“When they had sung the hymn…”

One of the measures of good preaching is that even when you “know how the story turns out,” you hear it afresh through the words of the homilist. When I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s recent essay in the Christian Century, “And Jesus Sang,” I already knew that Jesus sang the Hallel psalms at the end of the Last Supper. But I found that I wanted to hear it again. I was engaged by her gift for language and intrigued by her imaginative engagement with the subject. By the end, I also realized something new—namely, that I have never actually imagined Jesus singing. We sing to Jesus, but do we ever imagine ourselves singing with him? Yet we affirm that Christ is truly present in the assembly of his people precisely when they pray and sing.

This elegant meditation merits reading, and re-reading. Here is a clip:

…Or maybe the Gospel writers thought everyone knew the tunes to some of the most famous things Jesus said—like the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer or his last words from the cross. When I first learned my way through Luke, my teacher told me that the Magnificat was sung in the early church, along with the Song of Simeon. Why not the Lord’s Prayer? Maybe the music just vanished after everyone who knew it died, so that only the words remained for those who came later. Music speaks to our soft parts, and soft parts are as vulnerable as flesh, as grass, as the lilies of the field. Maybe that is what happened to Jesus’ music. It went back to where it came from until he comes again, singing us back into the presence of God.

You can read the whole thing here.

Rita Ferrone

Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker on issues of liturgy and church renewal in the Roman Catholic tradition. She is currently a contributing writer and columnist for Commonweal magazine and an independent scholar. The author of several books about liturgy, she is most widely known for her commentary on Sacrosanctum Concilium (Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Paulist Press). Her most recent book, Pastoral Guide to Pope Francis's Desiderio Desideravi, was published by Liturgical Press.

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Comments

7 responses to ““When they had sung the hymn…””

  1. Jack Rakosky

    “Or maybe the Gospel writers thought everyone knew the tunes to some of the most famous things Jesus said”

    Oh, the translation problems began very, very early!

    Jesus obviously sang in Aramaic (or Hebrew for the Hallel).

    But the Gospels were written in Greek. Perhaps the writers thought all those Greek speaking Gentiles flocking to the Church were just too important to be worried about keeping the music in the translation.

    Sounds like a familiar problem. Maybe they needed an Authentic Scripture document to help them. How does one say Authentic Scripture in Aramaic? I guess we just totally gave up on keeping the literal Aramaic. Oh, those really Eastern Christians, the Oriental ones did keep the Semitic languages but we managed to ignore them.

    Only a few really great scholars like Origen and Jerome even bothered about the Hebrew. Gosh everyone traded in all the stuff Jesus loved for Greek and eventually Latin.

    Maybe when we get our first modern Pope from an oriental tradition, like maybe from India, maybe Rome will try to make this all more authentic and undo the misinterpretations of that First Council in Jerusalem.

    Reply
  2. Austin Fleming

    I often think of Jesus singing and of us singing with him, based on my favorite lines from the documents of Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 83:

    “Christ Jesus, High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of Heaven. He joins the entire community of humankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of Divine Praise.”

    Reply
    1. Gerard Flynn

      This is worthy of inclusion in a preface. Thank you!

      If the appearance of a tortuous translation has the effect of moving people to reingage with the text of the council’s documents, it will have achieved some good.

      Reply
    2. Michael O'Connor

      That passage from SC83 seems to pick up on Mediator Dei 144–I’d love to know where Pius XII got it from (if there was a source). Jesus’ culture was an intensely musical one (Edward Foley calls it “lyrical”) and we should certainly imagine Jesus delivering the Our Father in some kind of chanted fashion; likewise his reading from Isaiah in Luke 4, and whenever he prayed in the Temple and the Synagogue and the home.

      Reply
  3. Cody C. Unterseher

    When I read Taylor’s piece earlier, I was reminded of the circle dance before the passion as depicted in the Apocryphal Acts of John (94-96 passim; tr. M.R. James):

    Now before he was taken. . . he gathered all of us together and said: Before I am delivered up unto them let us sing an hymn to the Father, and so go forth to that which lieth before us. He bade us therefore make as it were a ring, holding one another’s hands, and himself standing in the midst he said: Answer Amen unto me. He began, then, to sing an hymn and to say: Glory be to thee, Father.

    And we, going about in a ring, answered him: Amen.

    Glory be to thee, Word: Glory be to thee, Grace. Amen.
    Glory be to thee, Spirit: Glory be to thee, Holy One:
    Glory be to thy glory. Amen.
    We praise thee, O Father; we give thanks to thee, O Light, wherein darkness dwelleth not. Amen.

    Now whereas (or wherefore) we give thanks, I say: I would be saved, and I would save. Amen.

    I would be loosed, and I would loose. Amen.
    I would be wounded, and I would wound. Amen.
    I would be born, and I would bear. Amen.
    I would eat, and I would be eaten. Amen.
    I would hear, and I would be heard. Amen.
    I would be thought, being wholly thought. Amen.
    I would be washed, and I would wash. Amen.
    Grace danceth. I would pipe; dance ye all. Amen.
    I would mourn: lament ye all. Amen.
    The number Eight (lit. one ogdoad) singeth praise with us. Amen.
    The number Twelve danceth on high. Amen.
    The Whole on high hath part in our dancing. Amen.
    Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass. Amen.
    I would flee, and I would stay. Amen.
    I would adorn, and I would be adorned. Amen.
    I would be united, and I would unite. Amen.
    A house I have not, and I have houses. Amen.
    A place I have not, and I have places. Amen.
    A temple I have not, and I have temples. Amen.
    A lamp am I to thee that beholdest me. Amen.
    A mirror am I to thee that perceivest me. Amen.
    A door am I to thee that knockest at me. Amen.
    A way am I to thee a wayfarer. . .

    Now answer thou unto my dancing. Behold thyself in me who speak, and seeing what I do, keep silence about my mysteries.

    Thou that dancest, perceive what I do, for thine is this passion of the manhood, which I am about to suffer. . . . And if thou wouldst know concerning me, what I was, know that with a word did I deceive all things and I was no whit deceived. I have leaped: but do thou understand the whole, and having understood it, say: Glory be to thee, Father. Amen.

    Thus, my beloved, having danced with us, the Lord went forth.

    Reply
    1. Tom Poelker

      Is the Acts of John in Greek originally?
      In whatever original language, is there a discernible meter to the verses?

      Reply
  4. Jordan Zarembo

    Barbara Brown Taylor: Music speaks to our soft parts, and soft parts are as vulnerable as flesh, as grass, as the lilies of the field.

    For some, scriptural word and liturgical text alone strip the mind and soul of its vulnerabilities. For this pietist (okay, a man who dances on the razor edge of Jansenism), the Low Mass without accompaniment produces a music dependent not on neumes or notes but the nearly infinite derivations of semantic and syntactic meaning.

    I realize and respect that the liturgical movement’s emphasis on congregational singing was and is designed to immerse worshippers in liturgical action. Still, where is the space for the contemplation of the spoken word’s infinite valences?

    The New Testament provides sparse detail of the Annunciation. Yet I am convinced that the Annunciation was not accompanied by an angelic congregational round but rather dread silence. Could even one note sung by the throngs of angels that accompanied the archangel Gabriel’s annunciation to Our Lady enhance the incomprehensible mystery of the ex nihilo Creator entering his created order? Mass similary expresses through the spoken word the unbloody sacrificial presence of Creator-entering-creation.

    Liturgical syntax and semantics feebly but necessarily describe a reality beyond human expression within a temporal plane.

    Reply

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