Chants of the Vatican Graduale - MusicaSacra

Whitsunday 219
the note a, rather than c, bears the accent. Venio, setting in a third above
the tonic, stands out very prominently, and is excellently suited to its
text: "Now I come to Thee." It is a veritable reaching up of the Saviour's
arms to His heavenly Father, a taking wing and leaving this
realm of space and time, a song which wells up from the heart after a
difficult mission happily fulfilled. Truly can He say to the Father: "I
have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."
It seems strange, therefore, that cum essem cum eis should receive
a similar melody. Why the great expansion over these words? Did the
composer perhaps first sing ad te venio and then try to create a parallel
in the first half of the first phrase?
A special tenderness, as if coming from the very heart of Jesus Himself,
is revealed in the second half of each phrase. With what motherly
care He shielded His disciples from everything that might have harmed
them when His enemies sought to exploit their ignorance and inexperience!
When He was immersed in a world of suffering on the Mount of
Olives, how concerned He was that nothing happen to His disciples!
Those who were entrusted to Him He again confides to the hands of the
Father and implores Him to keep them out of harm's way. The two
alleluia at the end continue these heartfelt desires of Jesus.
In the Cenacle, after the first Eucharistic Banquet, Jesus had prayed
thus. In Holy Communion we are again "given" to Him. Now within
us He prays to the Father, as He taught us to pray in the final petition
of the Lord's Prayer: that we, laboring in the world and for the good of
the world, may remain untainted by its spirit; that we may be in the
world like a ray of the sun which, though it furnishes light and warmth,
nevertheless remains free of the sin that is committed in its light,
Rass. gr., 7, col. 420.
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WHITSUNDAY
INTROIT (Wisd. 1:7)
1. Spiritus Domini replevit or- 1. The Spirit of the Lord hath
hem ten arum, alleluia: 2. et hoc filled the whole earth, alleluia: 2.
quod continet omnia, scientiam ha- and that which containeth all things
bet vocis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. hath knowledge of the voice, alleluia,
Ps. Exsurgat Deus, et dissipentur alleluia, alleluia. Ps. Let God arise,
inimici ejus: * et fugiant, qui oder- and let his enemies be scattered: *
unt eum, a facie ejus. and let them that hate him, flee from
before his face.