2025.03.05
Lent begins with a striking absence of music.
On Ash Wednesday the liturgy begins abruptly without an entrance rite: a characteristic also of Good Friday, the other great fast of the Church. Later the sombre mood is taken up musically by an outstanding congregational Mass written by my predecessor in the very dark keys of B-flat minor and F Phrygian (the latter having the same key signature or scale as the former, but beginning the series of pitches on F rather than B-flat). At Communion we move from the brooding modern harmonic language of this Mass to a fine example of plangent nineteenth-century chromaticism, the tightly controlled drama of Samuel Sebastian Wesley’s ‘Wash me throughly’, setting verses of Psalm 51.
On the First Sunday in Lent it is the custom in many places to begin the Eucharist with the Great Litany. Rooted in ancient forms of prayer-in-procession, this was the first official English-language liturgical text, published in 1544 as the English Church was undergoing major reforms. For centuries it was appointed to be used every Sunday before the celebration of the Eucharist; it is now suggested for use especially in Lent, though it is always relevant. Our Offertory anthem, Stanford’s serene setting of the hymn ‘O for a closer walk with thee’ [684], and our closing hymn, the familiar ‘Lord, who throughout these forty days’ [142], offer repentance and pray for strength and grace to stay close to God in our daily lives, especially during Lent. Another hymn, ‘The sinless one to Jordan came’ [120], ties the Temptation of Christ to his Baptism (which of course immediately precedes it in the Gospel accounts, though the two are separated in our lectionary); to the Eucharist (reference to Christ as the true Bread surely echoing one of his temptations – and ours); and to our own part in Christ’s mission.