Renew Our Days as of Old

The title of the retreat was taken from the Book of Lamentations. The catecheses are woven around the words of the Book. The theme of the retreat was finding personal ways of returning to the time when closeness to God seemed easy and obvious.

In order to draw closer to the content of the book and not limit ourselves to a verbal commentary, each day the programme included listening to a “musical commentary” – a meditation on passages from the Lamentations set by Orlando di Lasso, performed by the ensemble Collegium Palestrinæ.

The Book of Lamentations is a poem made up of five songs. The first four begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet (an acrostic). The fifth consists of 22 verses (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), but they do not begin with the corresponding letters. Although the acrostic disappears in translation, translations of the Book have long marked the successive letters by writing them in the margin. The Book is an extended, skilfully composed lament addressed to God over the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel carried out by the Babylonians in 587/6 BC. The songs were composed much later. The title of the book comes from the Latin (threni, lamentationes) and Greek (threnoi) translations, the latter also containing an introductory verse added to the original: “And it came to pass, after Israel was taken captive and Jerusalem made desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem.” Hence tradition attributes the authorship of the Book to Jeremiah.

The Lamentations have been used in the liturgy of the Church since time immemorial. They form the core of Tenebrae, the morning office of the breviary formerly celebrated from Holy Thursday to Holy Saturday (today on Good Friday and Holy Saturday). Both the responsories of Tenebrae and the additional chants are taken from this Book. The heart-rending, pleading prayer of Jeremiah (chapter five of Lamentations) concludes the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday. Christians saw in the Book a lament that no longer concerned the destruction of Jerusalem – the result of Israel’s apostasy from its Lord – but the death of the Son of God. Sung during the days of the Paschal Triduum, it became a commentary on Christ’s prophecy: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (…). But he spoke of the temple of his body” (Jn 2:19ff).

Over the successive days of the retreat the ensemble will perform successive songs of the Lamentations. The division and choice of verses correspond to the liturgical structure of the chants of Tenebrae. The composer who set them was Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594), one of the greatest composers of the late Renaissance and one of the most prolific composers in the history of music.

Listen to the full set of recordings:

During the retreat you can hear: