Pride Goeth before a Fall

It seems it also goeth before a minor humiliation known only to oneself.

I was so delighted with myself this morning. I, who have nothing but trouble with Latin poems and hymns, breezed right through the hymn for Lauds this morning. All Latin hymns are a complete brick wall to me; I can never make head nor tails out of them, even the dictionary doesn't help often enough. Oh, sure if the hymn comes up often enough like Te lucis ante terminum or O Salutaris Hostia. That's different. But getting a once-a-year hymn this morning like Iesu, Salvator sæculi and actually knowing what it meant without consulting a dictionary three times in every line. . . .what a delight.

And then we came to the collect. Couldn't make the second half make sense. Never quite got all the grammatical bits to line up with the modifiers and the modified in happy unity. Had to look at the provided English translation in my missal. You can't fiddle with this stuff forever; it stops being prayer. And then, of course, it was blindingly obvious. I hate it when that happens. The bloody things could at least have the courtesy to have something arcane and subtle about them to provide a decent excuse. But, no. Just move the modifier a few words away from the modified and I'm at sea.