30/08/2026
We celebrate today the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. To celebrate this Sunday, we in Neumz have chosen the offertory chant Domine in auxilium. The text is taken from Psalm 39:14-15. It is a plea that is always on the lips of the Church, which is always facing persecution here and there... "Come quickly to help me, LORD!" It is also in our mouths, for the visible and invisible enemies of our souls constantly threaten us too. The text of our offertory contains a curse: "May those who seek to destroy my life be shamed and confounded” (Psalm 39:15). The enemies of the psalmist are mentioned. This often occurs in the Psalms, and the chastisement of the Lord is invoked upon them. In the light that we have received the message of Christ and his infinite demands for forgiveness, the enemies are no longer the people of God. They are no longer those of this or that individual because the new law asks us to love them. They are no longer brothers in humanity, but spiritual realities: they are our sins, our evil deeds, and also the instigators of these deeds, that is, the devil and his hosts of unholy spirits, who belong irrevocably to the world of darkness, hatred, and pride. We men, inferior creatures but graced with the love of God who became incarnate for us, have become the objects of incurable hatred on the part of these invisible beings. The spiritual warfare between light and darkness is a reality that we must not ignore or be indifferent to.
As for the melody, this offertory presents the melodic peculiarity of having a sort of refrain. In fact, most of the ancient offertories were responsorial, that is to say, they consisted of various ornamented verses that were sung by a soloist or a schola, separated by a refrain interpreted by the choir. Our offertory is a vestige of this ancient form of singing during the long offertory procession. The first phrase, which very briefly serves as a refrain (Domine in auxilium meum respice), is followed by a longer and more developed verse, which is then followed by the third phrase, a repetition of the same refrain, with a melody that is perfectly identical to the first phrase.
This melody is composed in mode VI. It is modest, it does not move beyond the La, and generally remains within the interval of a third, Fa-La, with some descents to the lower fourth (Fa-Mi-RE-Do) of mode VI. It is a melody imbued with great peace. It is the prayer of a soul that is completely abandoned, that rests in the arms of God, with tranquillity and joy, so profound that nothing can move it.
Since the beginning of the piece, the soul sings full of confidence on the fundamental, the Fa, amplified by the tristropha, before the descent of a fourth on the final syllable, where it bows with total reverence on the pes quadratus, Do-Re. From there, it returns with a beautiful impulse back to the Fa in the accent of the word auxilium, underlined by a bivirga. It is truly the peaceful triumph of trust that is expressed here from the beginning, and this nuances the text, which in itself recalls a cry for help. The word auxilium also concludes with a pes quadratus, Fa-Sol, which invites the melodic movement to continue its crescendo to the possessive adjective, meum, to the climax of this phrase, where that confident tenderness in the Lord fully blossoms. The melody reaches for the first time the dominant, the La, with a beautiful and solemn movement of elongated scandicus, that receives the intensity of the complete confidence of the prayerful one, and of the help that he receives from the Lord. The La is duplicated by a clivis with episema in the Einsiedeln manuscript. It will continue to sound in the final syllable of the word but with a lighter and more flowing movement before this melodic movement returns definitively to the Fa to underline with an elegant cadential torculus the imperative, which concludes this first phrase, respice, look, set your gaze: in the cadence, the degrees of Fa and Sol, on which this first phrase is almost exclusively based, are the ones that draw the word respice, this call or look back, of the prayerful soul for the Lord to turn his eyes towards him and help him. Everything is intimacy and confident hope.
The second phrase starts swiftly, the prayerful one raises his voice, confundantur, be confused, the movement towards the La is decisive, especially in the accent of the word. The epiphonus invites us to savor this supplication, with all its letters, before the melody reverently returns to the Fa: the prayerful singer has complete certainty that he will be heard. In revereantur, be ashamed, after a brief recitative on the Fa, which enhances this assurance that the supplication will be heard, the melody descends to the Re. In the accent of the word, from the articulation of the initial Re emanates a prostration of the melody that ends up "nailing" or settling itself on the Do, for those who will be confused and will have to kneel before the Almighty. The whole melodic movement flows, is quick, and is of great reverence in the low register.
The ascent of qui quaerunt, with its very firm and somewhat emphatic accent, brings us back to the Fa. Again with a leap of fourth, but this time ascending, with the initial articulation in the accent of quaerunt, giving a lot of force to this verb, but this impulse is contained, calm, and becomes interior and contemplative in animam meam. Those who seek my soul, all that separates us from God, that incites us to fall on our path of elevation. The prayerful singer never loses his serenity and he does not feel disturbed in this chant: especially in the possessive adjective meam, he sings with reverent devotion in the depths of his being. Note the use of the quilisma for the first and only time in this offertory widening that contemplation, as well as the oscillation of the melodic movement around the Re in the low register of the piece, even coming to touch the Do.
In the last incise, ut auferant eam, to take it away, the same motif is repeated as in qui quaerunt, an ascending leap of a fourth that gives a vigorous impulse to the melody and removes it from its contemplation. The accent of auferant is also emphasized, but the melody on this occasion goes beyond the Sol and rises to the La at the end of the verb, echoing the auxilium meum (Fa-Sol-La-Sol). This devout and confident offertory concludes with an admirable cadence, and synthesis of the piece, in eam, she (my soul): a masterful descent of thirds, La-Fa-Re, full of reverence and devotion, united to each unisonic development around the Fa, with two leaps of ascending and descending fourths, Do-Fa, Fa-Do, is simply the last compositional genius of this chant and the finishing touch to a confident, serene, peaceful supplication, in which the prayerful one looks at the Lord, seeking his help and knowing for certain that his Creator will give it in return.
Image: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek lit. 6 f. 25v
Listen to the whole chant at: https://app.neumz.com/listen/missa-domine-in-auxilium-6/30-08-2026