Stunning Choral Music for the Season of Lent

0:00:00 | Gibbons - Drop, drop, slow tears  

0:01:21 | Pange lingua (Plainsong) 

0:04:36 | Allegri - Miserere mei, Deus 

0:15:51 | Lotti - Crucifixus 

0:19:12 | Psalm 130 (Out of the deep, Purcell) 

0:21:41 | Byrd - Ave verum  

0:26:12 | Walton - A litany  

0:29:34 | JC Bach - Es ist nun aus mit meinem Leben 

0:36:23 | Byrd - Ne irascaris Domine  

0:40:03 | Byrd - Civitas sancti tui  

0:44:12 | Tallis - In manus tuas 

0:46:22 | Weelkes - Hosanna To The Son Of David 

0:48:06 | Pergolesi - Stabat Mater Tippett - Five Spirituals 

0:51:57 | 1. Steal away  

0:54:43 | 3. Go down, Moses 

0:57:25 | 5. Deep river  

1:00:49 | Byrd - Mass for Four Voices (Agnus Dei) 

1:05:33 | Tavener - Song for Athene 

1:11:26 | Purcell - Thou knowest, Lord 

1:13:48 | Tallis - In Ieiunio Et Fletu  

1:18:47 | Gjeilo - Ubi caritas 

1:22:48 | Victoria - Jesu Dulcis Memoria Bruckner - Motets  

1:24:39 | Christus factus est 

1:30:15 | Pange lingua  

1:34:40 | Vexilla Regis 

1:38:58 | Pärt - The Woman with the Alabaster Box  

1:44:45 | Ešenvalds - O salutaris Hostia  

1:47:57 | Tallis - O sacrum convivium 

1:51:52 | Messiaen - O sacrum convivium  

1:56:13 | Durufle - Ubi Caritas  

1:58:41 | Sanders - The Reproaches  

2:07:54 | Attwood - Turn thy face from my sins 

2:11:23 | Tallis - Salvator mundi  

2:13:57 | Farrant - Call to remembrance  

2:15:49 | Hilton - Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake 

2:17:59 | Purcell - Hear my prayer, O Lord  

2:20:17 | Wesley - Cast me not away  

2:25:24 | Wesley - Wash me throughly 

2:30:19 | Leighton - Drop, drop, slow tears 

2:33:15 | Ouseley - O Saviour of the world  

2:35:59 | Tallis - Lamentations  

2:43:27 | Purcell - Remember not, Lord 

2:46:16 | Ireland - Greater love  

2:51:26 | Tallis - If ye love me 

2:53:33 | Britten - Corpus Christi Carol  

2:56:32 | Nystedt - Immortal Bach 

3:01:51 | Tchaikovsky arr Lubbock - The Crown of Roses (Legend)  

3:04:33 | Wood - Oculi omnium 

3:06:06 | Gesualdo - Gesualdo - O vos omnes 

3:09:57 | Mealor - Drop, drop, slow tears 

3:13:30 | Macmillan - Domine non secundum peccata  

3:22:32 | Macmillan - Miserere 

Artists: Westminster Abbey Tenebrae Trinity College, Cambridge Byrd Ensemble Monteverdi Choir Genesis Sixteen St Martin's-In-The-Fields WMU Choirs Ensemble Vocal Aedes Truro Cathedral Ely Cathedral Magdalen College, Oxford The Evans Choir Ensemble ZENE St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh Queen's Six Temple Church King's Singers Apollo5 Antioch Chamber Ensemble Sofia Vokalensemble 

Saint Peter's Catholic Church, Columbia, South Carolina - "Forty Days and Forty Nights"

From my own parish, Saint Peter's Catholic Church, Columbia, South Carolina.  Hymn in Procession: Ash Wednesday 2012.  "Forty Days and Forty Nights."  Mark Husey, Organist; III/38 Peragallo pipe organ.  The church has historic and magnificent Tiffany Studios windows.

"Attende Domine"

Sung Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the chapel of what was my high school, Holy Family Diocesan High School, now St. Anthony's High School, Huntington, Long Island, New York, March 12, 2010.  Father Brian Austin, celebrant, with Our Lady of the Angels Schola.

Father Rutler: A Life's Goal

Father George W. Rutler

There are different theories as to why Schubert did not finish the Unfinished Symphony. Although his Symphony in B minor lacks two movements, it has two. And explaining why it began is as challenging as explaining why it did not end. Mozart did not finish his Requiem for the simple reason that he died. That also is why Thucydides did not finish his History of the Peloponnesian War, Raphael’s Transfiguration was incomplete, Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus was left for Titian to complete, and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov had unrealized chapters.
 

A Roman soldier’s sword prevented Archimedes from resolving a mathematical problem. Chaucer did not finish his Canterbury Tales because he had to go back to work as a clerk in the Port of London, and Spenser did not finish the last six books of The Faerie Queene for political reasons. Coleridge could not complete his Kubla Khan because someone awoke him from a laudanum stupor. Perhaps the arrival of Alessandro de’ Medici caused Michelangelo to quit Florence without finishing the statue that still puzzles experts, who are not sure if it is Apollo or David. We do know that Donatello deliberately used his non finito technique to give a kind of emerging vitality to his figures.
 

Artists rarely think that they have completed a work. Tolkien, for example, kept re-writing The Silmarillion. At least they have an intuition, a mental sense, of what should be realized with paint or pen. But if life has no goal, there is nothing to complete. Chesterton said that man has always been lost, but modern man has lost his address and cannot return home. Far different was Saint Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). His faith was trust that life has a goal, and it is realized in the eternal existence offered by the Creator who made us in his image. “In him you have been made complete” (Colossians 2:10).
 

The days of Lent are like signposts toward the goal. Meanwhile, we are “works in progress.” The question is, “Can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3). When Ash Wednesday is coincident with St. Valentine’s Day, there is a stark contrast between love and sentiment. The martyr Valentine loved so much that he sacrificed his life for the love of God. To reduce him to some sort of cupid, is never to finish the picture.
 

The world’s greatest Lover shouted from the cross: “It is finished!” That tetelestai is an accounting term meaning “paid in full.” The Son cried out to the Father that he had paid the debt incurred by human pride. It is what every composer, painter, writer or scientist wants to be able to say, but can only be said satisfactorily when Christ is seen “face to face, and not as a stranger” (1 John 3:2).