Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today is Wednesday in Holy Week. Tonight, our lay clerks and youth choristers will sing Tenebrae at Saint Philip’s church. This service of psalms, canticles, and readings dwells upon the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
Three readings from the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah form the center of the service, emphasizing the biblical themes of lamentation, repentance, and restoration. Jeremiah’s lament becomes ours, and the ruin of Jerusalem symbolizes the ruin of our souls and the disrepair of our relationship with God, due to our sins and of the presence of death in the world.
Thomas Tallis’ setting of the first 14 verses of this acrostic poetry (equaling the first Tenebrae reading) powerfully captures these themes and send us into Holy Week with introspection, heaviness, and hopefulness.
Yours in Christ,
—Justin
