For many of us, this Sunday is the last time we will hear "Alleluia" during the church service. In our local congregation, we will use the service from the Book of Common Prayer which uses thee and thou and uses a language many of us are familiar with from childhood. As Lent approaches, we enter the most penitential of seasons.
To end our service, we sang "Alleluia Sing to Jesus" as a way of closing off the seasons we have been journeying through since Advent. The "A" word (as we refer to it in Lent) will not return until the Easter Vigil. We have "buried" Alleluia to join us again after the Lenten season.
Does your church "shut down" Alleluia for Lent? If so, did you have an Alleluia Festival of hymns today? How did you worship through music today?
We did "Alleluia" big time today, before a season of quiet. The choir sang one of my very favorite anthems, "Halle, halle, halle," complete with an 86 year old bongo player and a professional percussionist parishioner (try saying that 3 times fast) on the African drums. Pretty lively stuff for an Episcopal church!
ReplyDeleteAll together now, one last time: "ALLELUIA!"
Hmm, I guess not. No alleluias today, plus, our choir is doing its huge choral thing on March 8 and this year it's Handel's Messiah -- the *whole thing* which I assume includes that famous chorus. Being UCC of the Congregational variety, we're lucky if we remember to change the paraments.
ReplyDeleteWe heard a tiny snippet of Easter in the organ's trumpets during the last hymn and postlude. The same trumpets will blast Christus Rignat toward the middle of the Great Vigil.
ReplyDeleteWe sang Alleluia and then put the banner with Alleluia away. In my heart I was singing a more contemporary version of "Sing Alleluia". Let the season of Lent begin.
ReplyDeletewe do indeed shut down the Alleluias, and at our early service Sunday the volunteer organist had a great glut of them, just to tide us over. He's very alert to these things. The BAND played at the later service, and they choose amongst their repertoire on rather different principles.
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