My Esteemed Father Damien,
I beg your blessings and guidance on this labor of love, the web site www.hymnsandchants.com which is still nascent and opened ended, meaning that it will never be complete and if it is God’s Will may still occupy my time well into my retirement. As you will see, this project is an exercise in ‘holy theft’ in that none of the content belongs to me other than the time and effort; even the time does not belong to me, but to God and may be revoked at any moment.
My hope is that this work might call someone to the Cistercian vocation; even one would suffice to redeem my effort. The juxtaposition of Triplex and Solesmes interpretations of the 33 Benedictions is more of an academic interest. May God give me grace as I follow in the footsteps of Father Chrysogonus.
You meet so many people, but perhaps you may remember me. I was inducted as a tertiary this past July. We spoke in your office about the decades of abstinence by Luisa Piccaretta and I brought to your attention the Hindu holy man who has abstained from food and water for seventy years and that I thought that he was further evidence, in the millenniums to come, of the divinization of mankind.
From the main menu, under Text is a menu for Fiat which will bring up the menu which will direct the user to the Servant of God’s writings, navigable by volume or chronologically. When all 36 volumes are scanned in, I will catalogue them by the Church calendar so that we may see if there is a common thread over the years, on the Feast of the Assumption, for instance. You will notice that I am highlighting Christ’s words to Luisa in red, the Theotokos’ in blue and Luisa’s words to Christ in green. Her musings will remain in black. I have been so bold as to correct punctuation, misspellings and grammar. The translator was obviously not a native English speaker. Ironically, by the time I finish this part of the project, Luisa will be call Blessed and Rome will officially come out with a better translation, anticipating her canonization. She will become a Doctor of the Church in the same vein as St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Theresa.
This site is media rich, meaning that the graphics will load slowly without a fast internet connection. I will present to you a CD version without this limitation when I see you at Christmas. I will be eager to show you further progress in the decision tree. As it grows there will be code monkey work among its fulsome branches, such as collating all 33 versions of ‘Christ in Mystery’. The first revision that is about to begin is a change in nomenclature for the two opposing views in the Great Gregorian Rhythm Controversy. These two rallying cries inspire avarice and vainglory; tenures are won or lost over these things, so that henceforth ‘Solesmes’ shall read, the more traditional, ‘Ad Libitum’ and ‘HIP’ (Historically Informed Performance) shall read ‘Triplex’. The Psalms in the Divine Office are accented in boldface in the rhythmic style of the New Jerusalem.
Please reply and tell me how Brother René is doing.
In Obedience;
Yours in Christ,
Gary
Our Help is in the Name of the Lord