Introduction to the Passion Libretto
Welcome, this Holy Monday to the first of six emails you will receive, one per day from today through Holy Saturday. Every day will offer an invitation to each of us for reflection, prayer and meditation individually yet together in the heart of God. These daily emails will include written text, music, and a video commentary by our teacher Cynthia Bourgeault focusing on a five part libretto she put together back in 2004. The libretto was for Ray Adams’ The Passion, an original Holy Week oratorio, composed for the Aspen Choral Society, of which Adams was the resident conductor. Ray Adams (1952- 2013) was a talented conductor, composer, all around bright spirit, and a close personal friend of Cynthia’s. When creating The Passion as part of a series of original oratorios, he wanted a new libretto, scripturally rooted, but portraying Jesus’s Paschal self-oblation not in the traditional modes of sacrificial lamb and scapegoating (tragically directed at the Jewish people), but in terms of a free offering of conscious, universal love. Cynthia reminds us, “It’s a message that still needs insistent replaying today—perhaps even more now than in 2004.”
Our hope is that you will be able to use the texts, music, and video commentaries as a daily meditative practice. Cynthia shares that “each of the libretto’s five movements concentrates on one aspect of the whole bouquet of substituted love and why this cross was not the interruption of [Jesus’s] ministry but the consummation of it.”
This Holy Monday will serve as an introduction and the five subsequent days of Holy Week will dive into each of the five movements. You will find the text for the Passion Libretto below but the music will come in parts throughout the week. As we linger and meditate with a particular facet of substituted love each day, we will individually and collectively prepare ourselves to “come back to this rite of passage in our Christian faith and walk through it in our own time and in our own kind of anguish to see if we too can rest in the beauty and meaning and universal love out of what looks on the surface to be a pointless and tragic violence and wasting of life.”
As we join together in this exploration, listen with the ear of your heart to whether you have a particular aim during these Holy Days of Holy Week. How might you work with these reflections and make space for deep quiet and listening? In what way can you bring a different kind of presence into all that life requires of you during this Holy Week?
Watch Cynthia’s Passion Libretto Introductory Invitation
Here is the PDF version of the whole Passion Libretto for you to download if you wish. We will be engaging in the five Parts, one Part per day, over the next five days.
A blessed Holy Week!
Cynthia Bourgeault & Wisdom Waypoints Board
I learned late about this offering (Maundy Thursday)–will this remain posted on the website for a while after Holy Week so I can finish it?
Yes these will be available as a permanent resource and as blog posts.
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Thank you for this precious gift. I can’t find the recording to listen to it. I would appreciate it if you can reply to my comment with a link to the recording. Thanks!
Listening with my heart.
Katherine Kallis
I am not finding the link to the music?
A long needed new and faithful use of Scripture.
We hear music starting Tuesday, is that right?
Thank you.looking forward to this journey ♥️♥️
My heart is holding close the gifts you have shared in this message and in your relating how the libretto was formed. I already sense an aliveness in the selections that embodies the unfolding of Holy Week moments and mysteries, yet without the painful othering and scapegoating that still felt present in the Palm Sunday liturgy yesterday where we were invited to participate by becoming part of a mob. The scapegoating and antisemitism have always disturbed me and felt like a betrayal of the love we were being shown incarnate, but until I heard your interview Cynthia I had not considered the obvious lack of feminine voices or presence. Thank you.
Thank you for this Easter gift. I am grateful.
I have a question – sort of embarrassed to ask; however, what is your meaning of
“substitute love”? Your response would be helpful for me.
Thanks you and blessings
My heart is holding close the gifts you have shared in this message and in your relating how the libretto was formed. I already sense an aliveness in the selections that embodies the unfolding of Holy Week moments and mysteries, yet without the painful othering and scapegoating that still felt present in the Palm Sunday liturgy where we were invited to participate by belonging part of a mob. The scapegoating and antisemitism have always disturbed me and felt like a betrayal of the love we were being shown incarnate, but until I heard your interview Cynthia I had not considered the obvious lack of feminine voices or presence. Thank you.
Thank you for this beautiful accompaniment to this sacred passage Cynthia and Heather <3
Thank you so much for this beautiful gift for Holy Week, a great way to travel these days together.
Thank you for reminding us this IS
Holy Monday
Walking along with you and others this Sacred Week
Love & MORE love
Thank you Cynthia for this beautiful gift.
With gratitude
Sirkka-Liisa
Thank you, Cynthia and Wisdom Waypoints. I don’t usually look through all of my emails, and I certainly glad I did today.
Blessed Holy Week
I am so delighted to be on your mailing list. Thank you for this incredible gift
Thank you Cynthia for this wonderful Easter blessing
Thank you for this lovely gift!
Is there a place we can hear the score played? Or will recordings of each part of the work be in this series?
Recordings of the pertinent parts of the work will be included in each section. I am sorry that at this point we have not been able to locate a quality recording of the entire piece, and I would in any case not want to release it without the express permission of Ray Adams’ heirs. Will work on that if we make this available again next year!
Thank you Cynthia and Heather for this beautiful offering. I appreciate this generous gift and will share it with my sister as she will be spending this week with me.
Thank you so much,
Carol
Thank you, Cynthia, Heather, and Wisdom Waypoints for such engaging and embodied Holy Week offerings. With this gift and attending Heather’s retreat, Accompanying Jesus and Mary Magdalene through the Paschal Mystery, I will be deeply immersed and held within our web and other webs, connecting us all in love and hope this Holy Week.
Thank you for this precious theme of consummate love. The theme of Christ’s freely given love is so resonate within my heart and spending time with that wisdom is so needed and welcome.
Sincere thanks Cynthia! This will be core to my Holy Week/Easter celebration. I have hoped for this since I first read about it at least 5 years ago!
Blessings,
Mairéad Heaney
Thank you for bringing to light the truth of the universal Christ.
This is a beautiful gift and I am grateful you sent it. Thank you
Lovely! Thank you, Cynthia! Earlier this morning before I read this I downloaded a copy of your book Centering Prayer & Inner Awaking!
How grateful I am to be sitting here listening to this “meeting of remarkable women” sharing the inspiration of this PASSION of Christ. Awed by your account Cynthia of waking in the night to that inspired Psalm.
This is Wonderful, thank you, Cynthia, yet I couldn’t see it hat there was any music downloaded for Monday is that correct?