31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

30 October 2011

Entrance	Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 130	Keep me safe (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	There is a longing (Anne Quigley)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	Lamb of God 6 (mtgf)
Communion	Many are the light beams (Widestrand)
Final	Guide me, O thou great Redeemer

Some small changes this morning. We began using the second Memorial Acclamation 'When we eat' — my intention is to introduce all three so that we do not always turn to the same one. There seems to be a common view that composers in setting the new acclamations either start with one text and then work out what to do with the other or two or at least write one successful acclamation and two other also-rans. So far I am not sure this is true with the revised Mass of Creation; it seems to me that one of its advantages is that each acclamation is distinctive. The other change is that we began using the Lamb of God in a litany rather than a responsorial form - so the congregation comes in with 'you take away…'

I was wondering why I don't think we have used this psalm since it was written in 1999. I presume that the Sunday has been replaced by All Saints in the intervening years,

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

23 October 2011

Entrance	Your love is finer than life (Marty Haugen)
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 17	I love you, Lord, my strength (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	Not for tongues (Dudley Smith/Joncas)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	Lamb of God 6 (mtgf)
Communion	Love one another (mtgf)
Final	Now thank we all our God ( )

Love of God; love of neighbour. I wanted the opening hymn to be about love of God and the final hymn to be about neighbour and was surprised that hymns about our love for God were not obvious. This seems odd and it may be a comment on my knowledge, our repertoire but my guess is that hymnbooks/writers may be more comfortable with love of neighbour.

So Your love is finer became the opening hymn; it always seems good to start with a psalm.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

16 October 2011

Entrance	Rejoice the Lord is King
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 95	Give the Lord glory and power (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	The love of the Lord (Michael Joncas)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Communion	He became poor (John Bell)
Final	O God beyond all praising

The image of money shone in a number of ways today. In The Love of the Lord the text takes images from St Paul that we may not have silver or gold but we are rich by our faith in Christ. And at Communion we become rich because Christ became poor.

The hymns took the other part of the image - to render God what is his — due worship.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

9 October 2011

Entrance	All are welcome (Marty Haugen)
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 22	I shall dwell in the Lord's house (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	Shepherd me, O God (Marty Haugen)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Communion	One in body, heart and mind (Christopher Walker)
Final	Praise we our God with joy

New members today learnt one of our realties. What do you do when our accompanist is unable to come? Well, you sometimes have to discard the couple of pieces of music you prepared last week. What we replaced them with were part of what I recognise as some of our basic repertoire which is good to build up familiarity with so that it can be used as needed.

Shepherd me, O God was another version of the psalm. I presume the psalm was chosen for the image of a banquet and the Haugen setting reserves the 4 part verse for that text. I though the Walker One in body sound lovely unaccompanied with some gentle 'ahs' underneath the verses.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

2 October 2011

Entrance	Here I am, Lord
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 79	The vineyard of the Lord (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	Ours were the griefs (Stephen Dean)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Communion	Now we remain (David Haas)
Final	Love divine

Today's Liturgy of the Word is a good example of one of the relationships between the readings. Jesus takes Isaiah's prophecy and retells it - and when the owner of the vineyard sends his son? The psalm response is taken from the first reading and spells out the meaning of the tale — the psalm verses are poetic retelling of the first reading.

There seemed to be a number of options for the Entrance song. Some ideas took the image of the cornerstone from the Gospel — The stone which the builders rejected or Christ is made the sure foundation. For familiarity at the beginning of term we went for Here I am, Lord for the image of being sent.

A new translation note. I have know accompanist during the Eucharistic Prayer desperately needing the text so that they come in at the right time. This is something our accompanist has never needed not because of deep attention to the text but I think an (unconscious) appreciation of rhythm and structure. This does not seem to have been affected by the new translation — in other words he knows his eschatocol from his elbow.

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

25 September 2011

Entrance	Lord Jesus Christ, you have come to us ()
Penitential Rite	St Gabriel's (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriel's (mtgf)
Psalm 24	Remember your mercy, O Lord (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	May we have the mind of Christ (Marty Haugen)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	St Gabriel's (mtgf)
Communion	Jesus, Saviour (mtgf)
Final	At the name of Jesus

This time of year I am trying to keep things a little simple so that anyone new whether in the choir or congregation will not feel too out of place. Hence the hymns are chosen from a list of ones I think most people should know (whilst also picking up themes in the liturgy) — it might not be a bad exercise to write down this mental list.

As the Phillipians Canticle was part of the 2nd reading it was hard to ignore it (it's the final hymn too). Marty Haugen's setting which we have done once before I think, and so gave a new view on the text, includes the previous verse 'May we have the mind of Christ'. 'Jesus, Saviour' is an alternative refrain for an Advent Song I wrote in Cantate. I think the text is in part editorial to complement the verses from Psalm 24 which were in the original. I don't think I have used it before. I thought the end of the first line needed a longer text phrase to run across two musical phrases otherwise it sounds a bit bitty.

In Roman Missal news we sang the (first) Memorial Acclamation straight through today, rather than cantor first. I am aware that we need to get all three acclamations sung as I suspect it is easier to do now than next time. That is much a comment on my planing as the congregation's engagement.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

18 September 2011

Entrance	Praise to the holiest ()
Penitential Rite	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Gloria	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Psalm 144	The Lord is close (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of Gifts	God beyond all names (Bernadette Farrell)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Creation (Marty Haugen)
Lamb of God	St Gabriels (mtgf)
Communion	I am your Saviour (Collegeville Composers Group)
Final	Tell out my soul ( )

This is delayed posting because I had to get to another Mass on Sunday afternoon and the rest of the week seems to have been quite busy too. Praise to the holiest seemed both appropriate to the Sunday and a way of marking the Papal anniversary.