Kate Keefe

A pilgrim psalm, which bears repeating : 121/122

The last shall be first

The last psalm of the Church’s year for the current year (Year C) is the same as the first psalm for the new year which starts with the First Sunday of Advent (Year A) : Psalm 121/122, a pilgrim psalm. For two Sundays in a row, with very different sets of readings and very different atmospheres and messages, we sing the same psalm. It’s not exactly the same all the way through (of which more later), but the Response and the first verse are identical.

As the year changes, we look both forward and back : here’s a lovely Arts and Crafts Janus-face

Only every third year

This does not happen every year, only when the move is from Year C (where we are now) to Year A. At the end of liturgical year A, the last psalm is 22/23, because the OT reading for that iteration of Christ the King is about the Lord being a true shepherd, and 1 Advent B has Psalm 79/80. At the end of Year B it’s Psalm 92/93, because we are emphasizing the kingliness of the Lord, and 1 Advent C uses Psalm 24/25. But this year, we have 121/122 for Christ the King on November 24th, and then the same again on December 1st at the beginning of Advent. Why, and does it work?

Psalms of Ascents, or Gradual Psalms

It is a brilliant psalm for both Sundays, for several reasons. First of all, it is one of the ‘psalms of ascent’, one of the traditional pilgrim psalms. The usual Catholic title for these is ‘Gradual psalms’, which I rather like, as it sounds as if it’s celebrating our slow creep towards improvement and the Kingdom. These are a bunch of psalms (119/120 to 133/134) which come just after the longest psalm in the whole book (117/118), a complex and artful meditation on the beauty of God’s Law. The next few psalms are brief, and seem briefer because of the contrast.

Going up

The ‘ascent’ could be to Jerusalem, or to the Temple Mount, or up the steps, no one seems to be sure; but I think two things are at work here. Pilgrimages are usually, traditionally, to places hard to reach, and very often uphill, because you express penitence and merit by effort or even suffering; and also there is a convention that you go ‘up’ to Jerusalem the way that in the nineteenth century, people always went ‘up’ to London from anywhere else in the country, even from the north. The same was true of Oxford and Cambridge, which is why being sent home in disgrace is always referred to as ‘sent down’. It’s nothing to do with geographical direction or compass points, and everything to do with aspiration. And they are ‘gradual psalms’ , from gradus, the Latin word for step, because you must travel step by step; no shortcuts.

Pilgrims to Jerusalem

The best, because the longest and most arduous, pilgrimage was to Jerusalem. Here is a link to a wonderful fifteenth-century virtual pilgrimage by Dr Kathryne Beebe, which I stumbled upon while researching this topic, and was enchanted by. And the illustrations are stunning.

Psalms telling the story of a journey

119/120 is a song at the beginning of the pilgrim’s journey, where he is fearful of the people he will encounter on the way and devoutly hopes for God’s protection, while still feeling rather nervous. The next psalm shows the group starting to coalesce (not just ‘I’, but ‘Israel’) and already feeling much braver; it is the beloved and familiar ‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains;/ from where shall come my help?’ (120/121), full of serene confidence, which we had a few Sundays ago. Then we get Psalm 121/122, and we (‘our feet’, ‘the tribes’) have suddenly arrived in Jerusalem. We have reached our destination, as the satnav always says. The later pilgrim psalms are prayers and praise, thanksgiving and celebration, until Psalm 133/134 as the last in this group of psalms, a night-time leavetaking, as the travellers start the journey home.

Psalm 121/122, living in the moment

What is striking about Ps 121/122 is its immediacy. ‘I rejoiced when I heard them say:/ ‘Let us go to God’s house.’/ And now our feet are standing/ within your gates, O Jerusalem.’

There is no explanation or leisurely scene-setting. The speaker could not be more direct. We don’t know who the ‘them’ are which he mentions, but this is immediately overtaken by the excitement of the next line and the sense of arrival and achievement, ‘now’.

At this point the two Sundays’ versions diverge (not US). And I want to talk about them with their preceding readings, because it makes a huge difference to the emphasis.

Christ the King: 2 Samuel 5, and Ps 121/122

The first reading for Christ the King is short. (The context is that Saul is dead by the beginning of Samuel 2, but there is still a lot of fighting going on about the succession.)

Christ the King, serenely reigning from a very gorgeous throne

All the tribes of Israel come to David at Hebron, and assert their kinship with him. They know about David’s prowess, and they know that God chose him to lead them. So they all come together at Hebron, and ‘King David’ makes a pact with them and is anointed king of Israel. (After this, David goes on to conquer Jerusalem and set up his capital city there.)

The psalm starts as we have seen. The second stanza praises Jerusalem ‘as a city/ strongly compact’, and names it as the focus of pilgrimage and power : ‘It is there that the tribes go up,/ the tribes of the Lord.’. The third stanza makes this even clearer : it is the law to praise God there, and it is where the judgment seats were set up ‘of the house of David’; – so, lawful authority for the ages to come.

1 Advent A : Isaiah 2, and Ps 121/122

The choice of stanzas is different for the First Sunday of Advent (A). We sing almost the entire psalm in this version. This is in response to the words of the beautiful and poetic first reading, which describes ‘the vision of Isaiah […], concerning Judah and Jerusalem.’. This is the fulfilment and apotheosis of the place and event that David’s consecration foreshadows. Isaiah sees ‘the mountain of the Temple of the Lord’ being lifted up above everything else, and all the nations will ‘stream’ to it (water flowing uphill, to show how amzing and totally other this will be), and they will say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord’. The whole world will make this pilgrimage. The people look forward to God teaching them, giving them his laws, bringing justice and peace. The sentences roll on, coming to a final, almost breathless call, ‘O House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.’. It is a most beautiful and stirring piece of writing, with real elan. I think it is impossible, even just reading it silently, not to feel the sweep up and down at the cadence like a mighty wave.

The Temple of the heavenly Jerusalem

The essential ‘place’ mentioned is the Temple and the mountain it is on. Jerusalem is mentioned by name, but only once, as a pair with Zion, and I think this is why the two lines about Jerusalem the compact city are omitted from the Advent version of the psalm, in every version except the US’. (The US version keeps all the lines, and ends up with one verse more than everyone else.) The emphasis is rather on Jerusalem as a place of pilgrimage to praise the Lord’s name. We have the thrones of judgement, just as at the end of the Christ the King version, but now we go further, with two stanzas of prayer for the peace of Jerusalem, because now it is more than just a city strongly compact (and therefore defensible if necessary); now it is the home of peace and the house of the Lord. The swords have been hammered into ploughshares, or, as we might say today, the weapons have been put beyond use. This is no earthly address, this is Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem.

Setting the psalm(s)

There was so much similarity between the two versions of the psalm that it would have seemed perverse to write two different settings. I think it’s important to preserve the link between them, so I kept the music the same, except that it was necessary to put extra bars in where there are extra lines. I was very concerned to keep the feeling of ‘going up’ where possible, but it doesn’t technically occur in the words until the second stanza for everyone except the US, where it comes in the second line. So I put it in the melody, which takes a run all the way up the octave. It was difficult with the version of the words for CAN and OZ, so I shifted it to the recorder part, but (I hope) there’s still a feel of moving forwards. Onwards and upwards. It needs to be sung at a good walking pace, not rushing, but not dawdling either.

Ps 121/122, a psalm for coronations

This psalm has been set by many composers (including Boyce, Vivaldi, Purcell…), often incomplete, of course. The most famous setting is probably the Hubert Parry version, which was composed for a king’s coronation in 19o2. Some version has been sung at every British coronation since Charles I (though that did not end well). I don’t think it’s because of a link between this psalm and the feast of Christ the King, however; I think it’s because of the whole tone of triumph and achievement.

Christ in glory ceiling mosaic — Coronation and glory, with a rainbow Jerusalem below

Miles to go before we sleep

Triumph and achievement are not exactly the expected note for the First Sunday of Advent! Rather, what we are doing is being delighted to have got this far, and working out what still remains to be done (the praying for the peace of Jerusalem), and above all, doing what we can to bring it about (last stanza). So the words of the psalm the second time around, with its extra verse(s), help us to focus on going forward, and the job still to be done. Very appropriate for 1 Advent, and not too daunting, because we are aware of the (short) timeframe before the Prince of Peace himself will arrive.

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Does it actually mean me? : excluding language

The Communion of Saints, the Holy Souls

All Saints and All Souls always make me notice the Lectionaries’ choice of excluding language. This is in spite of the names of the feasts, which are comfortably non-gender-specific. The whole point is surely that we are praying for and with all saints and all souls. Most congregations seem to contain (several) more women than men, but of course there aren’t any at the altar. It seems perverse to insist on ‘the just man’ always as our paradigm, especially when it is not necessary. Using a translation like ‘Such are the men who seek your face, O Lord’ (Psalm 23/24, for All Saints) deliberately excludes more than half of the people present, but it is possible to find acceptable alternatives (see the CAN or OZ version of the psalm in question).

Some Christians are female

Practically speaking, what can a church musician do? It’s probably not an option to alter the words of the Response as given in the Mass books, as this will sow confusion, which immediately stops people singing with commitment. So for the Response we are dependent on the bishops’ seeing the light; but you can tweak the cantor’s words slightly. You don’t want to upset anyone or spoil the rhythm (and even I would put those things in that order), but it is possible to make the language less excluding, and this is desirable.

woman with finger over mouth — No need to be silent about the women

Languages with gender

English is a gendered language (though less so than many others), and there is nothing we can do about that. Our scriptures come to us from a time where human rights were not regarded as belonging to women as well. You can’t help to write a faithful narrative if you aren’t allowed to learn to write. History has been presented in a particular way, and the language in which we talk about anything has been affected by it. If ‘man’ and ‘men’ were genuinely inclusive terms, we would not have so much gender discrimination, and women might even turn up for those weekends inviting ‘men’ to discernment of their priestly vocations…..and maybe even be allowed in (now there’s a really terrifying and radical thought). ….And the US would not have needed the nineteenth amendment, because ‘all men’ has in fact only ever meant ‘all men and no women’. (…..And hurrah for New Zealand which got its act together before anyone else on women and the vote.)

Practical considerations

I can’t change the world, or the Church, or even my own parish, but I would like to discuss some of the practical problems of the language of the psalms and its need not to exclude. At the most basic level, ‘man/men’ is a strong single syllable, and ‘people’ is two syllables, the second one weak. This is very important in the psalms, where rhythm and cadence are crucial, so it can be necessary to be slightly more creative rather than simply going for substitution. To go back to All Saints, this is why the CAN version works so well : it translates the idea rather than the word, and it does it with style.

Psalms better than many other texts

I am glad that I am usually working with the psalms rather than the other readings, because so much of the my text is in the first or second person. ‘I’ is not gendered, and ‘you’ has neither gender nor number in modern English, but in some ways, this makes it all the more shocking when you suddenly come up against something like ‘Such are the men’, because it has not been an issue before. I have been feeling included in these prayers; suddenly the door is slammed in my face. I am excluded; I don’t feel that I am part any longer of the company that loves to seek the Lord’s face. Let’s see what might help.

Hurrah for adjectives

Adjectives can stand alone quite comfortably for a neutral sense : ‘the just’, ‘the poor’; so it’s possible often just to leave out ‘man’ where it occurs. I should not need to say this, but I am not doing this in order to exclude ‘men’, but to include everybody. I like men, I even married one, and I have sons as well as daughters. I want everyone to feel that they are included.

The pronoun problem

The big problem is pronouns. We don’t have neutral pronouns for people in English (because it is a gendered language, just as Latin is), so if the sentence goes on after ‘the just’, ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ will keep cropping up. In an ideal world, you could alternate between stanzas, so half the time it would be ‘she’ or ‘her’ instead. That is not going to happen. It need not be a big deal, but some people would still object (though it’s worth asking them why it is such a problem, as the words themselves are translations of translations and not intrinsically magic). There are in fact many cases in the psalms where the adjectival noun (‘the poor’ etc) is followed by the neutral plural ‘they’, which is on-trend at the moment.

Try it the other way round

I think it would be a good corrective if, maybe once a year, there were a Sunday Mass where, without making a fuss, each occurrence of the word ‘man’ were changed to ‘woman’, ‘he’ to ‘she’, ‘him’ to ‘her’. I don’t think you would need to do anything else to make some of the men (the ones paying attention) in the congregation feel a little uncomfortable. Because many (if not all) women do, nearly every Sunday. We should not be using language which excludes them.

We can all be ‘sons’

‘Sons’ is a particularly tricky case, as ‘sons’ have legal rights (of status and inheritance) which daughters usually didn’t (that’s why we have that dreadfully clumsy ‘co-heirs’ in the Proper).

Jesus made us all ‘sons’ of God, so no one is a second class citizen. Maybe we should put this ‘sons’ in inverted commas, so that its significance is a little clearer.

‘Sons of men’ is an expression which annoys me, as it is a periphrasis (even a cliche) which means nothing more than ‘human beings’, but it’s made up of two unnecessarily excluding words and it totally omits any reference to the woman who has actually done the labour to deliver the child. You notice in certain psalms, just as in other certain sets of prayers at e.g. Morning and Evening in the Divine Office, that certain writers like to use such expressions repeatedly (Psalm 11/12, for example, Ps 28/29), and it can become a little wearing.

Moving from exclusion to inclusion : Psalm 28/29

To take a specific example : in Psalm 28/29, I’d be very tempted to replace ‘you sons of God’ with ‘children of God’, which has the same syllable count and just needs the stress shifting slightly. It’s a call upon everyone to praise God; why on earth (sic) should it be gendered? With good will, this does not need to be a problem, and I do know that it is not the most important thing; but Jesus was all about inclusion, especially of those who might be overlooked by other people.

The Lord bravely including a woman in the conversation

Age is no excuse

‘Brethren’ is almost archaic enough not to matter, but not quite. It’s just like addressing a group of students as ‘gentlemen’, something I am old enough to have experienced personally; nowadays, it’s rude. ‘Brothers and sisters’ is fine when speaking; when singing, you can substitute ‘people’ for ‘brethren’. Same syllable count, same stress pattern.

Location can make a difference

Different countries do handle this differently, and if excluding language is bothering you, it might be worth checking the other versions of a given psalm. There is a sad lack of follow-through, however, and sometimes a psalm starts well and then flounders. An example from All Souls is the CAN version of Psalm 102/103, which starts so well with ‘children’ and ‘those’, moving on to ‘we’ and ‘us’ as pronouns. Then mid-verse it suddenly switches to ‘he’, ‘his’, and ‘him’, which is disconcerting. I’d stick to ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’.

The Church thinks in centuries, we are told, and is still to catch up with Jesus’ ease of manner when dealing with women. We don’t so much need a separate theology of women as a realisation that what the sexes have in common is far more than what divides them. Women are people too. We can all be people! Our liturgical language won’t be perfect for a long time yet, it’s a work in progress; but let’s try to make it including rather than excluding where we can, and remember our sestren as well as our brethren.