Three days ago, our tinieblas ended, chanted to honour the Lord, contemplating on His holy Passion, in fervent prayer, in that natural darkness that recalls the spiritual darkness that once enveloped the world awash in sin, that we may rejoice in the light of His resurrection, having reconciled the world unto Himself when He died on the Cross.
We managed to record the first parts of our tinieblas.
| Spy Wednesday | |
| Maundy Thursday | |
| Good Friday |
Ut in omnibus laudetur Dominus.
Today, we turn 9 years.
We came to the Traditional Latin Mass under different circumstances. We stayed. And, in 2009, we decided to sing. Eleven of us gathered in that first practice we ever had to stake our future on Attende, Domine, glowing nonchalantly on the back of our heads the enervating sun of that second Saturday in February 2009, right after afternoons began to swelter, when the amihan would usually and disappointingly whimper into a mere memory of Siberian coldness.
In the course of our nine years the demographic of this first eleven has become a fascinating factoid, not because our youngest was then a teenager and our oldest not yet quartering a century, nor because most of us were still working for our undergraduate degrees, but astonishingly because most of us unexpectedly and perplexingly came from that institution, which, as a neonate, allegedly received in 1910 the moniker la escuela del diablo thanks to a parish priest from Surigao [1]. It must really be quite disarming that most of the first members of the choir—many came and went; many stayed—pursued and finished their education in the University of the Philippines (click on that doughnut graph and look!).
Novem abhinc annos, we continue to whittle down a little and swell up a little. And so we soldier on, in season and out of season. Not because change is so fearsome we would rather bury our heads in our enormous chant books, but because nothing out there can quite replace the beauty of the sacred music we are privileged to sing and experience in the Traditional Mass. “We carry a mission transcending time and space: the transmission of Tradition that has gained for the Church triumphant greater glory in heaven, the Church militant assiduous warriors on earth, and the Church suffering spiritual respite in purgatory” [2].
Deo gratias !
[1] Michael Tan, American UP (8 January 2008): PDI.
[2] Siniculus, Spes Ecclesiæ juventus (17 February 2014): Dei præsdio fultus (2014) http://deipraesidiofultus.blogspot.com/2014/02/spes-ecclesiae-juventus.html.
Two years ago, we sang a hymn to Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in her very presence.
Today, we sang it again!
On 9 April this year, Palm Sunday ushered in Holy Week, days which Holy Mother Church, in union with Christendom, specially devotes to the commemoration of the perfect Sacrifice on Calvary offered by our Lord Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, with Himself as the Victim, our Paschal Lamb. The Sacred Triduum relives in a very special manner this very sacrifice by which the Lord reconciled the world unto Himself, the very same sacrifice bloodlessly re-enacted on our altars.
Christ is risen, alleluia! Truly He is risen, alleluia!
The Office of Darkness—Officium Tenebrarum in Latin—comprises the offices of matins and lauds traditionally sung or recited in the evening for the last three days of Holy Week, what we call the Sacred Triduum. In the Philippines, this office is called in its Spanish name, tinieblas, which has also lent its name, at least in some localities, to the large wooden clapper installed in the belfries of those times, more widely known as matracas, apparently because when the time of the customary noise was come, the belfry clapper was also sounded. The Choir chanted the tinieblas at the new chapel of the Parish of the Most Holy Redeemer in the Diocese of Cubao progressively later in the evening of Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.
As in 2015 and 2016, the tenebrario, what we call in Latin as the candelabrum triangulum and in English as the tenebrae hearse, holding fifteen sockets to support fifteen candles, and the Lectionarium tenebrale pro Tridui Sacri matutinis proper to the Choir, containing the notations of all the lessons sung during the Office, were used. These fifteen candles are progressively extinguished after each of the nine psalms of Matins and five psalms of Lauds. The six altar candles are put out after each double verse of the Benedictus. As the Office progresses, the chapel increasingly becomes darker and darker. At the end of the Offices, only the topmost candle on the tenebrario remains lit.
Christus factus est pro nobis obœdiens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis !
Today, we turn 8 years.
We came to the Traditional Latin Mass under different circumstances. We stayed. And, in 2009, we decided to sing. And so we soldier on, in season and out of season. Not because change is so fearsome we would rather bury our heads in our enormous chant books, but because nothing out there can quite replace the beauty of the sacred music we are privileged to sing and experience in the Traditional Mass. “We carry a mission transcending time and space: the transmission of Tradition that has gained for the Church triumphant greater glory in heaven, the Church militant assiduous warriors on earth, and the Church suffering spiritual respite in purgatory” [1].
Deo gratias !
[1] Siniculus, Spes Ecclesiæ juventus (17 February 2014): Dei præsdio fultus (2014) http://deipraesidiofultus.blogspot.com/2014/02/spes-ecclesiae-juventus.html.
Cappella Gregoriana Sanctæ Cæciliæ olim Xicatunensis 