Good Shepherd Sunday again – the fourth Sunday of Easter, this time Year A. The gospel has Jesus telling his disciples, “I am the gate of the sheepfold”.
And what did we sing?
- Sung on 12 occasions – The king of love
- Sung on 10 occasions – Hail redeemer
- Sung on 7 occasions – Because the Lord is my shepherd
- Sung on 4 occasions – All people that on earth do dwell; The Lord’s my shepherd
- Sung on 3 occasions – Praise we our God with joy; The summons
I think the message of Jesus as shepherd was there in our song then! Every one of the above, with the exception of the summons, mentions it.
To be honest, there was very little difference with what was sung on the equivalent Sunday in Year C except that ‘Because the Lord is my shepherd’ was more in evidence replacing the more traditional ‘The Lord’s my shepherd’. But my analysis of the 4th Sunday of Lent had this the opposite way round then, so maybe people were making use of a broader repertoire – always a good thing.
And what about the rest of England?
- Sung on 9 occasions – The Lord’s my shepherd(Crimmond)
- Sung on 8 occasions – The king of love
- Sung on 7 occasions – Hail redeemer
- Sung on 6 occasions – Because the Lord is my shepherd; The Lord’s my shepherd (Townend)
- Sung on 4 occasions – Alleluia sing to Jesus; Loving shepherd of thy sheep; The Lord’s my shepherd (Brother James’ air)
- Sung on 3 occasions – All that I am; Guide me O thou great redeemer; Now the green blade; Take our bread; This is my body
I think the first thing to say is that this list is a lot more varied, with Easter hymns like ‘Alleluia sing to Jesus’ and ‘Now the green blade’ being included.
It should be noted that both lists include hymn settings of psalm 22 which was the responsorial psalm of the day. But was the responsorial psalm sung this Sunday? With so many versions of it readily accessible one would have thought this should be the case. You might remember that when I did this exercise for the 4th Sunday of Lent, with the same psalm, the percentages singing it were 32% for my diocese and 42% for the rest of England.
This time I found that, in my diocese, 9 out of 29 places or 30% sang the psalm. For the rest of the country, the numbers were 18 out of 36 or 50%. So, although I had more streams from my diocese (thanks to being unable to attend church due to surgery) only one more place sang the psalm. Nationally, the picture was better and I wonder if this was to do with people singing more during the Easter season.
So which version of the psalm was used for the responsorial psalm? Chant settings were most favoured, with the Gelineau version being used quite frequently. Other versions included metrical settings and other lyrical compositions.
And, though it wasn’t sung as the psalm, I am happy to report that two places this time used ‘Shepherd me O God’.
Music, Liturgy and ME 