Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson has me thinking laterally, in particular, about scenes in the Gospel accounts involving various women anointing Jesus’ feet, and of a piece of music related to one of these episodes.

In particular, the story of Matthew 26:6-16 tells of a woman who came to Jesus as he stayed with Simon the Leper, and who anointed his feet with a very costly perfume.

This story was expanded in the Greek hymnography in the 9th century by a female author: Kassianí of Constantinople. Kassianí is known to have participated in a rather colorful ‘imperial bride show’ with Emperor Theophilos (she didn’t get picked) and also for founding an abbey near Constantinople. Scholarship indicates that Kassianí was a prolific hymnographer, though she is today best know for the eponymous ‘Hymn of Kassianí’, written for Wednesday of Holy Week in connection to the lesson from Matthew 26.

Interestingly, this hymn conflates the various anointing accounts, a practice which dates to the late 6th century on, and suggests that the character in the hymn is repentant, and yet one who also became one of the myrrh-bearing women.

In any case, the hymn has a first-person quality characteristic of Greek hymnography, bringing each individual into a contemplative and repentant position via biblical language of a particularly beautiful and profuse character.

Here’s a video of the Cappella Romana singing a Greek version of Kassianí’s hymn. You can also hear a modern setting in the beginning of Ēriks Ešenvalds’ marvelous Passion and Resurrection.

Yours in Christ,
Justin