“Away with your noisy
songs!
I will not listen to the melodies of your harps.
But if you would offer me holocausts,
Then let justice surge like water…”
Amos 5: 24
ONLY THE
ONE WHO CRIES OUT…
The
night before I left for my pilgrimage, I watched a
documentary film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German
Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was killed in 1945
for his role in resisting Hitler.
Awareness of the failure of the Christian community to
resist Hitler, especially the timidity of the Catholic
Church in Germany, has played an important role in my
commitment to justice since my early years in college in
the mid-sixties.
One phrase of Bonhoeffer’s in the video
particularly touched me that night. “Only he who
cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chant.”
I love chant and much medieval music. The music seems to
give us a glimpse of the heavenly realm.
As I prepared to leave I wondered whether this statement
might need to be expanded – “Only the one who
cries out for the Jews and the Palestinians may sing
Gregorian chant.”
But I wondered whether that might be pushing things.
The first day in Bethlehem, after visiting the Grotto of
the Nativity, Omar and I went to St. Catherine’s,
the attached Roman Catholic church. We passed into the
crypt where we passed the tombs of the Holy Innocents and
went to the chapel of the cave of St. Jerome, where he
translated the bible into Latin.
It was almost noon and the Franciscan friars were
preparing for prayer. We approached the grotto and were
stopped by the door that led from the crypt. We turned,
went upstairs to the church of St. Catherine’s and
began to leave. As we left the friars were beginning to
chant.
Truly, I thought, “Only the person who cries out
for the oppressed - the Palestinians and others –
may sing Gregorian chant.”
Church
of Saint Anne, Jerusalem
A few
days later, visiting Jerusalem we stopped into the Church
of Saint Anne in the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s an
old Crusader church built in the twelfth century, on the
grounds of the ruins of the pool of Bethsaida. It served
for a time as a Muslim school but is now a church on the
ground of the seminary of the Missionaries of Africa. As
I entered the church I heard Omar humming and was
astounded at the acoustics. I sang a few notes and
realized that there is an incredible reverberation in the
church, up to seven seconds someone later told me.
I wanted to sing a chant. All I could think of was the
Regina Coeli, an Easter hymn in honor of Mary. This was
quite fitting I later realized since this church was on
the site of the house of Ann, the mother of Mary, and
there is a shrine to Mary’s birth on the crypt.
As I sung I heard my voice echoing in the vaults –
my prayer continued by the stones. When I stopped
singing, the sound continued. The prayer echoed in the
church and it echoed in my heart.
That night in a conversation with the pastor of Christmas
Lutheran Church in Bethlehem I shared my reflections on
Bonhoeffer’s challenge.
But only a month later did I realize what I had done that
day in East Jerusalem. In occupied land I sang chant. Had
I, by singing chant, unwittingly committed myself to cry
out for the Palestinians?
So I will continue to sing chant – but I will raise
my voice even more for the oppressed and marginalized of
the world. For only if you speak up for the oppressed may
you dare to sing the praises of God.
May my chant and my cries of protest echo as forcefully
as the hymn in Saint Anne’s.
Regina Coeli, laetare,
alleluia
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia,
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
Queen of heaven, rejoice,
alleluia,
Because he whom you were made worthy to bear, alleluia,
has risen, as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
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