Music for May 24, 2020 + The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Shelter Me – Jan Michael Joncas (b. 1951), Harrison Boyd, baritone

Instrumental Music

• The Day of Resurrection – arr. Ovid Young (1940-2014)
• Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise – Malcolm Archer (b. 1952)

Congregational Music (from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 460 Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)

This week Harrison Boyd sings a song / prayer which was written by American Roman Catholic priest and liturgical composer, Jan Michael Joncas in late March 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The text is a paraphrase of Psalm 23 (the Lord's my shepherd), especially the second verse which acknowledges the experience of “walking in the valley of the shadow of death.”

Fr. Jan Michael Joncas

Michael Joncas is a priest, liturgical theologian, and composer of contemporary Catholic music, best known for his hymn, "On Eagle's Wings". He received a Master of Arts degree in liturgy from the University of Notre Dame in 1978 and went on to study at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome.

He wrote this about the song, "Shelter Me":

These are difficult times for all of us, individually and globally. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life as normal and called for acts of corporate and individual heroism in the face of present suffering and an uncertain future. People of faith may be struggling to articulate their belief in an all-good and all-powerful God in this new era. “Shelter Me” is my attempt as a church composer to find God’s presence even in these fraught times. 

While the text is clearly in the first-person singular, reflecting the intimacy of Psalm 23, I believe that, like many spirituals also using “I” language, it can reflect our common experience when sung by an assembly sharing the same experiences.

This is the last Sunday of the season of Easter, so I open the service with a piano prelude based on the hymn tune ELLACOMBE, which we use for the hymn, "The Day of Resurrection." It was arranged by Ovid Young, a gifted organist and pianist in the Nazarene tradition who for many years was part of the piano duo, Nielson and Young. For more than forty years, the two performed around the world in an array of venues encompassing Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall; Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall; Coventry, England’s Cathedral of St. Michael; Chennai, India’s Academy of Music; Moscow’s Kremlin and Tschaikovsky Hall; Oberammergau’s Passionspiel Theatre; Bern, Switzerland’s Konzerthaus; and the Dallas/Fort Worth Meyerson Symphony Center and Bass Performance Hall. Beyond that, Nielson & Young were hosted for concerts at hundreds of churches and universities, appearing by themselves or with symphony orchestras from coast to coast in the United States and abroad.