Psallam​​ TIBI​

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"ALLELUIA" – CLAMOR MORIENTIUM

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"ALLELUIA" – THE CRY OF THE DYING: would that it please God that we should pass from this world to the next in a state of such grace so as to have this word on our lips and its essence in our hearts.  For this word, which we have kept buried now for 46 days (or 64 nights in the traditional ordo) has a significance far deeper than its common liturgical function, even on this most glorious of nights, and a meaning more recondite than our modern translations can capture.

 

‘Alleluia’ comes to us through the millennia from Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Sacred Scriptures and the worship of our fathers in faith. Written as הללו־יה and formed by the words הלל (halal), a verb in the imperative mood, and יה (yah), a noun which is the abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, the very Name of God, it is customarily known as an exhortation to praise YHWH. However, ‘halal’ has layers of meaning in this ancient tongue that even the common man would have understood in the period of the Second Temple, but which has grown pale for all but those who study the classical languages in our times. Unravelling its connotations is like listening to the first Alleluia of Paschaltide echoing off the walls of the church and ascending the lantern tower – a harmony of mankind’s longing for God.

 

Allel-uia – the shining of the celestial lanterns, the stars, that have invited men of all eras to gaze heavenward and wonder at the works of the Creator, which guided the Magi to the Christ-child, and which broke forth from the heavens, that beauteous light which lit the skies of Bethlehem, as the Angels sang to the glory of God at the birth of the Saviour. And, no doubt, the light that emanated from the tomb of the Crucified Lord as he rose from the dead.

 

Allel-uia – the exuberant acclamation of joy, of one overawed, rejoicing to be in the presence of God. A joy that yields all that a man possesses in himself that is good, to one who is greater or the source of his goodness. The boasting of another’s greatness and delight in the annihilation of pride.

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Allel-uia – a euphoria so ecstatic that it would seem as madness to those who do not experience it. The loss of all faculties and the yielding of all personal strength, power, and dexterity, not to morbidity but to a vigour that transcends the self. Dying into the life of God.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia: Christ who had died is risen as he said! Would that this word be our dying breath, that in the yielding of this mortal flesh to its Creator we might exhale the joy in him which is his Spirit’s breath in us, and be transfigured by his light and configured to his love, which is life in him, in Christ, the firstborn from the dead, who is our beginning and our eternal end.

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