Nugax
At Lauds today, the Church gives us this prayer among the intercessions: ‘Libera nos a malo nosque a fascinatione nugacitatis, quae bona obscurat, defende’. The English breviary translates, ‘Set us free from all evil; show us in the confusion of our lives the things that really matter’. That is woefully inadequate. The phrase ‘fascinatio nugacitatis’ occurs in the Vulgate translation of Wisdom 4.12 and has deeply marked Christian consciousness. In Latin, ‘nugax’ refers to something (or someone) that is trifling or frivolous. Lewis and Short render ‘nugacitas’ as ‘drollery’. The nugacious tendency draws us away from earnestness, from engagement. It distracts us, persuades us that nothing really matters much. It seduces us with entertainment and prospects of immediate satisfaction. It seems innocent but in reality, as the prayer says, it ‘obscures the good’. It subverts the very categories of good and evil. It is ultimately joyless. ‘Nugacitas’ sums up contemporary pop culture in a nutshell. It is beneficially countercultural to pray to be ‘defended’ from it. We are called to be mindful of essential boundaries. A fragment by Pascal reads: ‘Fascinatio nugacitatis. That passion may not harm us, let us act as if we had only eight days to live.’
