28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

13 October 2013

Entrance	Praise my soul
Penitential Rite	St Gabriel (mtgf)
Gloria	Angels and Saints (Steven Janco)
Psalm 96	The Lord has shown his salvation (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	Exsultate Deo (Johann Cruger)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	Angels and Saints (Steven Janco)
Communion Antiphon	The rich suffer want (mtgf)
Communion	Unless a grain (Bernadette Farrell)
Final	God is love, his the care

Today is one of the best examples of parallelism in the Lectionary where the events of the First Reading are echoed in the Gospel — a foreigner is healed of Leprosy and there is a question of how to respond to this gift. I was struck that today's psalm response, which as ever helps to make the link, is The Lord has shown his salvation not All the ends of the earth have seen which is sung with this psalm at Christmas and I think picks up the question of response. In the gift of healing the salvation that the Lord offers is revealed but that offer has to be responded to.

The motet by Cruger was intended as a moment of thanksgiving. It is in 3 parts - SAM. I had originally thought it as quite easy with simple imitation between the voices and would build up contrapuntal confidence. It is surprising when you find what you thought was easy causes difficulties… I think for two reasons: the Alto part often sung above the Soprano which can be disconcerting to both; also there were changes in triple time where I had decided that crotchet equals minim to keep up the momentum but it meant that suddenly the music went twice as fast in a different metre.

Unless a Grain of Wheat was chosen as uses some of the text from the 2nd reading which was quoted in the sermon. One of the reasons for doing it that I was aware that the SATB parts needed some polishing. In some ways I am not sure the refrain parts are that necessary - but they are there. We used the alternate SATB harmonisation for the final refrain — I had not realised before that it is a descant on the tune.