Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas

This past week I was in my car when Hugh Hewitt was talking with the faculty of Hillsdale College about Thomas Aquinas.   Basically, Hewitt and Hillsdale are doing a great books conversation every Friday afternoon.  You can see all of the topics here.  They started with Homer and have made it to Aquinas.  The conversation is always interesting and free.  I might try to carve out more time to listen to them more attentively.

This week they started with a prayer that Thomas Aquinas said every morning.  As I listened it just screamed out to me something worth memorizing or at least using in morning time for a season.

Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas (found here)

O merciful God,
grant that I may ever perfectly
do Your Will in all things.
Let it be my ambition to work
only for Your honor and glory.

Let me rejoice in nothing
but what leads to You,
nor grieve for anything
that leads away from You.

May all passing things
be as nothing in my eyes,
and may all that is Yours
be dear to me,
and You, my God,
dear above them all.

May all joy be
meaningless without You
and may I desire
nothing apart from You.
May all labor and toil
delight me when it is for You.

Make me, O Lord,
obedient without complaint,
poor without regret,
patient without murmur,
humble without pretense,
joyous without frivolity,
and truthful without disguise.

Give me, O God,
an ever watchful heart
which nothing can ever
lure away from You;
a noble heart,
which no unworthy affection
can draw downwards to the earth;
an upright heart,
which no evil can warp;
an unconquerable heart,
which no tribulation can crush;
a free heart,
which no perverted affection
can claim for its own.

Bestow on me, O God,
understanding to know You,
diligence to seek You,
and wisdom to find You;
a life which may please You,
and a hope which may
embrace You at the last.

It might be worth listening to a few conversations and thinking about including this prayer in your time with your children at some point.  

Latin, morning time and the interlinear text

Earlier this summer Andrew Kern made a comment that a full classical education could be accomplished in about 6 years.  This podcast is the beginning of his response to how that can be accomplished.  It is worth a listen, although, as usual, it is a little wandering in nature.  I will only cover the first half of the conversation which included introducing Latin and Greek at an early age and using interlinear texts.

He referenced books that were new to me (on Sunday I'll be posting the list of Latin curricula I currently have).  He discussed using interlinear texts, especially with young children, as read alouds. The interlinear approach to Latin was endorsed by Locke and Milton (yes, the men you think of first). But there was only one advocate who tried to create a series of texts to use in this fashion - Hamilton (no, not a famous guy just a linguist with a dream).  His approach has fallen out of favor.  If you want an idea of how it works you can listen to this short video - this man appears to be finding ways to bring it back into style.   Here is another article that explains the approach.   It seems that you read the text once and memorize it (like little kids love to memorize their favorite books) and then you read it through a second time to dig into the language and parse it, etc.  

I am still torn on the long term plan, but I have decided to start including an interlinear text reading in our morning time.  Reading or listening to Latin is also greatly extolled by the creator of Visual Latin. Honestly, if you have Visual Latin you could create your own interlinear and audio experience by using the answer worksheets for the third section as an interlinear text and then listen to him read it aloud.  I might do this when the kids are a little bit older.

The texts' Kern mentions are already prepared and only take a couple of minutes to read.  We just started a few days ago and it has already led to some good discussion.  When we watched the animated video of the Bayuex tapestry and REX was emblazoned on the tapestry and a part of our text - I just pointed it out.  This week we are also discussing ominvores and omines is one of the words in our text - so we talked about how omines means all.   I am really beginning to see how a Latin centered curriculum could really work.

Here are the books that Kern recommends:

Fables - Aesop's with an interlinear text.  There is a free PDF you can download or a book you can purchase.  Her related sites also have Latin Bible verses, mottoes, etc.   Maybe for my second go around with Language Lessons through Literature I will connect the fables she uses with their Latin counterparts.  Possibly we could do this with the first level of most progym programs as well - since often you are rewriting Fables.

Child's First Book in Latin - this one has Christian content and is a little moralistic but it is what we are going to start using during our morning time.   We have already learned short sentences like Deus est Rex and Amo Deus (which ties in with the first conjugation present tense jingles we are learning).

He also mentions Adler's Latin.  It appears that the linguist who discusses using interlinear texts above is trying to update this method and make it an interlinear experience.  The good thing about Adler's is that there is a key to the old version - which is not always the case!

Kern does not mention the Latin Primer by John Henry Allen but it is similar in nature and uses Bible stories (I found it through Don Potter's website - he has done his homework!).  It is not a word for word interlinear translation - instead it just covers "new" words in the text.

I am still don't know how you would teach kids to study the text.  Most people do suggest memorizing the declensions and basic conjugations first.  However, I can see the value of learning these quickly (like Spell to Write and Read has you learn the phonograms) and then starting to apply them in your reading.  Of course, Visual Latin does encourage you to read Lingua Latina once you get through about a third of the lessons for this exact reason.  So, more resources to add to your list.