Lamentations for Tenebrae - lectio 1 | Gregorian Chant for Good Friday

The Lamentations of Jeremiah are sung during the liturgy of Tenebrae (divine office of Matins & Lauds) on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday on simple, mournful tones. In addition to the standard tones provided, there are optional, more elaborate tones taken from various medieval Mozarabic manuscripts from Spain. This tone is taken from an 11th century codex from Silos, Spain known as the "Missal of Silos."

These lamentations - like the Psalms - can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
1) Historical. It is a prophesy of the destruction of the Jews and Jerusalem for their innumerable evils, especially for their rejection of the Messiah and their Deicide.
2) Spiritual. Jeremiah is a "type" or "prefiguring" of Jesus, like Moses and many others. In that sense, the personal words/prayers of Jeremiah to God can be seen as Christ's words to the Father. And, in as much as we are baptized into Christ and have him dwelling in our souls by sanctifying grace, they can be our words to God also.
3) Spiritual. In as much as we willfully sin, we too are like the Jews, condemning Jesus to death, mocking Him, spitting on Him, crucifying Him. In this sense, the evils we read of concerning the Jews can also be applied to our own souls, broken and desolate with sin, until we repent and return to the Lord our God.

English translation:

Lesson from the book of Lamentations
Lam 2:8-11
8 Heth. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion: he hath stretched out his line, and hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: and the bulwark hath mourned, and the wall hath been destroyed together.
9 Teth. Her gates are sunk into the ground: he hath destroyed, and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more, and her prophets have found no vision from the Lord.
10 Jod. The ancients of the daughter of Sion sit upon the ground, they have held their peace: they have sprinkled their heads with dust, they are girded with haircloth, the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11 Caph. My eyes have failed with weeping, my bowels are troubled: my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the children, and the sucklings, fainted away in the streets of the city.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Return unto the Lord thy God.

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