The Wedding of Sacred Text and Sacred Melody

By Brother Marc Labish

A unique mix of musical experiences has been a vital part of my life in the church. I would like to think this led to the gradual blossoming for me of an awareness of the transcendent, of prayer and the presence of God. When I sense beauty in music, especially church music, it also gives me a further appreciation of life’s many blessings. I continue to feel excited and impelled to delve into the treasury of sacred chants from around the world.

From the time I was seven as an altar server, I was immersed in the chanting of the Polish Roman Catholic Felician sisters in their huge double-nave convent church in western Pennsylvania. Since my family lived nearby, I was able to be present for their engaging worship every day, both early morning and early evening. I also enjoyed hearing the high school women’s choir from the nuns’ academy whenever they sang at Mass and Benediction on the lay persons’ side of the church.

When I left home for the seminary and its high school studies, I joined the Gregorian chant schola group at the semi-monastic chapel there. Later at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic college seminary, I learned to cantor in the chant that comes from Galicia/Halychyna in western Ukraine. This body of chant was uplifting and especially rousing when the whole congregation of college and prep school students sang together. I also joined the male chorus there and so tasted of the powerful classical harmonies from Ukraine and Russia, like those of Bortnyansky and Tchaikovsky. New Skete’s Brother Stavros and I remember Mother Andrea and Prof. Zadorozhny as our notable chant instructors back then. A fellow seminarian at the time and now a priest in the Orthodox Church in America, Fr. Paul N. Harrilchak, introduced us to a German chorale’s fine LP recording of the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. This was the first time I actually heard the ancient Kievan-Rus’ Sign-chant melodies (Znamenny) that were used throughout; especially astounding to us was the lush and energetic triple “Holy God.” A few years ago several of us monks sang the “O Virgin Theotokos” from that composition, in church Slavonic, with the large Cambridge Battenkill Chorale.

When my family and I during my college years attended Byzantine Catholic (Rusin and Hungarian) churches, the congregational singing seemed to raise the roof! Later, as a member of the Byzantine Franciscans, I learned bits and pieces from many ethnic bodies of chant used in Eastern churches. This included Carpatho-Rusin, Melkite, Antiochian, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek church hymnology. What an exhilarating collection of riches for the ear and the soul!

At that time these were sung in their original languages; later we began adapting some to English. When we first sang the Paschal services in English on Easter in 1966, the transparency of the new liturgical texts in our own language was truly uplifting. This celebration evoked in the monastery a new feeling and sense of the meaning of resurrection. In fact, it instilled in us a further energy to go on to begin our founding of New Skete that year.

Some years later I took some CDs of Russian Orthodox choral music to the local hospital for one of the monks who was recuperating. The sounds of the chants as they echoed in the hallways were so very uplifting and calming—even for the nursing staff at their station.

The appeal of liturgical or religious chant in one form or another seems to be present in most cultural settings around the world. It seems to ebb and flow in popularity. I was intrigued in 1994 when the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos became very popular for their chant recordings—this certainly was a counter-cultural phenomenon. Reminded me of my earlier schola days. Gregorian chant is named after Pope St. Gregory the Great, who lived around the year 600. It is normally used without harmony or accompaniment. The Silos monks’ Gregorian chant conductor explained that it was widely used in the Roman Catholic church before Latin was largely replaced by vernacular services in the 1960s. He said the intensity of the chant speaks to “that inner person.” He also said the monks were particularly adept at interpreting the chants to evoke an internal response: “This is not singing; it is a form of prayer for us.”

Today you can easily find numerous audio and You-Tube collections of chant and choral church music for solo singers, mixed voices, and men’s or women’s chorales. At New Skete we are always on the lookout for additional pieces from chant traditions and composers for use in our divine services. This wide scope of selections also becomes a part of monastic hospitality, hopefully giving a point of recognition to guests and visitors during our services, which may be unfamiliar to them. We strive to be true to the sources as we render them in English and make them our own songs of praise and thanksgiving. We also use a variety of harmonies, too, if not simply unison. To succeed in wedding the accents of the words of poetic hymns with the natural rhythms of the chant melodies is not easy, for sure, and continues to be an on-going work.

I was happy to learn of the dialogues on Orthodox and Wesleyan spirituality, including comparisons of hymnography, at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary twenty years ago, published by their press. Early Methodist hymns were compared and matched with those of St. Ephrem the Syrian, among others.

I was amazed to learn in these studies that in the 1700s Charles Wesley translated dozens of volumes by early Christian writers and hymnologists and composed thousands of Methodist hymns and tracts that often closely reflected the spiritual outlook and theology of the Greek authors. I noticed he wrote the original version of the carol “Hark, the herald angels sing,” along with many other Christmas hymns, echoing much of what Ephrem wrote. The connection between the two author-composer theologians is so clear, so full of Biblical motifs and the use of nature’s beauty as images of the word of God speaking to us.

Vivid stanzas from what is listed as Methodist Hymn #1:

11. He speaks, and listening to His voice

New life the dead receive,

The mournful, broken hearts rejoice,

The humble poor believe.

12. Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,

Your loosened tongues employ;

Ye blind, behold your Saviour come,

And leap, ye lame, for joy.

Ephrem the Syrian (actually Aramean) was an Eastern Orthodox deacon-monk and one of the most ancient Christian theologians, writers, and musicians. He lived in the 300s, wrote in Aramaic, and was translated into Greek and Arabic. He called one collection The Harp of the Spirit. The Prayer of Ephrem is recited at every daily service in Lent in the Eastern church tradition. Ephrem was known also for gathering and directing all-female choral groups and for ministering to victims of the plague.

Ephrem’s glorious “Hymn to the Light” from over a millennium earlier than Wesley is a fine example of hope in the coming kingdom. It reminds me of the ancient Phos Ilaron, the “Radiant/Gladsome Light” we sing every evening. You can hear the Bruderhof community sing a similar version of Ephrem’s, and they comment that on reading his ancient words, “the saints awaiting Him in weariness and sorrow,” our thoughts are drawn to those suffering in Syria today. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/music/the-coming-light

Ephrem’s Hymn to the Light:

The Light of the just and joy of the upright is Christ Jesus our Lord.

Begotten of the Father, He manifested himself to us.

He came to rescue us from darkness and to fill us with the radiance of His light.

Day is dawning upon us; the power of darkness is fading away.

From the true Light there arises for us the light which illumines our darkened eyes.

His glory shines upon the world and enlightens the very depths of the abyss.

Death is annihilated, night has vanished, and the gates of Sheol are broken.

Creatures lying in darkness from ancient times are clothed in light.

The dead arise from the dust and sing because they have a Savior.

He brings salvation and grants us life. He ascends to his Father on high.

He will return in glorious splendor and shed His light on those gazing upon Him.

Our King comes in majestic glory.

Let us light our lamps and go forth to meet Him.

Let us find our joy in Him, for He has found joy in us.

He will indeed rejoice us with His marvelous light…

When He manifests Himself,

the saints awaiting Him in weariness and sorrow
will go forth to meet Him with lighted lamps…

Like Ephrem before him, the monk and priest St. Gregory of Narek is recognized both in Eastern and Western Churches as a poet, theologian, and composer. His ancient Armenian Christian hymns similarly use fresh and vivid images from natural creation and from the Bible to portray the Gospel message and the call to life in Christ. He lived at the end of the tenth century in Armenia (which in 301 was the first country to adopt Christianity).

Saint Gregory of Narek

In the 2016 volume The Festal Works of St. Gregory of Narek, by Abraham Terian, I found the Ode for the Holy Cross, which features the striking figure of Christ as the Lion, an image of the courage and strength required for true freedom:

I speak of the Lion’s roar,
crying on the four-winged cross;

On the four-winged cross crying,
Calling to the depths of the earth.

The depths of the earth trembled,
They shook beneath his mighty voice.

This mighty voice I heard
Loosens the bonds I’m in.

He longs to loosen my bonds,
To reverse the captivity of the captives.

I say, “Blessed are the captives
Whom the Lion raised.”

Those raised by the Lion
Expect no further suffering;

They expect no suffering,
They await the wreaths that wither not.

They receive the braided wreaths
From the Lion, the immortal King.

Let us give glory to the Redeemer
Who rescued the captives from prison.

I was especially excited to find this, since my patron saint is St. Mark the apostle, whose Gospel is traditionally represented by the figure of a winged lion. Here I see the Word of God, both Christ and the Good News, described as the Lion’s roar to wake us up to deeper realities.

I have found that my experiences of chant, hymns, and choral sacred music are prayerful and touch the heart and soul. With their poetic repetitions and vivid images, I think they provoke a gentle parasympathetic balance in our bodily nervous systems and brain. Singing or listening to them as intimate prayer and communal song, they draw us into a clear and alert mind, and seduce us into serene calm and restfulness. Certainly I have found them soothing balm for body and spirit.