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Put together a man with a humble spirit, who for eight years scrapped brilliant compositions until birthing his distinct voice, tintinnabuli (Latin for “little bells”)—and you will thrill with the Estonian genius of Arov Part. I had such an experience.
His Miserere (1992) presents an awesome response to the Ukrainian burning, together with the long look at death’s specter. Stunned are our psyches with grief this Holy Week as we listen. Two liturgical hymns comprise this choral work: the Miserere, the great penitential Psalm 51, and the Sequence Dies Irae, found in the Roman Catholic Mass of the Dead. The composer’s Intimacy with the living Word of God shimmers in each note of the score.
As the piece opens, five soloists implore repeatedly for mercy, accompanied by woodwinds and percussion. Pregnant pauses for reflection follow, slowly building toward thundering drum-rolls: Catastrophe has struck—monumental shuddering follows in its wake. With its resolution, the choir ascends to radiant heights over the deep-throated resonance of the organ, tam-tam, and bell. Then it’s over. Earth knows peace.
We open our eyes and blink, then breathe. Mercy’s sweetness enfolds us within humble silence, until the next wave of grief… and the next theophany—the story of our lives.
As Holy Week begins, many search the scriptures for glimpses of Jesus of Nazareth through prayer and ritual enactment of His passion, death, and resurrection. Both Testaments reference God’s salvation mysteries, a response to the woeful circumstances that we have created for themselves. One of the most powerful images comes from the Old Testament, and still sparks fire in my psyche and reduces me to silence.
The image of an enigmatic suffering servant emerges in four songs, found in the Book of Consolation, attributed to Isaiah’s prophetic school, the Book of Consolation, in the sixth century, BCE.
In the First Servant Song, Yahweh speaks of taking his beloved’s hand and forming Him, endowing Him with the spirit of prophets, gentleness, and soft-spokeness. As servant, His mandate is to serve the cause of right, to be a covenant of His people, and to free the blind and imprisoned.
To his former gifts, the Servant in the Second Song acknowledges his former gifts, adding his tongue like a sharp sword or arrow for disputes, and his light a beacon for all nations. Salvation is world-wide.
The gift of listening enables the Third Servant, with Yahweh’s help, to maneuver the courts; opposition will be devoured “like moths.” Critical, above all, is to lean upon God in the midst of darkness. The first reference to “plucking beards,” to “whippings” occurs in this Song.
But in The Fourth Song, the suffering servant bears the full brunt of unspeakable cruelties, many of which are identical with Jesus’s passion narrative in the gospels. These atrocities, silently borne, address the global sin that still persists.
So, superimposing these vignettes atop each other, reveal another way of viewing Jesus that still silences me, especially Jesus in His suffering members in Ukraine. There, fires still burn.
“Deadly Brinkmanship,” so describes a journalist’s take on Putin’s reputation as he threatens Ukrainian cities of chemical, biological, cyber, or nuclear weapons—”on special combat readiness”—As well as other nations that support his siege. Sounds like the bully across the lot, his slingshot aimed at the munchkin with the torn jacket giggling behind his back.
So, it’s about power ripped out of context like a sizzling electrical current gone haywire. This has happened before. History bristles with war; many have suffered losses of limb and life and identity, only to rebuild with innovative change and to start families within communities. Such upheavals evoke fresh courage and vision.
Those who do not survive, transition to other realms, their spirits afresh with lightness and emboldened by Jesus’s promise in the gospel of Matthew:
…And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Faith and trust in the Cosmic Christ liken us to the munchkin with the refreshing smile. Putin and his “Deadly Brinkmanship” disintegrate within the big picture of salvation—another figurehead wearing slick aviator shoes; some with pumps so as to appear taller.
Heart Whisperings 