Column: Illuminations

Worship for the Weary

by Anthony Esolen 

For now coming on fifty years, we long-suffering members of the Roman Catholic Church have had to bear the devotion of our brothers and sisters and its expression in song. It is like being held captive every Sunday to a recital: "You play the violin? My Ashley plays the violin, too! Ashley, go get your violin and play that Mahler piece you've started on." Or: "You teach poetry? My Madison writes poetry, too! Maddy, go get that poem you wrote for Earth Day. You see," says the star-dazzled mother, "the school has an Earth Day celebration, and they awarded first prize for the poem that best expresses our concern for the Earth and our need to Think Globally. Oh, here it is!" And the daughter, rolling her eyes but actually eager to comply, puts five pages of artistic effluvia before your eyes.

We Catholics have been subjected to a kind of liberal-political-theological-anthropological-tragical-comical doggerel; Evangelicals, I've been told, have been subjected to emotive refrains repeated over and over, like the endless running-on of a rock and roll song stretched out over five minutes while the congregation wave their arms and smoke joints and throw Frisbees.

Yes, I know, it's not that bad. But I don't know why we should settle for paint-by-the-numbers pictures of Jesus at the Social Security Administration or Jesus with the Kindergarten Kids when we could have Fra Angelico or Albrecht Dürer; so also I don't know why we should settle for office memoranda and hypnopaedic mantras when we could have Bach or Vaughan Williams or the Wesleys.

Some of my Catholic friends have reacted to the drab and dull by insisting that almost all hymns be banished from the liturgy, to be replaced by the propers and commons, the lovely prayers of the Divine Office and of the Masses for the various seasons and feasts. I do not agree with them. I have no desire to send Doctor Watts to the basement just because some silly person with a bachelor's degree in English has left his job at Hallmark Cards to devote his talent to the Lord. Handel need not be sent to the woodshed just because Marty Haugen makes music, too.

The Prayer

And yet if we look at these old texts set to music, the more sensible and meditative among us may be inspired to write hymns that continue in their wise tradition. The texts do not spring full-grown from the head of a poet. They are usually passages from Scripture, sometimes with a short interpretive phrase by way of introduction, or a short summary phrase as a finale; and the scriptural passages need not come from the same place. Here, for example, is a beautiful prayer once used in the common Mass of the Apostles. I will give it in the Latin for which Felice Anerio (1560–1614) composed a rousing polyphonic motet in eight voices, followed by an English translation:

Venite ad me omnes, qui laboratis et onerati estis,
et ego reficiam vos, dicit Dominus.
Panis quem ego dabo, caro mea est pro mundi vita.
Accipite et comedite:
Hoc est corpus meum,
quo pro vobis tradetur.
Hoc facite, in meam commemorationem.
Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit meum sanguinem,
in me manet, et ego in illo.

Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy burdened,
and I will refresh you, says the Lord. (Matt. 11:28)
The bread that I shall give you is my flesh, for the life of the world. (John 6:51)
Take and eat:
This is my body (Matt. 26:26),
which shall be given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me. (1 Cor. 11:24)
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:56)

The Meditation

This is not just a series of Eucharistic lines culled by chance and placed beside one another, ad libidinem. It is a kind of poem, a coherent work of meditation, and in Anerio's hands it becomes a hymn whose small movements—the musical and grammatical phrases as I have printed them—are all involved with one another, shade one another, complete one another.

Look at the first line. To my ear they are the most comforting words Jesus ever spoke. He understood that we are but weak flesh. He knew that we stoop under the burdens of life; of sin, of injustice, of grief; of loneliness and disappointment; of worry and fear; of age and decay and death. And he says, "Come to me." Jesus will take away our heavy burdens and put upon our shoulders his yoke, which is easy. Here we might think of the cross, but this particular prayer takes a hint from the Latin reficiam, I shall re-make, I shall restore, I shall refresh. Jesus offers to restore our souls with a refection that no one else can give.

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