As we journey through Holy Week, the blog is taking a slightly different format with short reflections on Marcel Dupré’s Le chemin de la croix, a musical version of the Stations of the Cross. Instead of one reflection released on Wednesday, these episodes are to appear through the week from Palm Sunday until Good Friday.

Jésus meurt sur la Croix

THE human life fully lived which is the glory of God comes to both an end (for now) and a fulfilment. Τετέλεσται.

What more might be said? Perhaps silence is the more appropriate response to the magnitude of this moment.

And yet, Dupré’s craft was music and we have a movement of the cycle to hear. After the violence of the nails in movement XI, most of this movement is a tendency towards stillness: the vital functions are weaker and slower as His spirit is given up. This mood is interrupted by a flurry of movement and agitation: is this the Lord crying out with a loud voice? Or the curtain of the Temple being rent asunder? ‘The rest is silence’.

Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi: quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum