Monday, April 4, 2011

Tantum Ergo As I Haven't Heard it Before

Tomorrow evening we will close Forty Hours Devotion at our parish with a Eucharistic procession.  It is customary for the current pastor of our parish to invite previous pastors as well as some of his brother priests to participate.  I have several favorite nights that I look forward to each  year.  This is one of them.  The others would be the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the Great Vigil of Easter and of course, Christmas Eve.

The Picardy melody in the excerpt below is more commonly heard in the hymn "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence", which is what we sing to open the service on the final night.  I thought I would share it here.

6 comments:

  1. Very, very beautiful, thank you Joyce. The melody is also used in the Divine Liturgy of St James - "Let all mortal flesh keep silence....."

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  2. Wow, that was soooo beautiful. Thank you Joyce.

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  3. St Thomas Aquinas wrote the hymn Pange Lingua (of which the Tantum Ergo is the last two stanzas) for the feast of Corpus Christi. A fellow priest and close friend attempted this task at the same time. When St. Thomas finished, he shared it with the priest, who was awe-struck at its sublimity and expression. He was so moved by its beauty that he immediately tore up his own work, which he professed was like so much garbage compared to this heavenly-inspired text.

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  4. Maria, yes, I had heard that story. Amazing.

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  5. I always love to listen the Tantum Ergo and is an excellent manner to do the adoration of the Holly Sacrament. I think is very touching.
    Ruth Nobio

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