Thee and thou
I seem to know the words to a lot of hymns. Especially the ones that come from Protestant churches (I’m a convert, so that’s no surprise).
Actually, I just know a lot of first verses. After that, I need to grab a hymnal.
But the words that I do know? They seem to be the “old” versions. The “thee” and “thou” versions.
When the words have been updated, I find myself scrambling for a hymnal when I hit the first “you.”
I used to think that “thee” and “thou” was formal language. A way of showing respect for God, emphasizing the difference between Creature and creator. But also putting God at arm’s length.
Which makes sense. I learned all the “thee” and “thou” versions in the context of the Protestant tradition I grew up in. Where God was kind of distant.
For the kind and loving (and distant) people of the church that I grew up in, the radical intimacy of the great saints with God made no sense at all.
To them, a prayer like Catherine of Siena’s personal version of the Glory be – which she started with “Glory be to the Father, and to Thee, and to the Holy Ghost” – would have been familiar to the point of being rude.
But for Catherine, who was speaking directly with Jesus (something that my church claimed to prefer but rarely did in practice), referring to someone sitting next to her in the third person would have been rude.
Because to Catherine, Jesus wasn’t off in the distance. Jesus was sitting next to her. And her prayers were conversations with her closest and dearest friend.
This becomes clear in Catherine’s writings (which are in Latin), where she uses the intimate forms of second-person pronouns when talking about Jesus. Like Latin, many languages have two versions of their second-person pronouns, a formal one and an informal one.
Until about a hundred and fifty years ago, English did as well. Back in the day, if you were writing a letter to someone important or speaking to someone you barely knew, it was “you.”
For close friends and family, for your beloved, it was “thee” and “thou.”
Which – contrary to what I thought – is the real meaning of “thee” and “thou.”
It’s why (in 1846), Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” And not “How do I love you?”
It’s not a poetic flourish or a pointless formality. She is making a precision strike.
She is writing to her beloved. And she wants to make sure her beloved knows exactly how she feels. Even before she starts describing her love.
And it is exactly how God wants us to think about Him.
Because Catherine’s intimacy with God – talking with someone sitting next to her, with prayers that were really conversations between the closest and dearest of friends – is not something rare. It isn’t something that’s reserved just for the great saints.
It’s something that God is longing to have with you.
And it’s why, in spite of changing tastes in language and style, in the Our Father, in the Hail Mary, in the prayers that so often lead us into our most intimate, most personal prayers, the Church has kept the language of “thee” and “thou.”
So the next time you catch yourself saying “thee” and “thou,” let those words remind you that your closest and dearest Friend is waiting for you with open arms.
Today’s Readings
