Et Crucifixus Est

From the East Window of Worcester Cathedral

‘I thirst’ from the setting by Sir James MacMillan (b. 1959) of the Seven Last Words from the Cross.  

It is Finished

After this, Jesus knew that everything had now been completed, and to fulfil the scripture perfectly he said: ‘I am thirsty’.  A jar full of vinegar stood there, so putting a sponge soaked in the vinegar on a hyssop stick they held it up to his mouth. After Jesus had taken the vinegar he said, ‘It is accomplished’; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit. 

John 19:28–30.

‘God So Loved the World’, from the oratorio The Crucifixion by Sir John Stainer (1840–1901), sung here by Tenebrae, conducted by Nigel Short.

Good Friday

It is three o’clock, and the world comes to a stop.  All Holy Week we have been watching the final disaster draw near; on Palm Sunday, having sung our King into Jerusalem with palms and hosannas, we filled our mouths with barbs and jeers and the unctuous solicitations of the Pharisees (‘Your Excellency, we recall that this imposter said…’)  Now the sentence is passed, on the sentencers as much as the sentenced, and we have come to the place of execution.  Bone-dry silence falls.  Surely there is some mistake… surely God will not permit…?  But the Devil is allowed to see the victory he has so long desired; all, to his own astonishment, has gone entirely to plan; his triumph is within his grasp.  Has he done it?  Has he not only destroyed God’s son but, better, caused humanity to destroy God’s son?  Surely he has; he has driven his opponent out of the world, and humanity is his; if has also pleased God to accept the sacrifice, so much the better.  What now stands in his way?  Only a few things unsettle him: those sharp observant glances among the scattered remnants, their mutterings of recognition and realisation.  And the mother; always the mother; this second Eve whom he cannot bring to ruin.

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,

That we to judge thee have in hate pretended?

By foes derided, by thine own rejected,

        O most afflicted!

Who was the guilty?  Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!

’Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;

        I crucified thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;

The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered.

For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,

        God interceded.

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,

Thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;

Thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,

        For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,

Think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,

        Not my deserving.

‘Herzliebster Jesu’ (‘Ah, Holy Jesus’), melody by Johann Crüger (1598–1662), harmonised by J. S. Bach.  Words by Johann Heermann (1585 –1647); translation by Robert Bridges (1844–1930).

Good Friday

Words from the second Psalm, sung by the choir of Westminster Cathedral.  ‘They arise, the kings of the earth; princes plot against the Lord and his anointed.’

A treasured prayer, the tenth of the Solemn Intercessions for Good Friday:

Let us pray, dearly beloved,
To God the Father almighty,
That he may cleanse the world of all errors,
Banish disease, drive out hunger,
Unlock prisons, loosen fetters;
Granting to travellers safety, to pilgrims return,
Health to the sick, and salvation to the dying.

A moment of silent prayer.  Then the Priest says:

Almighty ever-living God,
Comfort of mourners, strength of all who toil,
May the prayers of those who cry out in any tribulation come before you,
That all may rejoice,
Because in their hour of need
Your mercy was at hand.

Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Good Friday

Holy Week has not quite felt like itself this year, with the sudden determination in the sun’s warmth and the half-lifting of pandemic restrictions sending an extra surge of traffic out onto the roads and crowds into the parks.  Still, I would not exchange it for last year’s Holy Week, when the first wave of the virus was at its height.  Now all the figures, including the extraordinary statistics emerging from the vaccine programme, suggest that the end might be in sight.  Let us hope it may be so.

But first, Good Friday: the gloom, the hush, the void.

From a television broadcast of the Good Friday Office of Readings from Westminster Cathedral, 9 April 1993: the reading from the Gospel of Matthew is sung by the late Fr. Mark Langham, a priest loved by many, who died on January 15th this year. 

Good Friday

Now this austerest of Lents descends to its bitter nadir, and without any end in sight, either, of the Long Lent in which we are living.  (It is an irony that this is the sunniest Good Friday we have had in England for some time.)  All we know is that, however low we sink into despair or sin, the Son of God has come down with us, and that no anguish or suffering is beyond the knowledge or compassion of his Mother —

Cuius animam gementem,

Contristatam et dolentem

Pertransivit gladius.

O quam tristis et afflicta

Fuit illa benedicta,

Mater Unigeniti!

Quae mœrebat et dolebat,

Et tremebat, dum videbat

Nati pœnas inclyti.

([…] Whose anguished soul, sorrowed and grieving, a sword has pierced.

O how sorrowful and afflicted was that blessed Mother of the Only-Begotten!

Who, seeing the torment of her glorious Son, mourned and grieved and trembled.)

Here are these words of the Stabat Mater set to music by Herbert Howells (1892–1983).  With Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo), John Daszak (tenor), the Philharmonia Chorus and the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by the late Stephen Cleobury, and broadcast live in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge on the 7th April, 2013.  Howells never recovered from the death in 1935 of his own son, aged nine.

Good Friday

The clouds have gathered.  It is the year’s darkest day, and utterly bone-dry.  Today not a single Mass will be celebrated in the whole world.

Here is a fragment of Venantius Fortunatus’ hymn Pange lingua gloriosi: (not to be confused with St. Thomas Aquinas’ later hymn, which was inspired by this one), sung by Westminster Cathedral Choir.

Good Friday

Now to the calendar’s zero, Good Friday.  The liturgical year grinds to a halt.  The church is stark; the altar is bare; the tabernacle is a shocking void.  

It is three o’clock.  Such intense emptiness: no distractions; no comfort; no Mass even.  Only the fact of the Cross.

Psalm 22, sung by the choir of Westminster Cathedral

Maundy Thursday

Paradox follows paradox along the path of Holy Week.  This is the evening of the Last Supper, the very institution of the Eucharist.  Yet no sooner is Mass said than the Tabernacle itself is emptied.  The church is already a bare shell, awaiting the only day of the year when there is no Mass: the zero of Good Friday.

Maurice Duruflé’s setting of the Tantum Ergo (one of the Quatre Motets sur des Thèmes Grégoriens):

‘Rise heart; thy Lord is risen’

After Lent’s long flatness and sinking into bitter hollowness in Holy Week, especially on Good Friday (which this year, for the first time I can remember, was not shrouded in pallid cloud at three o’clock), Easter has dawned upon us.  Happy Feast!

Here is a setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams (again, sorry) of fitting words by George Herbert:
  

Easter.

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.  Sing his praise
                                                  Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
                                                  With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
                                                  With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
                                                  Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
                                                  Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
                                                  And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,

And make up our defects with his sweet art.

George Herbert (1593–1633)

I cannot resist including another monunental rendition of the same music at the Royal Albert Hall in London on the Last Night of the Proms in 2004:

They Laid Him There

They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, following the Jewish burial custom.  At the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no-one had yet been buried.  Since it was the Jewish Day of Preparation and the tomb was near at hand, they laid Jesus there.

John 19:40–42