Ashes V

In our penultimate installment of Eliot's (somewhat dense and obscure, but intensely personal) poem, we find a quote from one of the most extraordinary moments in the liturgical year. Known as, "The Reproaches," this text is sung during the liturgy on Good Friday, and is as harrowing, in its way, as that awful moment in the accounts of the Passion: My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me!


(A copy of the sheet music for this setting is available here should you like to follow along.)

The sung text in the video above is in both Latin and Greek (so don't adjust your speakers if you aren't picking it up). Here's the English text, at no additional charge:

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

Because I brought thee forth from the land of Egypt: thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.

Hagios, o Theos. Hagios ischyros. Hagios athanatos, eleison imas.

(Holy and mighty. Holy God. Holy and immortal, have mercy upon us.)

Because I led thee through the desert forty years, and fed thee with manna, and brought thee into a land exceeding good: thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.

Hagios, o Theos. Hagios ischyros. Hagios athanatos, eleison imas.

What more could I have done unto thee that I have not done? I indeed did plant thee, O my vineyard, with exceeding fair fruit: and thou art become very bitter unto me: for vinegar, mingled with gall, thou gavest me when thirsty: and hast pierced with a spear the side of thy Saviour.

Hagios, o Theos. Hagios ischyros. Hagios athanatos, eleison imas.

I did scourge Egypt with her firstborn for thy sake: and thou hast scourged me and delivered me up.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I led thee forth from Egypt, drowning Pharaoh in the Red Sea: and thou hast delivered me up unto the chief priests.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did open the sea before thee: and thou hast opened my side with a spear.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did go before thee in the pillar of cloud: and thou hast led me unto the judgment-hall of Pilate.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did feed thee with manna in the desert: and thou hast stricken me with blows and scourges.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did give thee to drink the water of life from the rock: and thou hast given me to drink but gall and vinegar.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did smite the kings of the Canaanites for thy sake: and thou hast smitten my head with a reed.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did give thee a royal sceptre: and thou hast given unto my head a crown of thorns.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

I did raise thee on high with great power: and thou hast hanged me on the gibbet of the Cross.

O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.

[Caveat lector: Most English translations are rendered with some slight differences from the foregoing (and likely with somewhat greater accuracy), but this version had a kind of "King-James-Version-y goodness" that always feels like home to me.]

For those of you who are still sore over that bit of unpleasantness in 1054 (and I'm not going to name names... Brandon), consider the following something of an olive branch. While still technically Roman chant, it has a much more "Eastern" church flavor––and, I must admit, chant with an ison is pretty cool. (JP II would say it's just part of breathing with "both lungs"... though some of those basses on the recording sound like they must have three or four at least! As a tenor, I am simultaneously filled with awe and covetousness. Then again, in opera, the tenor usually gets the girl, so there are some consolations––though mostly everyone is dead by the end anyway.)


Now, back to the text!

Drawing on lines from Micah, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, the text is heavily informed by the Old Testament. The Isaiah quotes are, for me, particularly interesting, as I spent some time digging in the early verses of Ch. 5 during my mission. The prophet sets his words in a style common for his time, inspired by (or at least imitating) a popular song-form. One of the important points we should note comes in verse 2, as the speaker rolls out a litany of all the things he has done to ensure the vineyard's success:

And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes...

The inclusion of the winepress is an unusual point. Normally, one such press would be sufficient for a number of neighboring vineyards; it was something of a communal resource. To build your own winepress was an expensive investment, and it suggests that the master of the vineyard was expecting extraordinary yields. This explains the real sense of despair and anger the master feels when, in spite of all he has done, the vines only produce "wild grapes." (Perhaps we should think about this chapter when we are bemused by a certain NT passage involving a rather unfortunate fig tree.)

Understanding what a winepress really meant to grape-growers is important. I mean, I like grapes as much as the next guy, but really, what's the big deal? In the ancient world, lacking the technologies of refrigeration and rapid transportation that we enjoy today, wine-making was the only way of turning this economically essential fruit into something valuable and lasting. We can nip down to the supermarket, but in the ancient world, months (years, really) of hard work would vanish in a couple weeks if it couldn't be bottled as wine.

Scripturally, the symbolism of the winepress resonates further. In a rather gory passage (Isaiah 63), the theme arises again:

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people [there was] none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.

And for the observant Latter-day Saint, there should be another familiar echo:

[H]e shall deliver up the kingdom, and present it unto the Father, spotless, saying: I have overcome and have trodden the wine-press alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God (D&C 76:107).

(Note the beautiful relationship here between the two kinds of "blood stains" in these passages; the blood of those who reject Christ (in Isaiah)––blood spilled by destruction––will stain His garments, whereas, if our garments are marked with His blood––spilled by salvation––we are rendered "spotless.")

The vicissitudes of life, even the cycles of the year remind us: we are here for a brief season, then we wither and are gone. Only the Master Craftsman is able to make of us something that lasts, something of real value: if we allow Him, he will make us like Himself. After all, Lewis reminds us, everything that exists––every tree, flower, planet, and supernova; every human relationship we cherish––is only here for one purpose: "Every Christian is to become a little Christ."

How perfect, then, that He has chosen to reach toward us (and allow us to reach toward Him) most often through bread and wine.

Anyway, I must dash. (There is nothing like gratitude to remind me just how much repenting I have to do! It's a good thing I still have some Lent left; it's like a runway that lets us get our feet on the ground and taxi to the next liturgical terminal, so we don't just crash into Easter.)

Here's the Eliot you've been waiting for:

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.