In the Lord-- omnis spiritus laudet Dominum, as the Psalmist concludes-- and get on with things. I had begun to pray the Office for the Dead on Fridays not too long ago; this morning, after the ferial Office, well, not 'ferial', I suppose, since we are in the Octave of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul: what is the term I want? All I can think of is 'the canonical Office' which isn't quite right, either, but perhaps it is... anyway, my understanding was that Matins is of nine psalms in three nocturns with nine lessons (from the Book of blessed Job). I believe what turned up at Divinumofficium.com were three psalms and six lessons? In any event, at 0215 I wasn't about to go searching through my printed breviaries or in the Liber: next Thursday I will investigate-- I've made an alert on the mobile, even.
Google Alerts informed me that there is a new recording (new this year, anyway) of Fauré's Messe de Requiem performed by Sinfonieorchester Basel under the direction of Ivor Bolton, featuring Katja Stuber and Benjamin Appl-- which I suspect I wouldn't ever have seen on Spotify (and it is there, so I can listen, later on) because it's not showing up on Appl's 'artist page' which I do check every so often (am waiting for recordings of the Schubert song cycles).
There is something else of interst that the email disclosed... usually there is a great deal of dross and then a receipt that I save because I feel I ought to do so, or an update about some organisation that I read because. Ah, it was the day's meditation from the Marie de Nazareth people in France: there was a Slovak Protestant poet named Maria Razusova Martakova (m 1964) who, in at least one of her poems, memorialized her sorrow at not being able to invoke the patronage of the Virgin, presumably because the Protestant police would be after her if she had done (or, less flippantly, her religious convictions wouldn't allow her to). The Marie de Nazareth writer says that she is one amongst several Slovak Protestants who in some way have expressed such sentiments, so I'm presuming that this is a cultural or folk 'memory' of the pre-Protestant past (and not an idiosyncrasy of Martakova's, I mean), or... who knows. I may look about, later on.
Cette certitude gît dans mon cœur,
Et Dieu sait combien le désir est ancien,
De brûler du thymian à vos pieds,
Et de vous dire: conduisez-moi, pleine de grâce!
Mais pour moi, vous êtes, comme les étoiles, inaccessible.
Ce désir n’est qu’un rêve et ne s’accomplira point,
Vers Dieu je dois aller par le chemin de la souffrance solitaire,
Par un étroit sentier, tout encombré d’épines.
The great Mother of God is never 'inaccessible, like the stars'. I wonder why Martakova imagined this.
The album itself is on YouTube but I can't find it via the YouTube uploader here. This situation has happened often enough before that I must think it's a rights issue of some sort.
***
Comments
Post a Comment