Apostolorum passio

In honor of the liturgical leadership of our Holy Father Pope Benedict, here is my translation of this great Ambrosian hymn. Perhaps it could be nicely sung to the tune Deo gratias.

Apostolorum passio

Blest day by suff’ring sanctified:
Christ’s chosen high apostles died.
Today St. Peter wins renown.
Today St. Paul accepts the crown.

Together, equally, they bled:
Together: the victorious dead.
They followed God and sacrificed
And now their faith is crowned by Christ.

St. Peter holds the highest place,
Yet Paul is not the less by grace.
An equal faith was giv’n to Paul:
The chosen vessel of God’s call.

St. Peter, downward crucified—
To honor God in how he died—
Securely tied, he sees unfold
The death his Shepherd once foretold.

On such foundations Rome may claim
The highest service of God’s name.
His noble blood has dignified
The city where this prophet died.

Let all the world, then, run to Rome.
Let families of nations come!
The head of nations teaches there
Beside the nations’ teacher's chair.

O Lord, we ask that we may be
In their exalted company,
And with our princes sing Your praise
Forever, to unending days.

C. 2010 Kathleen Pluth. May be used only with permission.

At their best, hymns can pack a ton of theological information, and religious emotion, into a small space. Here's a familiar Easter hymn by Charles Wesley.

1. Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!

Sons of men and angels say: Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply: Alleluia!

2. Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Alleluia!
Christ has burst the gates of hell: Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise; Alleluia!
Christ has opened paradise! Alleluia!

3. Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting?
Alleluia!Once He died, our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

4. Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

5. Hail, the Lord of earth and heaven! Alleluia!
Praise to thee by both be given; Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now; Alleluia!
Hail, the Resurrection, thou! Alleluia!

Aside from the excellence of the entire hymn, which takes us proleptically from the Resurrection of Christ to our own resurrection (in keeping with the remarkable Pauline logic of I Corinthians 15), there is a single line of such exquisite theological intensity that I've tried to "steal" it in several different ways already in my own writing.

"Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Alleluia!"

Frankly the rest of verse 2 is somewhat pro forma, because after this line, what else is there to say? The tomb is empty! Death has been defeated, the powers of earth have been defeated. Their efforts are vain--kenotic--empty, and against God.

The images are directly Scriptural and used as Scripture uses them. And yet they come through the hymn in a fresh way. First, they demand a small amount of work, like a puzzle: in context and as a group they can only mean the three things they mean, but first one must think. Which stone? Watch (a multivalent English word)? Seal (the same)? The hymn points us back to Scripture to rediscover a story with concrete details, including the unusual situation of soldiers guarding a dead man. Secondly, they are very short words, one of the keys to Wesley's perennial appeal. Here his short words are nouns (and an adjective) but just as often they are verbs: "FIX in us thy humble dwelling/ all thy faithful mercies CROWN" (from another excellent Wesley hymn, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling).

Thirdly, these short words have big, open sounds. Vain is an emphatic word, a word that excludes, but its long vowel would seem to suggest the opposite. (Notice that the sound of the old word "fain" captures a sense of longing.) "Stone," one of Thomas Merton's favorite words, implies weight and solidity, with its long O. "Watch" is exceptional here. The vowel is short, the consonants much more expressive. "Seal" has a very long vowel, a diphthong anchored in its long e.

Verse 3 will taunt death, death in se, in the Pauline way. But here at the beginning of verse 2 we are still in the mode of wonder at the fact of Jesus' resurrection, as much declaring the resurrection as reflecting upon it. And yet there is some taunt in this line: it is both "joy" and "triumph."

As with all great hymns a congregation becomes like little children saying "Can you believe it? Look at the great things God has done!"

Hymns in honor of St. Paul

I had thought that when the Holy Father annunced the Pauline Year, there would be a sudden flurry of hymn writing in St. Paul's honor. No such flurry has occurred to my knowledge, but I have been able to contribute a couple of hymns in honor of this inimitable Saint, one of the two pillars of our apostolic Church.

I've received a number of requests for use of these hymns--more from the UK, in fact, than from the States. An Anglican parish named St. Paul's, in Sheffield, for example, sang one at the anniversary service for their parish. And this morning my translation of Excelsam Pauli Gloriam was sung at Morning Prayer by Bishop D'Arcy and his priests in the diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. I was delighted to be asked to contribute in this small way to their diocesan Lenten Day of Recollection for priests, and even more so in light of recent events.

One of the verses says:

The shining of the lamplight gleams
And drenches earth with heav'nly beams.
The dark of error's night is past.
The reign of truth has come at last.

For the upcoming feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, anyone may please feel free to use one or both of the following hymns. The first is originally mine, the second is my translation of the office hymn Excelsam Pauli Gloriam. They can be sung to many Long Meter (LM, or 8888) hymn tunes, such as Eisenach or Jesu Dulcis Memoria.

The martyr Stephen met his death
Forgiveness in his final breath.
He interceded for them all
Whose cloaks lay at the feet of Saul.

The Father, hearing Stephen's prayer,
Gave gifts for all the Church to share
When grace and mercy overflowed
In light upon Damascus Road.

Then bless the Lord of heart and mind
Who gives new vision to the blind,
Whose reign throughout the world extends,
Whose loving-kindness never ends.

© 2008 Kathleen Pluth. Permission is given for parish use January 24-25, 2009. All other rights reserved.
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Let all the Church acclaim St. Paul
And sing the glories of his call
The Lord made an apostle be
From one who was his enemy

The name of Christ set Paul afire
Enkindling him with great desire;
And higher these same blazes reached
When of the love of Christ he preached.

His merits are forever praised
For to the heavens he was raised,
And there, the all-mysterious word,
That none dare speak, by Paul was heard.

The Word, like seed sown in a field
Producing an abundant yield
Fills heav’nly barns whose stores of grain
Are tilled and grown on earthly plains.

The shining of the lamplight gleams
And drenches earth with heaven's beams.
The dark of error's night is past;
The reign of truth has come at last.

To Christ all glory, and all praise
To Father and the Spirit raise,
Who for the nations’ saving call
Gave us the splendor of Saint Paul.

Translation © 2008 Kathleen Pluth. Permission is given for parish use January 24-25, 2009. All other rights reserved.

Hymns for the Pauline Year

CanticaNOVA features 3 of my texts on their page devoted to the Pauline Year. Check it out: http://canticanova.com/articles/misc/art7bc1.htm