We all have our favorites among Gregorian chant propers, and Vovete et Reddite is mine. In the ordinary form, this is the communion chant for next Sunday.
It begins with the Psalmist urging us to gather to make offerings to the Lord but also make vows and accomplish them. So the entire first line has the sound of urging us to act and sustain that action, with the lingering notes on FA, moving to this tricky liquiscent figure on “circuitu.” The first half of the chant ends calmly. And truly it could end there and be very beautiful.
But it doesn’t end there. Suddenly, matters become much more serious. We start again on FA but this time move to LA on the text “Terribili” and with no break pass through this firery phrase that is extremely intense with drama, especially once we get to “principum.” When you sing that, your voice just feels the intensity and the heat of the moment. Then again we sing the word “terribili” and move through another striking musical phrase the burns with the passion of someone singing about an awesome power. Just to listen to it, you know that the story here has taken on a much greater significance at the end that it began with.
And so what are we singing about? Our vows, we are told, are made to “the awesome God who takes away the life of princes; he is greatly feared by all the kings of the earth.” Thus does God stand above all states, no matter how powerful they may appear. God can strike down all earthly power, and so should all earthly rulers live in fear. Who then should receive our vows? The state? Or God?
Is it any wonder that Rousseau considered Christians essentially dangerous to the collectivist-secularist civic order he attempted to create? The chant explains why. At liturgy, we are not singing about the glories of the “general will” but rather about transcendent power that reigns over all. We are loyal citizens, yes, but our first loyalty is to God.
Here is an audio of this chant.
Very insightful comments!
I also just wanted to mention that the English translation does not bring out the nuances of the Latin.
The one in the Douay, Puis XII psalms, is much more faithful to the Latin:
"Make vows and fulfill them to the Lord, thy God, let all who are round about him bring a present to the Terrible One, to him who restrains the spirit of the princes, who is terrible to the kings of the earth."
Of course, "terrible" has shifted in meaning over the years, so "awesome" would be a good synonym.
As a tiny bit of caution, I would not stress too much the political dichotomy between earthly rulers and God here as the selected text is mainly meant to emphasise the majestic power of the Creator, infinitely greater than all other powers. And for that reason, as you say, our first loyalty is to the highest Power here present in the church, that is, Jesus as the Bread and Wine of communion, the sacrificial gift around which we now kneel, as the text implies. This fits well with the Gospel of Pentecost XVII for which this communion text was chosen, concerning the great commandment of loving God above all else.
It is also a good text to prepare us for the September Ember days that soon follow. The September Ember days allude to the Feast of the Tabernacles in which Jews made a pilgrimage to the Temple of Jerusalem around harvest time.
Ted:
Some of us are more thorough in our application of subsidiarity than others. If Satan could make a credible offer of the kingdoms of the world to Jesus, he had to possess them.
I'm delighted to have this text drawn to my attention.
Jeffreyquick:
What you say is true, but just to make clear what I mean is that yes, one can rightly interpret the psalmic text in different ways towards our modern world, but I do not think that making this text political in any way was the main intention, if at all, of the Roman Schola when choosing it as the communion antiphon for that particular Sunday. That is why I suggested a bit of caution on how one speaks of the text per se on the one hand, and how one speaks of it as the Communion antiphon on the other. Rousseau or today's secularists may consider that text dangerous, and indeed it is dangerous for them, but not the Byzantine rulers, nor Pepin, nor Charlemagne who were protecting the Church in the 7th and 8th centuries when this Communion antiphon was composed.