27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

4th October 2009

Entrance	Love is his word
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 127	O blessed are those (Paul Inwood)
Gospel Acclamation	Alleluia Beati (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	Lamb of God 6 (mtgf)
Communion	Your words are life, Lord (Collegeville Composer's Group)
Final	Love divine, all loves excelling (Charles Wesley)

It was wondered when I mentioned the opening and closing hymns before Mass whether there was a theme going on. Is love the dominant theme of today's readings? What else might we have sung that illuminated the Gospel? I looked at the GIA Hymns for the Gospels which offers text related to the Sunday Gospels. It offered two texts, the first Enter in the realm of God focussed on the end of the passage about welcoming little children; the second God! When human bonds are broken apart from having an irritating exclamation mark seems to presuppose a modern pastoral answer before the question is even asked. The Michael Forster text in the edition of Hymns Old and New where he provided a text for every Sunday seemed to make a better job of this task. It was probably easier as he started from the first reading from Genesis. Now I am not sure I would use any of these as I think the task of a chosen sung text is to illuminate and make connections not to reiterate or interpret the particular text.

A little know fact about Love divine that the text was written to be sung to Fairest Isle by Purcell, which it fits very nicely and memory suggest that Wesley is alluding to the original text, if not parodying it.

This week slightly suffered from lack of opportunity for second thoughts or what do you do when the Mass sheet is already printed - don't be so well prepared? Anyway I did consider changing the psalm so that it used the actual given response but the Inwood setting does work well. I also would have changed the Communion response - the chosen text was a scrabble to find something but a better something would have been better, possibly based on 1 Cor Missal text. The psalm tone was pleasing.

Bob Hurd's Ubi Caritas is lovely. It is also interesting how he inserts 2 new verses into the text which bring more contemporary theological concerns in without, in my opinion, damaging the original - actually enhancing it.