We did end up taking a spring-break family trip to Chicago after all, combining touristy stops for the kids with my own private commemoration of a long-ago graduation, more on all of which later sometime. We attended Mass on Palm Sunday at the church where I was received into the Church, and where I returned a decade later to marry. Fr. Fitz, the priest who baptized and confirmed me, is no longer there, but the stretch of Kimbark in front of the church now bears an honorary street sign in his name. Tom Weisflog, the organist at our wedding, is still there, and the eucharistic acclamations we sung on Sunday were to music that he composed. The cantor, Tambra Black, accompanied by Weisflog on piano, sung Gabriel Fauré's "En prière", moving and beautiful, as the communion meditation. Yesterday I hunted down a CD of Fauré songs, the better to hear it again and again. And then, just today, flipping through channels and settling on the tail end of an unfamiliar movie, "The Music of Chance," I heard it again, sung by Wendy White.
Si la voix d'un enfant peut monter jusqu'à Vous, O mon Père,
Écoutez de Jésus, devant Vous à genoux, la prière!
Si Vous m'avez choisi pour enseigner vois lois sur la terre,
Je saurai Vous servir auguste Roi des rois, O Lumière!
Sur mes lèvres, Seigneur, mettez la vérité salutaire,
Pour que celui qui doute, avec humilité Vous révère!
Ne m'abandonnez pas, donnez moi la douceur nécessaire,
Pour apaiser les maux, soulager la douleur, la misère!
Révèlez Vous à moi, Seigneur en qui je crois et j'espère:
Pour Vous je veux soufrier et mourir sur la croix au calvaire!
Stéphan Bordèse
thank you for posting this.. I had sung it long ago and have been forever trying to find the music online.. but couldnt remember what the name was.
thank you so very much.
Posted by: Renée | September 21, 2007 at 09:49 PM