(Please reflect on the scriptures passages and read the commentary before listening to the music.)
Psalm Offering 2, Opus 7
For the victims of sexual violence.
All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans, and turns her face away. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me. For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my courage; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed. Behold my suffering; my young women and young men have gone into captivity. My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the young women in my city. Women are raped in Zion, virgins in the towns of Judah.” (Lamentations 1: 8b,c, 12a,b, 16, 18b; 3:51; 5:11)
Susanna cried out with a loud voice, and said, “O eternal God, you know what is secret and are aware of all things before they come to be; you know that these men have given false evidence against me. And now I am to die, though I have done none of the wicked things that they have charged against me!” The Lord heard her cry. He (Daniel) said to him, “You off spring of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has beguiled you and lust has perverted your heart. This is how you have been treating the daughters of Israel, and they were intimate with you through fear; but a daughter of Judah would not tolerate your wickedness. This lie has cost you also your head, for the angel of God is waiting with his sword to split you in two, so as to destroy you both.” (Daniel 13: 42-44, 56b-57. 59)
Sexual violence. World history has been filled with sexual violence. The Bible is filled with stories of men, women, and children sexually violated. In our present age rape and incest still inflict untold horrors on the lives of victims. The murder of men and women from the GLBTQ community fills our news. For the past three years, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has been reeling from a long history of clergy sexual abuse, most going back 50 to 60 years ago or more. Incidents of sexual violence has escalated seemingly since November of 2016 domestically and abroad. It matters not whether the violence is institutionalized by political motive, or religiously motivated. Sexual violence is always an affront against God and humanity, all of whom have been made in the image and the likeness of God. This Psalm Offering is a prayer for all victims of sexual violence. May God heal the brokenness they have mercilessly suffered at the hands of others.
I began this composition in August of 2016 and completed it on January 1, 2017. For the past 26 years I have been involved in assisting families who have suffered from domestic violence. As ugly and criminal as domestic violence is in the family, exacting horrible tolls on its victims, nothing ever prepared me for the having to deal with the same damnable offence in the Catholic Church. Many children and adolescents suffered unspeakable horror from the very people in whom they bestowed their love and trust. It is out of all this that has led me to compose this Psalm Offering as a prayer for all victims of sexual violence.
THE MUSIC: This music is composed in the form of a Prelude and Fugue. It is written in the key of E minor (the Aeolian mode). The prelude is in the form of a through composed melody often used in church hymnody. The subject of the fugue is borrowed from the opening measures of the hymn. The music concludes with a recapitulation of the hymn.
(c) 2017 by BRUTH Music Publishing Company.
Scriptural Text by Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A.. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. © 2010 by Oxford University Press Inc. All rights reserved.
