Jul 24 Thu
Why do we repeat, “Lord, have mercy”?
In the Mass, after the Penitential Rite, having bridged the gap between God’s love and our feeble love through penance, we feel the need to express our joy again. The presence of Christ makes us break into praise with the Kyrie and the Gloria.
To give glory to God and to beg his mercy are two reasons why man turns to God: We know that God is almighty, and we ask him to have mercy on us. All the nuances of these two inseparable purposes are expressed in the Kyrie.
Kyrie eleison means “Lord, have mercy.” This formula comes straight from the Gospel. Both the blind man of Jericho and the Canaanite woman cried, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And the lepers cried aloud, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” (Lk 17:13).
St. Josemaría invites us to consider:
“Don’t you feel the same urge to cry out? You who are also waiting at the side of the way, of this highway of life that is so very short? You who need more light, you who need more grace to make up your mind to seek holiness? Don’t you feel an urgent need to cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me”? What a beautiful aspiration for you to repeat again and again!"
This cry of supplication passed into the liturgy of Christians, for we too have to call upon the divine mercy. But this prayer presupposes a previous declaration of our guilt: It is the completion of an earlier invocation. It is, in reality, the response to a litany. The Kyrie is a remnant of those litany dialogues, of those frequently long prayers that accompanied the procession of the celebrant up to the altar. It originated in the Greek speaking East, where the Spanish pilgrim Eteria heard it sung in Jerusalem about the year 390. You probably know that Greek, rather than Latin, was the prevalent liturgical language of the early Church. From the East, the litany passed into the Latin Church.
Toward the eighth century, the pope reduced the acclamations to just nine. The first three were addressed to God the Father. The second group of acclamations, which in Rome became “Christe eleison” (Christ, have mercy), was addressed to God the Son, and the last three invocations were to the Holy Spirit.
People received a triumphant warrior after a battle with similar acclamations. They celebrated his victory, as well as sought his favor. And that is precisely the meaning the acclamations keep, transposed to the supernatural level. The Kyrie is a song by which the faithful praise the Lord and implore his mercy.
We have nothing, but we hope to receive everything from him -especially his mercy, which is indispensable for us to be forgiven.
The Kyrie is also a clear and vibrant profession of faith, because when we acclaim Christ as our Lord, we express our determined resolution not to serve two lords, but him alone.