30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

 
Entrance Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Kyrie Taizé Kyrie I
Gloria Coventry Gloria (Peter Jones)
Psalm The cry of the poor (John Foley)
Gospel Acclamation Alleluia Mode 2 (Plainchant)
Preparation of the Gifts My God, accept my heart this day
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei (Alan Rees)
Communion Take, O take me as I am (John L Bell)
Postcommunion Jubilate Deo (Orlande de Lassus, c. 1532-1594)
Recessional Fight the good fight
 

It was a day for trying to live up to the challenges set out in the readings. Our offertory and communion songs both aimed to capture the humility of the tax collector in today’s Gospel story. Then for our recessional hymn we took up St Paul’s good fight from the second reading.

We rejoiced too, in thanksgiving after Communion, taking up the idea expressed in the antiphon:

We will rejoice at the victory of God and make our boast in his great name.

in the exuberant setting of the opening of Psalm 99 by Lassus. We may have got carried away at the end.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

 
Entrance All ye who seek a comfort sure
Kyrie Mass of the Creator Spirit (Ed Nowak)
Gloria Mass of the Creator Spirit
Psalm Ps 120 (Claire Lee & Stephen Dean)
Gospel Acclamation Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts Lord, for tomorrow and its needs
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei Mass of the Creator Spirit
Communion I lift up my eyes (David Ogden)
Postcommunion God so loved the world (John Stainer, 1840-1901)
Recessional Be thou my vision
 

Today’s Gospel reading from St Luke talks of the need to pray continually and never lose heart. Fr Tony’s homily, on personal prayer, also followed this theme. Our hymn at the Preparation of the Gifts was an old favourite on the same subject. The words are by a Sister M. Xavier, who (internet searches reveal) was Sybil Farish Partridge (1856-1917), in religion Sister Mary Xavier of the convent of Notre Dame, in Mount Pleasant, Liverpool. The words bear a resemblance to Mon chant d’aujourd’hui by St Therèse of Lisieux, though the latter is dated 1894, twenty years after our hymn was written. Perhaps the shared simple piety of the two nuns is just an unsurprising coincidence.

Stainer’s God so loved the world was intended as a reflection on one of the Communion antiphons proposed in the Missal for today:

The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many.

The piece allows for plenty of drama, but for me its still centre is formed by the words but that the world through him might be saved. The silences which punctuate the piece are as important as its musical phrases.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

Sunday, 10 October 2010


Entrance All people that on earth do dwell
Kyrie Kyrie II from Paschal Mass (Alan Rees)
Gloria Glory to God in the Highest (John L Bell)
Psalm Ps 97: The Lord has shown his salvation (Geoffrey Boulton Smith)
Gospel Acclamation Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts Domine, non sum dignus (Tomás Luis de Victoria c. 1548-1611)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei (Alan Rees)
Communion Now we remain (David Haas)
Postcommunion He hath filled the hungry (Felix Mendelssohn, 1809-1847)
Recessional Thanks be to God (Stephen Dean)
 

Today’s Communion antiphon, from Ps 33:

The rich suffer want and go hungry, but nothing shall be lacking to those who fear the Lord

finds an echo in the Magnificat:

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away

We sang these lines from Mendelssohn’s unaccompanied setting, Op 69 no 3. This section is scored for four soloists, but it makes for a luminous and direct choir piece.

The story in St Luke’s Gospel of the healing of the lepers prompted us to pray for our own healing in the words of the centurion (in Matthew 8:8), set by Victoria, and to give thanks in our final hymn.

The second reading, from 2 Timothy, included the words

If we have died with him, then we shall live with him

The final, dramatic verse of David Haas’s Now we remain paraphrases this to

For to live with the Lord, we must die with the Lord

Inverting the two clauses like this turns St Paul’s words from consolation to challenge.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

 
Entrance O thou who camest from above
Kyrie Kyrie for 3 voices adapted from Byrd (mcb)
Gloria Mass of the Creator Spirit (Ed Nowak)
Psalm O that today (Chris O’Hara)
Gospel Acclamation Alleluia Mode 2 (Plainchant)
Preparation of the Gifts You are the Lord of all (Daniel Bath)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei (Alan Rees)
Communion How good is the Lord to all (mcb)
Postcommunion Oculi Omnium (William Byrd c. 1540 - 1623)
Recessional All my hope on God is founded
 

Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you were St Paul’s words in this morning’s second reading. Our opening hymn took the same image:

O thou who camest from above
The fire celestial to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.

Today’s Communion antiphon came from Lamentations:

The Lord is good to those who hope in him, to those who are searching for his love.

Our music sounded the same note of reassurance with texts from Ps 144(145): firstly, our processional song (written first as a responsorial psalm for a wedding), with the words

He is close to all who call him, who call on him from their hearts

and then in William Byrd’s setting of lines from the same psalm, from Book I of the Gradualia of 1605. Having already sung verses form the psalm during the procession, we confined ourselves today to the opening section (the four-part setting of the Latin text The eyes of all creatures hope in you, Lord, and you give them food in due season). The remainder of this fine piece is an ongoing project for us, perhaps to be revisited when the psalm appears as Communion antiphon or responsorial psalm next year: respectively the twelfth and eighteenth Sundays in Ordinary time.