning Their Merits You Crown Your Own Gifts,”’ Adoremus, March 10, 2018, online at: https://adoremus.org/2018/03/crowning-merits-crown-gifts/, accessed 02/12/24.

[88] Luke 17,10.

[89] Hebrews 11, 6.

[90] See Anderson, Sin, p. 43. ‘Almost as soon as the idea of sin as debt appears on the scene, so does its financial counterpart, credit,’ he contends (p. 135). The texts quoted consistently by the Fathers in relation to merit are Proverbs 19, 17; John 14, 2; 2 Corinthians 5, 5; and Matthew 20, 1-16, the parable of the labourers.

[91] Homily 7 on Repentance, 6.

[92] Oration 14.36.

[93] Bakhuizen van der Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ p. 334.

[94] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 192. For this ‘self-binding’ in scripture, see, for example: Matthew 10, 43; Revelation 22, 12.

[95] Enchiridion, 28.107.

[96] The Verona Sacramentary, sometimes called the Leonine Sacramentary, is the oldest surviving liturgical book of the Roman Rite. The sacramentary itself dates from the seventh century, but contains older material, some going back, perhaps, to the fifth century. See David M. Hope, The Leonine Sacramentary: A Reassessment of Its Nature and Purpose, (Oxford: OUP, 1971).

[97] See above, n. 31.

[98] This prayer is also used as the secret for Saturday masses of Our Lady in Advent. It dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 3094).

[99] C.O., 2660.

[100] Or, the shorter form, per Christum Dominum Nostrum. The exception is, of course, those prayers which are addressed to Christ Himself.

[101] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 188.

[102] Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 210.

[103] Against Marcion, 2.13.1. Compare Against Marcion, 2.23.1.

[104] Against Marcion, 5.12.4-5.

[105] Apology, 18.3.

[106] Apology, 48.4.

[107] Apology, 18.3. The same teaching is repeated in To the Nations, 1.19.5-6, and in Testimony, 4.1. From these texts we see that merit can have a negative sense for Tertullian. Another example of this is when he says that Christ was crucified non pro meritis suis, meaning that He didn’t deserve the punishment of death (Against the Jews, 10.4.).

[108] Against Marcion, 4.24.4.

[109] On the Resurrection, 15.10. Compare On the Resurrection, 52.10.

[110] Scorpiace, 6.7. One may note how in the Syriac tradition we also find the same idea of ‘many mansions,’ for example in the Hymns on Paradise of St Ephraem.

[111] To Scapula, 4. Compare St Ignatios: ᾿´Οπου πλείων κόπος, πολὺ κέρδος (To Polycarp, 1.3).

[112] Against Marcion, 4.28.7. Compare Clement of Alexandria, §.5.1.

[113] Praescription, 20.1.

[114] On Repentance, 2.11. See above, §.1.4.

[115] On Repentance, 2.9. See Hallonsten, Meritum, p. 133.

[116] Against Hermogenes, 5.4. Compare St Maximos, Ambiguum 20, where the confessor insists on the gratuity of theosis.

[117] On the Resurrection, 17.7.

[118] See Against Marcion, 2.6.6-7. For the scriptural basis of this idea, see Romans 2, 5-10.

[119] On the Resurrection, 8.

[120] To His Wife, 1.8.3.

[121] Hallonsten, Satisfactio, especially pp. 130, 157.

[122] On Repentance, 4.1. ‘Everywhere Tertullian emphasizes God’s willingness to forgive,’ Hallonsten notes (Satisfactio, p. 156). See, also, for example, On Prayer, 7; On Repentance, 7.14.

[123] On Repentance, 4.1, referencing Ezekiel 33, 11.

[124] On Repentance, 7.14. Compare St John Chrysostom: ‘We do not offer repentance to Him, but He gives it to us’ (Chrysostom, Sermon 7 on Repentance, 3).

[125] On Repentance, 8.7-8. One is reminded of Chrysostom, Sermon 7 on Repentance,1: ‘To all who sin, He threatens punishment; but to all who repent, He promises reconciliation (ἱλασμὸν).’ We may note that in his later rigorism, Tertullian took the view that these parables do not apply to sinful Christians (On Modesty, 7-9).

[126] On Repentance, 9.5.

[127] On Repentance, 9.6.

[128] On Prayer, 7.

[129] On Repentance, 9.2.

[130] On Repentance, 2.2. Compare 2 Corinthians 7, 10.

[131] On Repentance, 6.4.

[132] On Repentance, 6.1.

[133] Gerald Bray, Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian, (London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1979), p. 66.

[134] See Bishop IRENEI, Of God and Man, pp. 77-78.

[135] On Repentance, 9.2. Compare, for example, Jonah 3 and Joel 2, 11-13.

[136] On Repentance, 9.1.

[137] Illustrious Men, 53.3.

[138] Augustine notes that Cyprian was honoured in his time ‘not only by the Africans and westerners, but also indeed by the churches of the east’ (Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, 4.8.21).

[139] On Works, 21.

[140] On Works, 26. The passage gives a good illustration of Cyprian’s biblicism. Without quoting directly from the scriptures, he alludes to Luke 10:7; 2 Corinthians 4, 18; and Matthew 25, 23.

[141] On Works, 26. Compare On Works, 16.

[142] On The Lord’s Prayer, 33.

[143] Letter 77. 1.

[144] On Works, 23.

[145] On Works, 24.

[146] On the Dress of Virgins, 23.

[147] Graeme Clarke and Michel Poirier, eds, Ceux Qui Sont Tombés, (Paris : Le Cerf, 2003), p. 103.

[148] Graeme Clarke, ‘Introduction’ to Clarke and Poirier, eds, Ceux Qui Sont Tombés, pp. 9-99, p. 61. See above, §. 1.3.2.

[149] On the Lapsed, 30.

[150] Letter 51.2.

[151] On the Lapsed, 30.

[152] On Works, 5.

[153] On Works, 23.

[154] On the Lapsed, 29, citing Joel 2, 12.

[155] On Works, 5. Compare Tobit 12, 9.

[156] On Works, 5. Compare St Maximos, Centuries on Charity, 1.79: ‘Alms are medicine for the soul.’

[157] On Works, 3.

[158] On Works, 7. See, also, On the Lapsed, 14, where the priest is described as a physician who provides salutary remedies to the repentant.

[159] Letter 39.5.

[160] Letter 59.1.

[161] On Works, 5. Sirach 3, 30 says: ‘As water extinguishes a blazing fire, so almsgiving atones for sin.’

[162] Quoted Bakhuizen van der Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ p. 334. For the original see, Adhémer d’Alès, La Théologie de St Cyprien, (second edition, Paris: Beauchesne, 1922), p. 276.

[163] On Works, 5.

[164] On Works, 5. Compare Tobit 12, 9.

[165] Letter 13.1.

[166] On the Lapsed, 17.

[167] On the Lapsed, 17.

[168] See Clark, ‘Introduction,’ p. 81, confessor here meaning those who suffered for Christ.

[169] See, for example, Letters 13; 15; and 24.

[170] On the Fallen, 19.

[171] On the Fallen, 39.

[172] Letter 57. See, also, On the Lord’s Prayer, 8.

[173] Compare Tobit 12, 11; Isaiah 58,6; Acts 10, 4; 31.

[174] On the Lord’s Prayer, 33.

[175] Letter 15.4. Cyprian begins this letter by telling the confessors: ‘The more time you spend suffering, the more your merits increase’ (ibid., 1).

[176] On the Lapsed, 4; 22; 32. Compare the teaching of St Ambrose, below, §.4.4.2.

[177] On the Lapsed, 10.

[178] Letter 77. 4.

[179] Bakhuizen van der Brink, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ pp. 336 – 337.

[180] Letter 73, 13. The original Greek is the single word ἠλεήθην.

[181] On the Lapsed, 36.

[182] Bakhuizen van den Brinke, ‘Mereo(r) and Meritum in Some Latin Fathers,’ p.334.

[183] Ernst Dassmann, ‘Cyprianus,’ in Cornelius Mayer (ed.), Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 2, (Basel: Schwabe, 1996-2002), pp. 196-211, pp.199-200. Dassmann refers to more than 650 cases in which Augustine cites Cyprian.

[184] On True Religion, 10.20.

[185] For Augustine, see, for example, Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, eds, Orthodox Readings of Augustine, (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2020); Fr Seraphim Rose, The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church, (Platina, CA: St Herman’s, 2007).

[186] Letter 154.5.16.

[187] On the Grace of Christ, 1.31.34.

[188] Confessions, 9.13.34.

[189] Sermon 110.4.4.

[190] Sermon 158.2.2.

[192] Sermon 19.2.

[193] Sermon 19.2. Compare St John Chrysostom: ‘Let us try ourselves now without pain, that then we may not be tried with pain’ (Homily 6 on Repentance, 3); and, again: ‘Mourn for your sin, and so you will not have to weep for its punishment’ (Sermon 7 on Repentance, 6).

[194] Sermon 19.2.

[195] Sermon 19.2. In the same passage he cites David as an example of praying and satisfying God: orandi et satis Deo faciendi exemplum. In the background are Psalm 4, 5; and Psalm 50.

[196] Sermon 19.3.

[197] Enchiridion, 19.70.

[198] Enchiridion, 19.70.

[199] On Duties, 1.25.119. See, also, what Ambrose says about Moses and David, below, §. 4.4.3.

[200] On Duties, 1.31.162.

[201] On the Resurrection, 1.101.

[202] On the Sacraments, 2.2.4.

[203] On the Patriarch Joseph, 13.76.

[204] On the Resurrection, 1.92. Note the use of 1 Corinthians 15, 23, as in Tertullian, §. 2.1.1. Elsewhere, Ambrose says that the resurrection ‘is not of our merits, but from God’s gift’ (On the Resurrection, 2.2.), meaning that our rising again depends ultimately on God’s grace and love.

[205] On Duties, 1.48.237.

[206] On Duties, 1.15.57.

[207] Commentary on Luke, 2.60.

[208] On Virginity, 1.7.32.

[209] Commentary on Luke, 5.10-11. Compare St Cyprian, above, §.2.2.5.

[210] On David, 6.24.

[211] On Psalm 43, 46.

[212] Commentary on Luke, 3.38. See, also, On Duties, 1.48.236, where of David he says: ‘He stored up humility and justice and prudence so as to merit forgiveness from the Lord.’

[213] Letter 2.16.

[214] On Elias and Fasting, 20.76.

[215] On Duties, 1.11.39.

[216] On the Christian Faith, 5.6.83.

[217] On the Christian Faith, 5.7.91.

[218] Compare St Cyprian above, §.2.2.5. As noted there, the point is important for a proper understanding of the western liturgy.

[219] On Repentance, 1.9.42, alluding to Exodus 32, 31-32.

[220] On Duties, 1.11.57, alluding to Exodus 16 and Numbers 20, 2-9.

[221] On Duties, 2.4.10, alluding to Exodus 14.

[222] On Repentance, 2.6.50. Alternatively, one may translate as ‘he obtained that …’ Compare in the same work, 1.9.43: Hieremias …oravit et veniam meruit. As in the case of David, Jeremiah’s prayer merited/obtained mercy for others. Allusions to 2 Kingdoms, 24, 10; and Jeremiah 7, 16.

[223] On Widows, 8.48.

[224] Letter 22.19, alluding to John 14, 12.

[225] Commentary on Luke, 1.8.96.

[226] On Duties, 1.30.153.

[227] See, for example: James Jorgenson, ‘Predestination according to Foreknowledge in Patristic Tradition,’ in John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias, eds, Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), pp. 159-69.

[228] Romans 8, 29.

[229] On the Christian Faith, 5.6.83.

[230] Commentary On Psalm 118, 20.42.

[231] Commentary On Psalm 118, 20.42. Compare n. 203, above.

[232] On Virginity, 7.44. Compare the collect for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, which goes back to the Leonine Sacramentary: Abundantia pietatis tuæ et merita supplicum excedis et vota, ‘In the abundance of Your Love You exceed the merits and desires of Your suppliant people’ (C.O., 3887).

[234] Sermon 9.2. Compare the language of purchase used by St John Chrysostom, above, §.1.3.2.

[235] Sermon 6.1.

[236] Sermon 13.

[237] Sermon 11.2.

[238] Sermon 20.3.

[239] Sermon 9.2. Note the biblicism of the passage, which is a catena of scriptural verses: Matthew 5, 7; 25, 40; Romans 12, 9.

[240] Sermon 6.

[241] See Sermon 32.4. Compare, also, Sermon 53.3: ‘… that we may merit to come to those things prepared for the faithful.’

[242] Sermon 59.8. See, also, Sermon 53.3; Sermon 71.6.

[243] Sermon 94.4.

[244] Sermon 92.4.

[245] Sermon 88.5.

[246] Sermon 82.7.

[247] Sermon 9.2, alluding to Matthew 5,7.

[248] Sermon 9.2.

[249] Sermon 20.3.

[250] Sermon 80. Leo here employs the verb promerari. Compare Matthew 5, 7; 7, 2.

[251] Sermon 7, citing Titus 3, 5, and 1 Peter 4, 8, the latter itself a quotation from Proverbs 10, 12.

[252] Letter, 1.3.

[253] Sermon 32.4.

[254] Sermon.69.3, alluding to 2 Corinthians 2, 17.

[255] Sermon 55.5.

[256] See Sermon 11.1. Compare St Ambrose, above, §. 4.4.4.

[257] Morals, 9.18.28.

[258] Morals, 9.29.30. Elsewhere, he bemoans his unworthiness to act as an intercessor for others, since he fears that he is not in a state of familiarity with God ‘through the merit of my life’ (Letters, 1.25).

[259] Morals, 9.2.2.

[260] Morals, 9.25.37.

[261] Morals, 5.32.56.

[262] Morals, 9.18.28. Compare Letter, 12.1, where Gregory says that we must seek that the Lord ‘should not punish us according to our merits, but be inclined to pardon through His mercy.’

[263] Morals, 32.1.1.

[264] Morals, 32.5.6.

[265] Homilies on the Gospels, 1.20.15, referencing Matthew 11, 12.

[266] Morals, 9.18.28.

[267] Morals, 8.43.70.

[268] Morals, 8.41.68.

[269] Homilies on the Gospels, 15.5. See, also, Dialogues, 4.14, where the story is repeated. Gregory speaks of Servulus’s death as the ‘time when he came to be rewarded.’

[270] Homilies on the Gospels, 2.26.1.

[271] Dialogues, 2.38.

[272] Homilies on the Gospels, 2.26.4.

[273] Letter 9.110.

[274] Letter 1.77.

[275] Letter 6.60. St Eulogios, a Syrian by birth, reigned over the See of Alexandria from 580 until his death in 608.

[276] Morals, 8.7.12. Job 7, 1 asks: ‘Are not his days, the days of a hireling?’ Compare Clement of Alexandria, below, §.5.1.

[277] Morals, 4.36.70, referencing John 14, 2 and Psalm 113, 13.

[278] Morals, 25.1.1.

[279] Morals, 25.16.44.

[280] Job 42, 7-9.

[281] Morals, Preface, 7.17.

[282] Morals, 16.2.64. See, also, Homilies on the Gospels, 2.32.8.

[283] Letter, 6.17.

[284] Letter, 8.30.

[285] Letter 10.35.

[286] Letter 13.42. See, also, Homilies on the Gospels, 2.40.10.

[287] Daniel 1, 2-16.

[288] II Kingdoms, 11; and 23, 13-17.

[289] Letter 11.44.

[291] Morals, 8.31.51.

[292] Morals, 18.40. 62-63. See, also, 33.21.38.

[293] Homilies on Ezekiel, 1.8.2.

[294] Morals, 33.21.32.

[295] Morals, 33.21.32.

[296] Homilies on Ezekiel, 1.9.2.

[297] Morals, 16.25.30.

[298] Dialogues, 1.12.

[299] Dialogues, 1.5.

[300] Dialogues, 3.15.

[301] Dialogues, 3.22.

[302] Dialogues, 4.35.

[303] Dialogues, 4.36. See, also, Homilies in Ezekiel 2.4.6.; Morals, 9.65.98.

[304] Dialogues, 3.31.

[305] ‘O praiseworthy and glorious merits of St Benedict … who has been made a partaker of eternal rewards’ (Response after the Fifth Reading)

[306] Prologue, 50.

[307] Prologue, 5.

[308] Rule, 2.16.

[309] Rule, 2.16.

[310] Rule, 21.4.

[311] Rule, 62.5: ‘For the merit of his life.’

[312] Rule, 62, 1.

[313] Rule, 35.2.

[314] Rule, 36.5.

[315] Rule, 49.9.

[316] Rule, 59.4.

[317] Prologue, 7.

[318] Rule, 2.16.

[319] Matthew 7, 2; 10, 41-42; Romans 2,6; 1 Corinthians 3, 8; 2 Corinthians 5, 10; Ephesians 6, 8.

[320] Philippians 2, 13.

[321] Job 42, 7-10.

[322] Matthew 3,8.

[323] Genesis 18, 22-33; 26,24; 1 Kings 11, 13; Isaiah 37, 35

[324] Stromata, 4.6: Clement alludes to John 14, 2, which we have encountered so often quoted by the western Fathers with regard to merit. In the passage cited Clement goes on to quote Matthew 10, 41-42: ‘Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.’

[325] Who is the Rich Man that shall be Saved? 4.

[326] Stromata, 2.15.

[327] Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), art. ἀξία, on-line at: Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀξία (tufts.edu), accessed 12/22/23.

[328] Nicomachean Ethics, 5.3.1131a2-29.

[329] Politics, 5.1.1301b35–39.

[330] The Teacher, 1.8.

[331] Stromata, 4.6. It is of note that the word which Clement here uses for distribute is μερίζω, the verb from which the Latin mereo(r) is derived.

[332] Stromata, 1.1. The Greek speaks of τὸν μισθὸν τοῖς ἐργάταις κατ’ ἀξίαν. As well as Matthew 20, 1-16, Luke 10, 7 is also in the background: ἄξιος γὰρ ὁ ἐργάτης τοῦ μισθοῦ αὐτοῦ.

[333] Stromata, 7.14. The Greek text describes the mansion as ὀφειλομένην, something due, something owed, as in the famous saying of Socrates: Ὦ Κρίτων, ἔφη, τῷ Ἀσκληπιῷ ὀφείλομεν ἀλεκτρυόνα.

[334] Who is the Rich Man that shall be Saved? 32

[335] Stromata, 1.1, alluding to the parable of the labourers, Matthew 20, 1-16.

[336] Stromata, 1.1, alluding to Matthew 6, 1-4.

[337] Catecheses, 18.1.

[338] Catecheses, 18.1.

[339] Catecheses, 18.1.

[340] Catecheses, 18.4.

[341] Catecheses, 18.4.

[342] On the Psalms, 48.6.

[343] Homilies on Romans, 2.3.

[344] Homilies on Matthew, 13.5.

[345] On Lazarus, 4.4, (P.G. 48, col. 1011).

[346] Homilies on Matthew, 3.5.

[347] Homilies on 1 Corinthios, 15.2.

[348] Homilies on 1 Corinthians, 1.1.

[349] Homily 6 on Repentance, 3.

[350] Sermon 6 on Repentance, 3.

[351] Sermon 6 on Repentance, 3.

[352] Sermon 6 on Repentance, 3.

[353] Morals, 1.1.

[354] Morals, 1.2.

[355] Morals, 1.3.

[356] Homilies, 20.3. Basil quotes 1 Corinthians 15, 10.

[357] Letter 203.1.

[358] Morals, 1.1. Compare St Gregory the Theologian, who summing up the faith for those about to be baptized makes the almost credal statement that Christ will weigh our deeds and give recompense (ἀνταπόδοσιν) according to ‘the just scales of God.’ (Oration 40,45). A similar ‘creedal’ statement appears in Basil’s On the Faith, 4. One thinks, too, of St Patrick’s Confessio from the other side of the Christian world, in which he declares his belief in Jesus Christ, ‘… Who will render to each according to their works’ (Confessio, 4). The similarity is of course due to the fact that the three saints are inspired by the same scripture, Romans 2, 6.

[359] Homilies on the Psalms, 114.3.

[360] On the Holy Spirit, 8.19.

[361] Rendering of On Baptism, 1.2.22 in Sister Monica Wagner, trans, St Basil, Ascetical Works, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, reprint, 1999), p. 354.

[362] P.G., 31, col. 1563.

[363] Homily on the Beginning of Proverbs, 8.

[364] Shorter Rules, Question 249.

[365] Homily on the Famine and the Drought, 9.

[366] Longer Rules, Prologue, 4.

[367] On Baptism, 2.9.4.

[368] On the Judgement of God, 1.

[369] https://journal.orthodoxwestblogs.com/2018/02/09/regarding-the-merits-of-the-saints/, accessed 12/19/23.

[370] Denis F. Sullivan, Alice-Mary Talbot, Stamatina McGrath, The Life of Saint Basil the Younger: Critical Edition, (Harvard, CA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 207.

[371] Against the Jews, 8.6.

[372] G.W.H. Lampe, ed., A Patristic Greek Lexicon, (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1961), art. Παρρησία.

[373] G.W.H. Lampe, ed., A Patristic Greek Lexicon, (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1961), art. Παρρησία.

[374] Homily on Ss. Bernice and Prosdoce, 7. See, also, Homilies on the Statues, 3.7; Homilies on John, 8.2.

[375] Homilies on Genesis, 9.6.

[376] Oration 18.4.

[377] Homily 37, On the Dormition

[378] On the Dormition, 1.

[379] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2. 5.26. See, also, 6.7.1–2.

[380] Oration 37.16.

[381] As in Luke, 20:35; Acts 5:41; 2 Thessalonians, 1:5.

[382] I shall confine my remarks to the rite of St Gregory the Great, which can be seen as the mass of the western church, akin, in this respect, to the rite of St John Chrysostom in the east. Since this mass derives from the Roman Missal (prior to its reform in 1969), it is at this text that we will be looking in what follows. However, as the Missal contains some three hundred references to merit, we cannot examine them all. Nor can we look at the use of merit language in the other liturgical books of the western rite.

[383] Orthodox Missal, p. 19.

[384] Orthodox Missal, pp.173-74. The same collect is also used in the Roman Missal in the mass ‘to ask the grace of the Holy Spirit.’

[385] Orthodox Missal, p. 20. The prayer Ad Mensam is ascribed to St Ambrose but is probably much later.

[386] ‘May I merit to bear the maniple of tears and sorrow, so that with joy I may receive the reward of my labour.’ For the dating of the prayer, see Josef Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origin and Development, two volumes, (New York: Benzinger, 1951), vol. 1. p. 283.

[387] ‘Restore to me, O Lord, the stole of immortality, which was lost in the transgression of our first parents, and, inasmuch as I approach Your sacred mysteries in an unworthy manner, nevertheless, may I merit eternal blessedness.’ For the dating of the prayer, see Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 1. p. 285.

[388] Byzantine Ordination Prayer.

[389] See 2 Corinthians 3, 6.

[390] ‘O Lord, You have said: “My yoke is easy and My burden light,” make me so able to bear it that I may obtain Your favor.’

[391] TLL, art. Mereo; https://publikationen.badw.de/en/thesaurus/lemmata#58887, accessed 01/16/24.

[392] N.M. Denis-Boulet, ‘Analyse des Rites et des Prières de la Messe,’ in A.G. Martimort, L’Eglise en Prière: Introduction à la Liturgie, (Paris: Desclées, 1961), pp. 326-470, p. 329; Archdale A. King, Liturgy of the Roman Church, (Milwauke, WI: Bruce Publishing Company, 1957), p. 229.

[393] Orthodox Missal, p. 197.

[394] Compare Isaiah 6,7. The English Missal renders the prayer as ‘that we may be worthy to enter …’ (p. 238).

[395] Compare the prayer of the Gelasian Sacramentary used at the consecration of an altar: …quorum hic reliquias pio more complectimur, eorum semper meritis adiuvemur:‘May we always be helped by the merits of those whose relics here we lovingly embrace’ (Henry A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary: Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Ecclesiae: With Introduction, Critical Notes and Appendix, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894, p. 139).

[396] Orthodox Missal, p. 174. The English Missal has ‘merits’ (p. 238).

[397] Today in the western rite the formula is used as a blessing at Matins of the Theotokos.

[398] See above, §§.2.2.5; 4.4.3; 4.5.2.

[399] Expressed throughout the Greek scriptures by ἕνεκεν or ἕνεκα, as in Genesis 18, or simply by διὰ, as in Genesis 26, 24 or 3 Kingdoms 8, 19.

[400] Denis-Boulet, ‘Analyse,’ pp. 383-384.

[401] Orthodox Missal, p. 205. The English Missal has ‘merits and prayers’ (p. 372).

[402] P. Borella, ‘S. Leone Magno et il Communicantes,’ Ephemerides Liturgicae, 60, (1948), pp. 93-101; C. Callewaert, ‘S. Léon et le Communicantes et le Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus,’ Sacris Erudiri, 1, (1948), pp. 123-64.

[403] See above, §. 4.5.2.

[404] Orthodox Missal, p. 207. It is worth pointing out the inconsistency of the Orthodox Missal in rendering merita as merits when the word is used in malam partem but ignoring it when it is used in a positive sense.

[405] Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 2, p. 257.

[406] See Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 2, p. 257. Jungmann references Psalm 129, 3-4.

[407] Psalm 102, 10.

[408] Enchiridion, 8.27.

[409] Merit language does not generally occur in the church’s chants. One instance is in the ‘Alleluia’ for the conversion of St Paul: Meruit thronum duodecim possidere. We may also cite the tract for masses of the dead: Mereantur evadere iudicium ultionis, on which see below, §.6.6.1.

[410] The Orthodox Missal translates as ‘counted worthy’ and ‘was worthy’ (pp.148-149), the same as the English Missal (p. 203).

[411] Ut, quem Doctorem vitæ habuimus in terris, intercessorem habere mereamur in cœlis. The formula is used in the collects of Ss Peter Chrysologos, Ambrose, Hilary of Poitiers, Isidore, and Gregory the Theologian. The English Missal renders variously ‘may be found worthy’ (doctors), ‘may be worthy’ (Joseph).

[412] This supplication is also used in the tract for the dead. The English Missal translates. ‘Let him be found worthy to escape the avenging judgement’ (p. [117]). See, also, below, §. 6.7.2.

[413] Collect for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, first found in the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 1511).

[414] Monday after the First Sunday in Lent, Prayer over the People. The prayer dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 1900).

[415] Secret for Ss Philip and James, dating back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 3418). It is of note that their collect speaks of our rejoicing in their merits: quorum gaudemus meritis. This collect may well be the work of St Gregory the Dialogist (Henry Ashworth, ‘Gregorian Elements in Some Gallican Service Books,’ Traditio 13, (1957), pp. 431–43, p. 441). The phrase quoted also occurs in several other prayers, including the collect Infirmitatem Nostram, used in the Litany of the Saints, also found in the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 3134).

[416] Collect of the mass ‘for any necessity.’

[417] ‘Almighty, Everlasting God, give to us an increase of faith, hope, and love; and that we might merit to obtain what You promise, make us to love what You command.’

[418] Haessly, Rhetoric, p. 101. The collect dates back to the Leonine Sacramentary (C.O., 3819). The Orthodox Missal translates ‘that we may be worthy to attain’ (p. 347). The English Missal likewise has ‘worthy’ (p. 527). One may note that the Tikhon rite follows Cranmer in simply saying ‘that we may attain’ (p. 287).

[419] Post-Communion for the First Mass of Christmas, dating back to the Gelasian Sacramentary (C.O., 935). The Orthodox Missal (p. 44) and the English Missal (p. 18) both render: ‘We may so walk in godliness of life, that we may be found worthy to attain unto his fellowship in heaven.’

[420] Post-Communion for St Stephen of Hungary. The English Missal has ‘counted worthy’ (p. 778).

[421] Collect for St Canute. The English Missal has ‘found worthy’ (p. 571).

[422] Blessing of Candles at Candlemas, second prayer. The Orthodox Missal (p. 391) follows the English Missal in rendering ‘found meet’ (p. 588).

[423] Blessing of Candles at Candlemas, third prayer. The Orthodox Missal renders by ‘found meet’ (p. 392). So, also, the English Missal (p. 586).

[424] Secret at the blessing of an abbess, and at the consecration of a virgin, found in the Gregorian and Gelasian Sacramentaries (C.O., 3639).

[425] This prayer dates back to the eighth century (C.O., 1699). One may profitably read Haessly’s comments, Rhetoric, p. 58. Both the Orthodox Missal (p. 110) and the English Missal (p. 148) follow Cranmer and say simply ‘may …be made partakers of his resurrection.’

[426] Compare the Christological hymn of Philippians 2, where, biding us have the same mindset as Christ, Paul says that, because Christ humbled Himself, therefore God exalted Him: διὸ καὶ ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσεν (verse 9).

[427] Ut mereamur ad æterna gaudia perveníre: prayer after the first prophecy. The English Missal (p. 207) and the Orthodox Missal (p.152) both have ‘be found worthy.’

[428] This collect is found in the Gelesian and Gregorian Sacramentaries (C.O., 1917).

[429] … ut, qui festa paschalia venerando egimus, per hæc contingere ad gaudia æterna mereamur. The English Missal has ‘found worthy’ (p. 427).

[430] Second blessing prayer. The Orthodox Missal again uses the phrase ‘found meet’ (p. 85). Demeritum is translated as ‘vileness’ (p. 85). In both cases, the English Missal does the same (p. 63).

[431] Letter 108.5.

[432] On Works, 5.

[433] Orthodox Missal, p. 85. The English Missal has the same translation (p. 63).

[434] Dom Henry Ashworth ascribes this prayer to St Gregory the Great, on the grounds of its similarity to several phrases in his writings: Henry Ashworth, ‘The Influence of the Lombard Invasions on the Gregorian Sacramentary,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 36, 2 (1954): 305–27, pp. 316-317. The oratio super populum is a prayer said over the people during Lent. Sitientes is the Saturday before Passion Sunday. The English Missal construes as ‘may be found worthy’ (p. 120).

[435] The English Missal simply has ‘may’ (p. [96]).

[436] This prayer dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 1031). The English Missal simply translates ‘may’ (p. 92).

[437] Intercedentibus meritis. See below, §. 6.7.5.

[438] This collect dates to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 2073). The English Missal has ‘by the intercession of the merits of thy Saints … may be found worthy’ (p. 734).

[439] ‘Grant us by her merits and prayers so to live innocently, that we may merit to come to eternal joys.’ The English Missal has ‘Grant unto us through her merits and prayers … that we may be worthy to attain …’ (p. 598).

[440] The English Missal has: ‘Grant through his merits and intercession …. may be found worthy’ (p. 594).

[441] Eius meritis et intercessione, concede …

[442] The English Missal (p. 166) has ‘the due recompense of his deeds.’ The Orthodox Missal has a different collect altogether (p.118).

[443] The Orthodox Missal (p. 99) and the English Missal (p. 108) both use the Cranmerian translation, which speaks of us, ‘who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished.’

[444] Ashworth, ‘Influence,’ p. 314.

[445] Homilies on Ezekiel, 1.9.9.

[446] ‘On the Major Litanies’ (P.L., 77, col. 1329): ‘We are afflicted because of our faults and offences.’

[447] Letters, 10, 31: ‘Turn back to Him with all your heart, He Who both justly allows whom He will to be afflicted, and Who will, in His mercy, deliver the one who puts his trust in Him.’

[448] … ubi nulla suppetunt suffragia meritorum, tuis nobis succurre præsidiis (secret for Advent II), a prayer found in the Gregorian and Gelasian Sacramentaries (C.O.,4246).

[449] Another example of the Orthodox Missal translating merita as ‘merits’ when used in a negative sense, while omitting it otherwise (p. 20).

[450] ‘For no merit of mine,’ translates the Orthodox Missal (p.147) and the English Missal (p. 201).

[451] Domine, secundum actum meum noli me iudicare: nihil dignum in conspectu tuo egi (response after the eighth reading, monastic matins for the dead).

[452] See also above, §. 6.6.1.

[454] Intercessio nos, quaesumus, Domine, beati N. Abbátis comméndet: ut, quod nostris meritis non valemus, ejus patrocinio assequamur (collect for the common of abbots). It is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary, where it is used for St Benedict (C.O., 3164). The English Missal translates as ‘merits’ ([p. 26]).

[455] The English Missal speaks of ‘merits’ (p. 615); the Orthodox Missal substitutes ‘prayers’ (p. 400).

[456] Matthew 1, 19.

[457] Adesto, Domine, supplicationibus nostris, quas in Sanctorum tuorum commemoratione deferimus: ut, qui nostræ justitiae fiduciam non habemus, eorum, qui tibi placuerunt, meritis adjuvemur. This prayer dates back to the Leonine Sacramentary (C.O., 119). The English Missal translates ‘merits’ ([p.18]).

[458] St Paul. See 1 Timothy 2, 7. The Latin original of the collect is: Deus, qui conspicis, quia ex nulla nostra actione confidimus: concede propitius; ut, contra adversa omnia, Doctoris gentium protectione muniamur.

[459] Morals, 16.64. Gregory here uses the word promereri.

[460] ‘By his interceeding merits.’ As well as the collect for St Jerome, quoted in the text, examples include the collect for St Roch, the secret for the mass in honour of the holy relics, the secrets of Ss Lawrence, Valentine and Anastasia. The phrase also appears in the collect of the mass pro sacerdote seipso, as noted above, §. 6.7.2. In the form meritis suffragantibus the phrase appears in St Ambrose, Commentary on Luke, 3.30, and in St Leo, Sermon 10.

[461] Ejus suffragantibus meritis, quod ore simul et opere docuit, te adjuvante, exercere valeamus. The English Missal translates: ‘by the intercession of his merits’ (p. 804).

[462] One may note that Basil himself is described as having merited to serve God: … qui tibi digne meruit famulari, eius intercedentibus meritis, ab omnibus nos absolve peccatis. The English Missal translates: ‘Like as he was found worthy … so by his merits and intercession …’ (p. 685).

[463] §.6.6.3.

[464] Post-Communion for the Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent. The appearance of Cosmas and Damian here is explained by the fact that in Rome, since the time of Pope Gregory II (r. 715-31), the mass of this day was celebrated in the church dedicated to their honour. The prayer dates back to the Gelasian Sacramentary (C.O., 5496). The English Missal translates ‘… pleading the merits of thy blessed martyrs …’ (p. 102).

[465] Collect for St Saturninus. The English Missal translates ‘merits’ (p. 549).

[466] Collect for St Marcellus I. The English Missal translates ‘merits’ (p. 567).

[467] Collect for a prisoner or captive. ‘By the merits of the same thine Apostle,’ says the English Missal (p. [99]).

[468] C.O., 41

[469] The formula appears in the secret of the masses Dilexisti and Vultum Tuum, for the common of virgins, as well as in the mass Cognovi, for holy women, but is used also elsewhere.

[470] Secret for St Andrew. The same formula appears in the secret of the votive mass of the apostles. It dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 5224). The English Missal translates as ‘merits’ (p. 551). The Orthodox Missal omits the word altogether (p. 373).

[471] Secret for St Mary Magdelene. The English Missal translates ‘merits’ (p. 726), but the Orthodox Missal has ‘example’ (p.418), which appears to make no sense in the context. How can her example make our offerings pleasing to God?

[472] The secret for Ss Felix and Nabor. The English Missal translates ‘merits’ (p. 716).

[473] C.O., 3005a.

[474] The phrase occurs in the secret of the mass Protexisti for the common of a single martyr in Paschaltide and is used for numerous saints, including Ss Peter of Alexandria, Gegory of Armenia, Timothy, Ignatius, Simeon of Jerusalem, Felix of Nola, Gordian and Epimachus, John and Paul, and Fabian and Sebastian. It also occurs in the secret of the mass Me Expectaverunt, for the common of virgin martyrs, and is used for Ss Bibiana, Christiana, Emerentiana, Sabina, Dorothea, and Margaret of Antioch. The English Missal renders it ‘pleading the merits of blessed N. thy martyr’ in the mass Protexisti (p. [16]), and ‘through the merits of blessed N.’ in Me Expectaverunt (p. [30]).

[475] The Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique remarks that ‘merita here certainly does not have the theological sense that scholasticism gave it,’ but provides no backing for this bold statement, whereas we may adduce the teaching of the Fathers we have cited. (Art. Saints, Culte de, online http://jesusmarie.free.fr/dictionnaire_de_theologie_catholique_lettre_S.html, accessed 03/03/24).

[476] §.6.7.3.

[477] The collect dates back to the Gregorian Sacramentary (C.O., 1860). The English Missal translates ‘merits and intercession’ (p. 633). The same phrase occurs in the collect for St Barnabas.

[478] Post-Communion for the Dormition. The Orthodox Missal omits ‘merits’ (p. 427); the English Missal has ‘merits and intercession’ (p. 758).

[479] Collect for St Titus. The English Missal has ‘through his merits and intercession,’ although the mereamur is translated ‘be found worthy (p. 594).

[480] Post-Communion for St Joseph (not in the English Missal).

[481] Collect for St Nicholas. The Orthodox Missal omits ‘merits’ (p.374). It is retained, however, in the English Missal (p. 556).

[482] Collect for St Scholastica. The English Missal translates ‘merits and prayers.’

[483] Autobiographical Notes (Paris: Y.M.C.A. Press, 1946), p. 49.