We all know that Lent is supposed to be a time of deprivation and devotion. Through fasting and prayer we emulate Christ’s 40 days in the desert as he prepared to begin his earthly ministry. One of our goals is supposed to be that we shall emerge, at Easter, prepared to take on new ministries of our own.
Liturgically, one of the things that we traditionally give-up during Lent is the “Alleluia”. Or last least we think we do. In point of fact, at St. Mark’s we do not. Why? Because we don’t sing it to begin with. The “Alleluia” that we are supposed to be giving-up is the Alleluia Verse which properly precedes the Gospel in the Mass. At St. Mark’s, as in many other parishes, a hymn is used in place of the Verse. All the extraneous alleluias that we are so careful not to sing during Lent certainly help remind us by their absence that we are in a penitential season. “The Alleluia,” however, as something precious to be given-up, is likely a foreign concept to most of us.
“Alleluia”(or Hallel-u-jah) is one of only a few Hebrew words which has remained unaltered throughout Christian history. The word, meaning “Praise the Lord”, first appears in the Psalms. It was a congregational response in early Hebrew Temple services. Christian usage derives from the 19th chapter of the Book of Revelation. We know that it was used in early Apostolic worship before the proclamation of the Good News. It may be the text of the first Christian “pop” music. Saint Jerome tells of farmers, tradesmen, and even children singing it to extemporaneous tunes. According to St. Augustine, it was also the first “sea-chanty,” having been sung by Roman oarsmen. The Roman historian Apollinaris tells of Christian soldiers singing Alleluia as a battle-cry as they marched against pagan barbarians.
The Alleluia before the Gospel became increasingly elaborate as Christian worship evolved. In Medieval times, there were sometimes dozens of Alleluias sung before the reading. Singing this song of the angels was seen as a privilege and a way of becoming one with the Eternal Word. To not sing the song was perceived as a great deprivation. It symbolized a deepening of the great chasm between earthly understanding and heavenly understanding. It carried the foreboding of a disconnect from God. Thus, in order to incite the people to increase their efforts to know and do the will of God, singing the Alleluia was forbidden during Lent.
In Europe there were elaborate “depositio” ceremonies associated with the temporary cessation of the Alleluia. The word would be burned into a plaque, placed into a coffin, and carried in a grand liturgical procession (complete with pall-bearers, torchers, thurifers, and crucifers) out of the church to be buried in the cloister. Before Easter Vigil, the coffin would be dug-up and ceremoniously carried back into the church so that the Alleluia song could live again. One less elaborate ceremony, popular in France, was for choir-boys to write the word on old-fashioned wind-up tops and hurl them spinning out of the church into the graveyard. The tops would remain in the graveyard until Easter, when the boys would retrieve them back into the church.
There are two songs in our hymnal which were written for use in the formal ceremonies. “Sing Alleluia forth, in Duteous Praise” dates from the 10th century and “Alleluia, song of gladness” dates from the 11th century. We may not feel the devotion that the early church felt when we sing “Alleluia”. We may not feel as deprived as the church in the middle ages felt when we don’t sing it. Might this mean we are spiritually less alive than they were? Or might it mean that we’re just a little more indifferent about our worship than we could be? It’s something to think about as we prepare, during this Lent, to emerge from our own spiritual graves at Easter.