11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

17 June 2012

Entrance	Unless a grain of wheat (Bernadette Farrell)
Penitential Rite	At the Table of the Lord (Collegeville Composers Group)
Gloria	At the Table of the Lord (Collegeville Composers Group)
Psalm 91	It is good to give thanks to the Lord (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	(Murray)
Preparation of Gifts	Parable (M D Ridge)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Missal (ICEL)
Lamb of God	At the Table of the Lord (Collegeville Composers Group)
Communion	Ave Verum (Elgar)
Final	All creatures of our God and king

Today something unusual happened. The preacher mentioned the psalm in the homily. This was to link cedars of the first reading and the psalm with the trees in the gospel. I have probably mentioned before that one reason that the psalm is infrequently mentioned in the homily is possibly due to the practice of replacing it with a relative text - near or distant. This visiting priest would have recognised that we (nearly) always sing the psalm in the Lectionary. A recent book on the Lectionary Making the most of the Lectionary devotes 2 pages to the psalm which effectively says because the psalm may be sung in a number of ways or even be replaced it should be counted as music rather than as worth commenting on. In a similar way commentaries on the readings by scripture scholars often omit the psalm and just comment on the individual readings and so ignore the dynamic of the Liturgy of the Word — i.e. I am not sure you can comment on the psalm with reference to the other readings and therefore the relationship of one to the other.

Talking about relationships a couple of choices were at a tangent to the readings. At a tangent or giving a new angle. Unless a grain was true to the Gospel and brought out the paschal mystery (as perhaps the foundational theme of the Ordinary Time Lectionary). We ended with the 3rd verse and the hope we would 'bear much fruit'. As a passing thought when listening to the gospels and the tantalising ending about explaining everything whether the Gospel of John was in someways the explanation. A different angle was provided by Parable where the verses retell the parable of the sower. The refrain is based on Ecclesiastes: to everything there is a season — another way of looking at Ordinary Time perhaps?

I was struck the last few weeks by the Missal chants, particularly when we did them unaccompanied, how they 'slot into' the prayer and do not break up the flow of it. I wonder if one of the effects of many parishes using these settings first might give people a renewed appreciation of the place of the acclamations within the prayer — as an integral part rather than some added music.