Thinking Anew:IN APRIL 1770 the composer Mozart was in his early teens, when he visited Rome with his father. It was Holy Week and they attended ceremonies in St Peter's where for the first time, the young Mozart heard the magnificent Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. He was overwhelmed by the music but it was forbidden, on pain of excommunication, for anyone to copy or perform this piece anywhere else. But that did not deter the young Mozart who quickly returned to his lodgings and wrote down the entire piece from memory, an extraordinary feat by any standard.
It is important not to let the music, however wonderful, to obscure the words of psalm 51 which it accompanies. It begins: “Have mercy upon me O God [Miserere mei, Deus]” and forms part of tomorrow’s liturgy.
Originally this psalm may have been used as an acknowledgment of corporate responsibility for the nation’s failures by the people, led by their rulers.
It begins with a fervent prayer for mercy making the point that their ultimate failure was moral and that the essence of this failure was that it was a rejection of God’s will, even though others suffer as a result: “Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” There is a strong tradition in the Old Testament of calling the nation to account in this way for these were a people who, on the face of it, gave religion a prominent place in their lives. But again and again although they were good at what might be called the religious externals, the rituals and so on, they failed to live what they professed in worship, especially when it came to economic and social justice.
As a people we Irish have been too confident about our religious virtue for too long. We put enormous efforts into religious observance but as we consider the state of the nation today and indeed the state of the church, are there not serious question marks over the integrity of it all? In the current economic crisis for example it is understandable that people are angry with those in positions of influence such as politicians, bankers and others. But doesn’t responsibility extend much further to those of us who indulged in waste and excess? We wanted and voted for more and more and more. As our human instincts to be selfish and greedy took over we supported those who promised us most with little regard for the consequences for the country and no thought for those who were given least. Ours is a moral crisis with economic consequences – a failure to live responsibly as a nation in the light of the values we have long paid lip service to. And our response as a people is fragmented, pointing fingers everywhere but at ourselves. There is little sign of the corporate sense of guilt or responsibility represented in the psalm.
There is nothing new in this. St Jerome was aware of similar problems back in the fourth century: “To our shame, the world is tumbling down in ruins all round us, but our sins are not included in the downfall. There is no country in the world without its asylum seekers. Buildings once regarded as sacred have fallen in dust and ashes and yet we still set our hearts on value for money. We live as though we were going to die tomorrow, and yet we build houses as though we were going to be here forever. Our walls, entrance porches are lavishly luxurious, while Christ is dying at our doors naked and starving in the persons of his poor.” We make a fundamental error if we think that our problems are purely economic and that money can solve everything. We need to recover things of much greater value, those gospel values which are the bedrock of a just and fair society. A mark of that society will be that the vulnerable and the disadvantaged at home and abroad are protected. Christians must speak up, not for themselves, but for those who are not and will not be heard.
“Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God” – St Bernard of Clairvaux.
GL