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April 11, 2006Sing, my tongue…in praise of Holy WeekI first heard the lovely chant, Pange Lingua, (”Sing, my tongue”) when I was in the fourth grade and an elderly nun came to our class to teach us the songs and chants we would be using at Mass on Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum. I fell immediately in love with the completely semitic - and wandering - air of the melody, as well as the words - also so semitic in nature, so near to the language of the psalms I had always loved, yet written so long ago by St. Thomas Aquinas: Sigh. I love Holy Week. The long Thursday mass, with the washing of the feet, the readings from Exodus which remind us that we are still in exile, longing for our heavenly home. The hour of Adoration - the meditation of Christ’s last words. It is accomplished. Then Good Friday - the Veneration of the Cross - to see young and old, healthy and infirm sing the songs - “Behold, behold, the cross…” then leaning down to kiss the Cross, or to touch it, to venerate it. It is Buster’s favorite part of the Triduum, I think because there is something so bare about it. No one is in church who doesn’t want to be, and it is to place oneself at the foot of the cross, and keep watch. Holy Saturday - what some call “the longest day of the year…” Tabernacles are empty, no masses, we are the women gathering together, going to the spot where He is buried and wondering, who will roll away the stone… until the triumph and tenderness of the Easter Vigil, which is so primitive - so primal and tribal, with the blessing of the fire and water, the marking of the new Paschal candle - and yet so easily comprehended. The congregation, all in darkness watches and prays - new candles in hand, as the fire is lighted, and from that Paschal candle each congregant’s candle is lit as the priest or deacon processes in, stopping three times to raise the Paschal candle high - the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it - “Christ Our Light,” (Lumen Christi) sings the priest. “Thanks be to God” (Deo Gratias) we respond. Finally, the church is awash in the flickering, soft light of a thousand candles and the priest of deacon begins the Easter Proclamation, Exultet, the greatest chant ever written; when it’s done by a priest or deacon who can actually sing it, it is…spine-tingling. Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor, And then the 9 readings and corresponding psalms…finally, for the first time in 40 days, we sing the Gloria - the bells peal and the words pour forth: Glory to God in the Highest, and Peace to His people on earth! (Et in terra pax hominibus!) And as the Gloria is sung, the shrouds of mourning are cast aside. Every light is turned on, every candle lit, the bare altar is again dressed. Then the NT Epistle and finally the Gospel is read. A homily and then the Liturgy of Baptism - we all renew the baptismal promises: I reject Satan and all his works, and all his empty promises… We baptise those who need it, welcome in those already baptised but seeking full communion and as they come, one by one, for sprinkling or immersion, we chant the Litany of Saints - it’s not just for popes, but for every one of us, a calling down of the Cloud of Witnesses, a request to all who have gone before: Pray for Us! And then the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and communion - a final blessing and we’re off, tired and yet exhilirated from a 2-3 hour liturgy that has been full of emotion and beauty and prayer. In our house, we go home and have coffee and sweetrolls and chocolate. We have sweets to celebrate the sweetness of life, and because He is Risen and it is no time for mourning. http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/04/11/sing-my-tonguein-praise-of-holy-week/trackback/ 5 Responses to “Sing, my tongue…in praise of Holy Week” |
April 11th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
I look forward, all during Lent, to belting out the Gloria during the vigil, but find myself blubbering to the point of not being able to sing. I’m sure it’s the Holy Spirit gripping me, but love the Gloria and try desperately to sing it every year.
April 11th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
By the way … your post is lovely and says everything about Holy Week that I hold dear.
April 11th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Feeling pensive…
… and so there’s no telling where this might go. I’ll ignore Iran’s headlong dive into the nuclear pool… for now. I’ll pass on the news that Britney’s baby has apparently fractured his skull and mommy and daddy are being
April 12th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Gracie,
That was so me last year. I was weeping but I still managed to belt it out somehow. We observe the Triduum at my Anglican parish and words just fail me.
I am so thrilled that its almost here. The end of the long arduous journey. Looking forward to the joy of the Ressurection.
Something struck me last year at our Maundy Thursday service when our priest were washing the feet of some members of the congregation. I occured to me that here enacted before us was the very heart of the universe, the very heart of God, who did not consider his divine privelege to remain above us “a thing to be grasped” but he washed those dirty feet of his disciples at as much “cost” to himself as everything else he did after the Incarnation and prior to the Resurrection. At the heart of the universe is a God who is willing to pay the highest price of himself, of his own substance, of his priveledge and otherness for our sakes. Seeing our priests decked out in their gorgeous festal robes representing Christ, these men that we treat with such respect and deference as our spiritual fathers throughout the year, kneeling down and washing someone’s stinky, dirty, all too human feet. It just slammed home to me so hard I felt a little faint.
This morning another rather obvious occurred to me. The whole of Holy Week but particularly the Triduum is the heart of the universe. We are entering deeper and deeper into the heart of the universe with each passing day. We approach with fear and trembling the final and darkest pass before we arrive at that glorious moment of resurrection when the light pierces that awful empty darkness. My heart overflows just in anticipation of it.
In our church we ring hand bells, cowbells, any kind of bell that can be wrung with our own hands. The little fire bell that calls us to worship is pratically wrung off its post because I can hear it from outside above the din inside. We ring with gusto in our church
Then the lights come up. The Lenten array is gone, the flowers are back, Christ The King stands at the center of his Cross again with the rich Sarum blue of the hanging behind him. Life has come again.
Those alleluias that we say later on are truly like manna from heaven. Doesnt it seem like ages and ages since we last prayed them? ahhhhhh!
Once we see that the heart of the universe is this particular and specific love and passion and sacrifice, then all the rest of it somehow makes sense in reference to it.
I was reading the testimony the other day of a unhappy woman wracked with doubts and enslaved to bad memories from her past. She is an artist and a poet. She makes pictures of people without faces. She converted to another religion many years ago and she says of it now that she sees the universe at the heart of it. I was at first at a loss for how to respond to such a comment. Later that night, it came to me. What do I see when I look at the heart of my faith? What information do I have to fill that space with? Do I fill it with my own perception of a faceless God known only by a list of general attributes and beyond that is a blank slate for me to paint my own “face” upon it? No. I see a face that I didnt paint one that doesnt look like me or what my opinion of the universe is. There is a face there drawn by the acts of God among his people recorded in the text of the Bible. He doesnt look like me. He doesnt reflect my biases back at me like a mirror. I see at the heart of the universe a face and a name, The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, Jesus Christ his only Son, and the Spirit of Grace and Truth given us as a free unearned gift out of the bottomless generosity of our Creator. There is no empty abstract space there for me to fill with my own idol. God has filled the God-shaped hole that we are all born with and which we fill with our own idols if left to our own devices. He has filled it with the face and voice of Christ.
Welcome to the heart of the universe my brothers and sisters in Christ. May the remaining days of your Lent be good and fruitful ones.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
It isn’t often that I am wrapt by Joy, but I’ve been wrapt away during Holy Saturday when the bells ring and the Gloria is sung. It’s at that time when for a tiny brief second, I glimpse the Divine.