March, 2024

Choir Directors Corner

You may have noticed an addition to the hymns during clergy communion in the weeks preceding Lent, based on Psalm 36 (this is also added to the Polyeleios during Matins).

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept when we remembered Sion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof did we hang our instruments.
For there, they that had taken us captive asked us for words of song.
And they that had led us away asked us for a hymn, saying: Sing us one of the songs of Sion.
How shall we sing the Lord?s song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten.
Let my tongue cleave to my throat, if I remember thee not,
If I set not Jerusalem above all other, as at the head of my joy.
Remember, O Lord, the sons of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem,
Who said: Lay waste, lay waste to her, even to the foundations thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, thou wretched one, blessed shall he be who shall reward thee wherewith thou hast rewarded us.
Blessed shall he be who shall seize and dash thine infants against the rock.

The psalm is one written in captivity, and speaks to us about our captivity - to the passions. Some folks are jarred (especially if we don't know the reason why the Church gives us these things) by the rather violent imagery of the last verse. This psalm can be read on an historical as well as an allegorical level.

On the historical level, the last verse is discussing a grim reality of pre-technological and tribal warfare. If your tribe went and attacked a town, presumably killing the men, and taking spoils, the infants were the ones that were going to grow up and take revenge on you if you left them alive. So killing them with the adults was a way to stop that. Lest you think that such imagery is unthinkable in our day, consider little Vito Corleone in "Godfather II." The Sicillian gangster tried to kill him as a child for the same reason. He failed, and little Vito grew up and came back to revenge his family.

But the Church gives us these verses, not to train us in warfare that is physical, but warfare that is spiritual. According to commentary by various Holy Fathers, the infants in question, are our passionate thoughts and the rock is Christ. We dash our thoughts on the Rock, in order that they may not grow up to be passions that will come back and take us captive. These verses remind us of the real battle in our lives and remind us to refocus and redouble our efforts during the opportunity of the great fast. Many other psalms are read during lenten services, and similar allegories may be found throughout Lent. As we hear the psalms, we are invited to a strategy meeting where we are instructed how to guard the walled city of our hearts and preserve there the treasures we receive from the King. In this sense, the only violence called for is that mentioned by Christ in Matthew 11:12:

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.

In this is all the "warfare" of Great Lent: self-opposition against giving into the passions, self-forcing in the good: prayer, fasting, almsgiving and all other good spiritual practices, especially watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, which creates in us, the state which in which we are able to dash our tempting and useless thoughts against the Rock of Christ.