Tomorrow we celebrate the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. To celebrate this Sunday, we have chosen the chant of the Introit, Respice Domine. The text, taken from Psalm 73, is the end of a very moving prayer inspired by the anguish of the unfortunate who seem to be abandoned. In the verses that make up this Introit, the psalmist presents this prayer very skilfully by appealing, like Moses, to the covenant once made between the Lord and his people.

This covenant, this pact remained, sealed even anew, in the blood of Christ. Moreover, it goes right to the heart of the central idea of this mass, for this covenant has no value except in faith. It is therefore the faith of its members that the Church asks the Lord to look upon, so that he may finally decide, in his mercy, to bring them out of their distress and help them to find him and to live with him in the joy of the promise fulfilled.

As for the melody, composed in mode 7, G-D, it is presented as a song of ardent prayer from the outset. The melody, which starts from the G with a determined movement towards the dominant of the mode and then moves in an interval of thirds in the treble, D-F and F-D, Respice Domine, effectively gives this beginning a character of intense supplication. Next, the melodic development relaxes in testamentum, which is also set off, but with a graceful curve, and without pressure, in a succession by joint degrees. 

In animas pauperum, the melody recites on C, with some inflection to A: the soul, as in a kind of introspection, becomes aware of its miseries and its weight keeps it as if hunched over in anguish; perhaps also in shame, the fact is that the melody no longer rises, it remains on C without reaching the fundamental, D. It is no less pleading. There is even something captivating in this insistence on C, until the melodic movement rises in ne derelinquas and finally finds, in the pressus, the ardour it seeks, which, moreover, immediately relaxes into a delicate complaint in in finem in a semitonal cadence.

Then, at the beginning of the second phrase, there is a touching call: Exsurge Domine. The melodic movement gathers momentum from the first notes of Exsurge through the quilisma, rises like a vehement cry in the bivirga of Domine, and reaches the melodic summit of the piece in this powerful vocative. The soul is filled with anguish, all of it directed towards the mercy of its God. A certain calm soon returns to et judica. It continues until the third phrase where obliviscaris responds to judica. The melodic movement takes on a final expression of intense supplication in quaerentium, and gradually relaxes to wrap the pronoun te, those who seek you, in loving veneration to conclude this supplication.