Today we celebrate the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time. On this occasion, we have chosen at Neumz the communion chant Christus resurgens. A peculiar detail of the chants of the proper of this 13th Sunday, for year A, is that the verses of the alleluia and the communion chant are taken from the great Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans 6:9, "We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death has no power over him." This is a message full of certainty and hope because it refers not only to Christ but to each one of us. The Christian vocation is, by its very nature, a vocation of Christian holiness, a total break away from sin, and existence in Christ. His resurrection is for us the beginning of a path of new life, centered on a relationship with him, which gives full meaning and value to any other human bond.

Saint Augustine comments in his sermon 229: “But let us focus our reflection, beloved, on the resurrection of Christ, because in the same way that his Passion was a symbol of our old life, so his resurrection contains the mystery of new life. That is why the Apostle says in Romans 6:4, ‘We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.’ You have believed and you have been baptized. He died the old life, received death on the cross, and was buried in baptism. The old life, in which you lived badly, has been buried and resurrected in the new life. Live well, live to live; live in such a way that when you die, you do not die... Begin to carry out in the spirit, living holily, what Christ manifested to us through the resurrection of his body.” We can only make our own the words of such a magnificent light for the Church, as Saint Augustine is, and deeply meditate on them before singing this communion chant: Christus resurgens; and we with Him.

As for the melody, it is composed in mode VIII, it is all contained joy, an immense and interior joy. The person praying expresses his infinite gratitude towards the risen Christ and sings this victory, joining Him in the triumph of Life. Although mode VIII provides a certain paschal triumph, the melodic movement is quite restrained. There are only two jumps of a fourth if we abide by the melodic restorations of the Graduale Novum, and on very few occasions the modal range, Sol-Do, is exceeded, with the low Mi or the high Mi, very rare in this mode. 

The beginning of the piece, Christus, gives color to the entire piece, the three degrees that will dominate the composition: Sol Si Do. The Graduale Novum restores the beginning, Sol-Si, the semitonal relationship Si-Do, always brings that closeness and a certain emotional charge that becomes evident in this incipit; the salicus Si-Si-Do contributes to a great extent to this. In the next incise, resurgens, resurrected, leaves that modal range for the first time. In the accent of the word, the gaze is placed on the heights with great fervor, the Re is reached, and joy momentarily overflows: resurgens, that adjective that accompanies Christ and manifests his victory, is thus enhanced thanks to this melodic elevation. After that, the word mortuis, from among the dead, follows the victorious echo of Christ, with the salicus Si-Si-Do, which continues to amplify that inner joy, in a certain way contained, and the melody settles on the fundamental. In the last incise of this first phrase, the melody rises from the Sol to the Si note and resounds in each monosyllable, jam non, no longer, emphatically and forcefully advancing towards the verb moritur, dies, in whose accent that victory is heard again triumphantly, like on the word incipit, in Christus: (Sol) Si-La Si-Do. This last incise is, in this way, clearly connected to the beginning, but with the masterful touch of the low Mi, Christ finishes "humiliating" death on one side, (note the letter h in the Laon manuscript, which means "humiliter") and the person praying, in turn, also bows before Christ who conquered. The alleluia that concludes the phrase resounds like a reverent echo, bowing again in the low Mi (the Graduale Novum very aptly reinstates the porrectus, Sol La-Fa-Sol Mi, conferring even more reverence on this phrase’s final cadence).

The second phrase begins by prolonging that feeling of triumph before death, the melodic movement in mors illi is an echo of the end of moritur and the alleluia that follows. From the low Mi that finishes illi, the person praying allows himself to be carried away by the victory of Christ, and in an agile melodic ascent, that first settles on the adverb non, underlined by the manuscript notation, Do-Do-La (Si-Do-La in the Graduale Novum version, again the emotional charge of the Si-Do), and then overflows in dominabitur, (it will not) dominate. Joy explodes in a shout of exultation, reaching the high Mi, masterful in the use of the scandicus in the first syllable as well as in the jump of a fourth, Mi-Si, which magnificently underlines the accent of the word before concluding it with a cadential formula in where the Si-Do and its emotional charge resound, very characteristic of this piece.

The first of the two final alleluias is, once again, an echo of what has just been manifested (the Graduale Novum restores the first pes, Do-Mi): third and last descent of the fourth, Mi-Si, like in dominabitur. The last alleluia, in a gradual descent towards the Sol full of immense reverence and fervor, synthesizes the tone of the whole piece by sounding the Do, the Si, adds the La that does not appear in the incipit and the Sol: the person praying returns to the contained happiness, to the interior joy, to savor that victory of Christ in the depths of his being.