7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

 

Entrance	Sing of the Lord’s goodness (Ernest Sands)
Kyrie	Belmont Mass (Christopher Walker)
Gloria	(Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 40 (Paul Inwood)
Gospel Acclamation	Here in our Midst (Peter Jones)
Preparation of the Gifts	Stand and stare not (Huub Oosterhuis/Tony Barr)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Spring Sanctus (mcb)
Agnus Dei	Belmont Mass
Communion	There is a longing (Anne Quigley)
Postcommunion	Cum appropinquaret Iesus (Juan Ginés Pérez, c. 1548-1600)
Recessional	Praise my soul, the King of heaven

 

Our postcommunion piece tells a similar story to that in today’s Gospel from Mark (2:1-12). Ginés Pérez sets excerpts from the story of the healing of the blind man from Luke 18:35-42:

As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. He shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’

In today’s story of the paralytic lowered through the roof, Jesus forgives and heals seeing their faith. In both stories, faith leads to audacity, and the healing that follows is perhaps not so much a reward for audacity, but a symbol of what faith itself inexorably brings about.

Our opening hymn reflected the lines from the entrance antiphon:

I will sing to the Lord
who has been bountiful to me.

I almost wrote echoed the lines from the entrance antiphon, but that was truer of the old translation: I will sing of the Lord for his goodness to me. Somehow God’s goodness seems easier to recognise and acknowledge than his being bountiful, but maybe that’s just me.

Our song at the preparation of the gifts, a charming canon with a bit of tricky syncopation thrown in, took its text from the opening lines of the first reading from Isaiah.