New York Polyphony: "If ye love me"

NYP sings Thomas Tallis in Länna kyrka in Bergshamra, Sweden; gorgeous. 

"New York Polyphony will release 'Times go by Turns' Summer 2013, the highly anticipated follow-up to their acclaimed BIS Records debut 'endBeginning'."

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may 'bide with you forever;  E'en the spirit of truth.  (John 14:15-17)

"To want nothing in return...."

Here's another lovely passage from the 1960s-era A Member's-Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous; my bold.

It is also apparent by now, I hope, that A.A.'s program of action is not the rushing to and fro so often envisioned by the newcomer, nor even the unflagging carrying of the message to other alcoholics. Instead, its action is concentrated for the most part on the inner man, involving his deepest sensibilities and values. Only three Steps - the Fifth, Ninth, and Twelfth - involve other people. The other nine concern themselves with the interior life of the alcoholic. Yet in their observance the ultimate result is to turn the alcoholic inside out - from himself to others.

An oft-quoted sentence from the book Alcoholics Anonymous is: "Self-centeredness ... is the root of our troubles." And one of the earliest evidences of the basic change in the personality of the recovering alcoholic is the slow, hesitant, frightened, but persistent offering of himself to others. Alcoholics are numbered among the great "gimmes" of the world. "Gimme a break ... Gimme a chance .. Gimme time ... Gimme understanding ... Gimme love." In A.A., these self-same "gimmes" come to be numbered among the great givers, and lo, some of them even learn to want nothing in return.

Confession and grace

More from A Member's-Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous (my bolding):

It may also appear to some of you that in the Fourth and Fifth of its Twelve Steps, A.A. might very well be accused of talking out of both sides of its mouth at once. If you will recall, these Steps are:

“4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
“5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Here, it would appear, is an organization that on the one hand claims there is no moral culpability involved in the disease of alcoholism, and on the other suggests to its members that recovery entails a searching and fearless accounting of this culpability to God and to another human being. I personally feel that this apparent paradox results from the empirical knowledge gained by the founders of A.A. I believe they found, as we all have since, that no matter what you tell the newcomer about the disease of alcoholism, he still feels guilty. He cannot blind himself to the moral consequences of his drinking: the blight he has visited upon those around him and the shame and degradation he has inflicted on himself. This load of conventional guilt – and I use the word “conventional” advisedly – as well as the alcoholic’s stubborn and perverse wish to cling to it, is the oldest of his “old ideas.” It is the oldest because it started first, and in most cases it will be the last to go. But go it must if the alcoholic’s attitude toward himself and hence the world around him is to undergo any basic change. That’s why I believe the founders of A.A. learned in their own experimentation that the alcoholic must be given a conventional means of unloading this burden of conventional guilt. Hence the Fourth and Fifth Steps.

"The splendor burning at the heart of things...."

This comes from Edward Feser's blog:, and a post in which he's continuing his (now 10-part!) series on Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.  Here he's again reviewing reviews (by "Plantinga and Moreland"); these are people who agree with at least some of Nagel's conclusions in the book - and are "coming at the book from a theistic direction."  Here are some introductory paragraphs:

Plantinga writes:

As for life, God himself is living, and in one way or another has created the biological life to be found on Earth… As for the diversity of life: God has brought that about, whether through a guided process of evolution or in some other way.  As for consciousness, again theism has no problem: according to theism the fundamental and basic reality is God, who is conscious...

And so forth.  Moreland’s approach is more detailed (since he is writing for an academic journal) but very similar.  He speaks of making a “cumulative case for God” on the basis of the same “evidence” that Nagel tries to explain in non-theistic terms, and says that “the theistic argument can be understood as an inference to the best explanation.”  Continuing in this vein he writes:

[T]he alleged limits of appealing to theistic intentions are, in fact, what characterize an appeal to any unobservable, theoretical entity (for example, a quark) -- we attribute to that entity what and only what is needed to explain the data.  This alleged limitation is also characteristic of personal explanation.  We attribute to a person those and only those intentions needed to explain his behavior.  Moreover, in the case of God, we have other factors -- for example, religious experience, revelation, other arguments in natural theology -- that allow us to fill out God’s intentions for bringing our cosmos and us into existence.  (p. 432)

Then Feser goes on to say (my bolding here):

Now the way all this strikes me, and I think the way it would strike any atheist reader, is as follows.  There are, Plantinga and Moreland seem to be arguing, several phenomena which might at least in principle be given a non-theistic explanation but for which theism is in fact a better explanation.  And “theism” is understood as a hypothesis postulating an unobservable theoretical entity which instantiates such properties as the property of being a person, the property of being alive, the property of being conscious, etc.  But it instantiates them in a way that is different from the way that natural things do, making it a member of the class of “supernatural beings.”  But it is not just any old member of this class, but the “premier” member.  The way this is supposed to explain the evidence in question is as follows.  Since God, like us, instantiates properties like being alive and being conscious, he could plausibly be what imparted those properties to us if he had the intention of doing so.  That he did have such intentions is something Christian revelation and the like tells us.  And so on.
 
Now I am not certain that Plantinga and Moreland would accept this summary without qualification.  Perhaps there are aspects of it that they would rephrase.  And obviously they would add a great deal in the way of argumentation for theism so construed.  But as I say, this is what strikes me as a natural reading, and how I think it would strike the typical atheist reader.  And with all due respect to Plantinga and Moreland, I have to say that if this is what I thought theism and the “case” for theism really amounted to, I wouldn’t find theism any more philosophically interesting or challenging than Nagel and his critics do.  (Indeed, it pretty much is what I thought theism amounted to in my atheist days.)
 
The main reason is not so much that I think Plantinga and Moreland fail to show that the existence of God, so understood, is sufficiently probable, though their remarks do smack of a “god of the gaps” approach.  The main reason is that God so understood is in my view not terribly philosophically interesting, and in particular not terribly God-like.  Certainly the approach just sketched has nothing to do with the way Augustine, Anselm, Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas, and classical theists more generally have historically approached these issues.   For the classical theist, God is not “a person” or “a being” -- not because he is impersonal or lacking in being, but because he is not “an” anything.  He is not an instance of any kind.  He is not in any genus.  He does not merely participate in or “have” mind, life, existence, or anything else, the way we do.  In that sense he doesn’t “have properties.”  Indeed, he has no parts of any sort, but is absolutely simple.  If he were not, then he would be just one more piece of furniture in the universe among all the others, requiring an explanation of his own -- an explanation of why he instantiates the properties he does.  Even if he instantiated them in every possible world, if he were a substance distinct from his properties, or had an essence or nature distinct from his existence, he would not have the absolute metaphysical ultimacythat, for classical theism, is definitive of God and that only what is absolutely simple can have.  For the classical theist, God is unparticipated being or subsistent being itself, unparticipatedgoodness or goodness itself, and whatever else we can attribute to him can be attributed only in an unparticipated sense rather than as the instantiation of a property.
 
Furthermore, the main arguments for God’s existence in the classical theist tradition are not mere “arguments to the best explanation” or “cumulative case” arguments, and the reasons have to do precisely with what God is for classical theism.  The Aristotelian approach to arguing for God’s existence holds that whatever is a mixture of potentiality and actuality -- and thus less than fully actual, and needing actualization -- can in principle be explained only by reference to that which is, already as it were, pure actuality and thus need not and could not have been actualized by anything else.  The Neoplatonic approach holds that whatever is in any way composite -- and thus in need of some principle to account for the combination of its parts -- can in principle be explained only by reference to what is absolutely simple and thus need not and could not have any parts needing combination.  The Thomistic approach holds that anything whose essence is distinct from its existence -- and which thus could have failed to exist and requires something to impart existence to it -- can in principle be explained only by reference to that which just is existence itself, and thus need not and could not have had existence imparted to it.
 
God is, in short, precisely that in which everything else participates for its actuality or being.  To say that what is pure actuality or being itself is not the only possible explanation for the existence of other things but is still “the best explanation,” for which we might make a “cumulative case,” is a bit like saying of a certain triangle that its instantiating triangularity-as-such is not the only possible explanation for why it is a triangle, but is still the “best explanation,” for which we can make a “cumulative case.”  This gets the nature of both the explanans and the explanandum just fundamentally wrong.  The relationship between a particular triangle and triangularity-as-such is not a contingent one, and not something we know of via empirical hypothesis formation and the weighing of probabilities.  And neither is the relationship between the world and God -- between that which has participated existence and that which just is subsistent or unparticipated being -- of that sort.

James Alison says the same sort of thing:

And this, of course, is part of the genius of monotheistic Judaism: the realisation that “one God” is much more like “no god at all” than like “one of the gods”. In other words that atheism, which is untrue, offers a much less inadequate picture of God than theism, which is true. For monotheistic Judaism, as for monotheistic Catholicism, which I take to be universal Judaism, the principal temptation is not atheism, but idolatry.

The reason I'm writing about this is that current God-language has for a long time seemed inadequate to me.  It's very easy, for instance, for me to say that "I often don't believe in God - but I always believe that Christ is the Son of God";  this seems absolutely sensible to me, and not at all contradictory.  But of course it is contradictory!  And I think the ideas above are where that contradiction comes from and ultimately gets resolved.

The hard thing, of course, is that people don't (and can't) really think about God this way - as "much more like no god at all than like one of the gods"; this idea simply doesn't come naturally to mind.   Who would, on their own, decide that God is "absolutely simple" and "much more like nothing at all" - and, further:  who can easily make any sense of these ideas once they're expressed?

So:  there's a gap between ideas about God that make philosophical sense and how ordinary people need to think about God.   This problem, it seems to me, explains current attitudes towards religion better than anything else.   And I think this is going to continue to be a problem going forward - especially for Christianity - a universal monotheistic faith.   Christianity means to appeal to all people; in this way it's not like Judaism - basically an inherited religion, and so one that doesn't depend on converts.  It's not like Hinduism, which is a regional faith.  It's not like Buddhism, which doesn't speak of "God" natively at all.  (Christianity is, in fact, most like Islam.)

This kind of faith seems irrational to people who don't have any fluency in the "more like no god at all than like one of the gods" idea; that's perfectly normal, since this isn't a natural way to think.  It has to be talked about and worked through - or else, discovered through contemplation, as so many mystics have discovered via apophatic theology.  (Remember, too:  A.A. doesn't ask anybody to believe in God - but in "a power greater than ourselves."   This is an excellent example of an entree into the spiritual life by avoiding the problem of "how to think of God" entirely.  My "power greater than ourselves" was simply "the life force" at first; one day I looked out the window and saw a tree and realized that whatever created it was certainly "a power greater than myself.")

Here's a great quote from Heinrich Heine - one that explains, I think, why many people find Christianity emotionally and psychologically accessible.  It's why I can believe in Christ as the Son of God, even when I have problems believing in God; again note that the Crucifixion is at the heart of it:

"So all day long until the sun went down

they spent in feasting, and the measured feast

matched well their hearts' desire.

So did the flawless harp held by Apollo

and heavenly songs in choiring antiphon

that all the Muses sang. [Heine is quoting the The Iliad here.]

"Then suddenly a pale, bloodstained Jew came panting in, with a crown of thorns on his head and a great wooden cross over his shoulder; and he threw the cross on to the gods' high table, so that the golden goblets trembled, and the gods fell silent and turned pale, and became paler and paler, till at last they entirely dissolved into mist.

"... Anyone who sees his god suffering finds it easier to endure his own pain. The merry gods of the past, who felt no pain, did not know either how poor tortured human beings feel, and a poor person in desperation could have no real confidence in them. They were holiday gods; people danced around them merrily, and could only thank them. For this reason they never received whole-hearted love. To receive whole-hearted love one must suffer. Compassion is the last sacrament of love; it may be love itself. Therefore of all the gods who ever lived, Christ is the god who has been loved the most."

John Orens supplies some other answers in his wonderful article “The Anglo Catholic Vision” [PDF] (my bold):

The question we ought to be asking is “What does the world need?” And the startling answer is that the world needs us in that commonness which bespeaks divinity. This is why God has preserved our little Anglo-Catholic family through tempest and storm. In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is “a splendor burning in the heart of things.” 32 Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives.

How then do we nurture this dream of flesh and spirit? How do we share it with the Church and with the world? Here I find myself almost at a loss for words. The answer to these questions can come only from profound meditation, common prayer, and from fearlessly and carefully listening to one another and to the world outside our doors. What I can offer are suggestions—signposts if you will—for our journey into the future. The first is that we must be willing to entertain troubling questions even about our most sacred beliefs. History, philosophy, psychology, above all the daily business of being human, call into doubt the goodness of God, the immortality of the soul, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If, like some of our conservative brethren, we try to exorcise these doubts, we will exorcise every honest man and woman out of the Church. And, as we have already seen, if we do not win back the mind of the age, we will never gain its heart. We must make it clear that orthodox Christianity is not a closed system which must be swallowed whole or rejected altogether. Rather, it is a matrix within which doubt and uncertainty can be expressed and even sanctified. Indeed, to question God can be a holy vocation. It is sometimes frightening to confront the unbelief of others, if only because it forces us to face our own. But there is reassurance in the knowledge that there would be no orthodoxy, perhaps not even the Church, if the Christians of the patristic age had not wrestled with the doubts of pagans and heretics.33

("The splendor burning at the heart of things" is from Evelyn Underhill's poem Corpus Christi, says the footnote.)

There are some of the same ideas I noticed on that website for the local Catholic organization (see "The art of living, as taught by Christ"):  that the point is to invite people to a discussion of faith in God, and to accept and talk about doubts.  ("Listening to others and acceptance of doubt" has also been a meme in the Episcopal Church over the past decade, I should note.  The problem has been a serious lack of effort at discussion of what "orthodox Christianity" itself actually consists of.  Instead, "doubts and questions" were thought of as the point of the exercise - and in some places, they even became a watered-down theology in themselves.  Episcopalians continue to fall back on "liturgy" as if it were an idea in itself; it's not.  Liturgy is a means, not an end.)

I think it's very to-the-point that "If we do not win back the mind of the age, we will never gain its heart."    Christianity is dealing with some of the most crucially important aspects of the human predicament:  the meaning and purpose of existence, the fact of suffering, how people can best live.  To me it's of central importance to understand these things ourselves - and then to be able to communicate these things to the mind, heart, and soul of the world.

I have to say that I think Pope Francis by himself is going to have a tremendously positive effect on the way the world views the Christian faith.  I have a very strong hope for this, anyway....
 

"The purgative way"

Here's an excerpt from Habits of Devotion: Catholic Religious Practice in Twentieth-Century America. There are four chapters in this book, covering Prayer, Marian Devotion, Confession, and the Eucharist; this excerpt is from the chapter titled "In the Court of Conscience: American Catholics and Confession 1900-1975," by James O'Toole.  I added the bolding.

For many, the familiar phrases of sermons they had heard on the subject [of Confession] rang true, and they described in glowing terms the sense of relief and joy that followed a visit to the confessional.  Dorothy Day - not, to be sure, an "ordinary Catholic" in any sense of the term, but a woman who, by her own account, had had some considerable experience with sin - remembered affectionately the "warm, dimly lit vastness" of the church as she waited her turn and the welcoming, "patient" attitude of her confessor.  Another mid-twentieth-century penitent said that he genuinely enjoyed going to confession because he found it an "individualized" procedure, in which the priest was "less interested in the guilt of the penitent than he is in helping the latter to avoid sin in the future."  Still another enthused over priests who "give you the impression that they have all the time in the world, that the only thing that matters is for you to  ... unburden your heart."  A woman who mentioned that there was a long line waiting behind her got a soothing response.  "At this precise moment," the kindly priest replied, "you are the only person in this church who matters."  Experiences of this sort could have a powerful emotional impact.   A character in a 1950 short story about a long-delayed confession left the box so moved by the feeling of "complete forgiveness and gentleness" that "his throat was choked and he felt close to tears."

The anonymity of the transaction appealed to most penitents and enhanced its potency.  In fact, parishioners probably worried more than they had to about the possibility of being recognized in the confessional.  Individual traits were masked by the darkness and by the whispering tones in which the sacrament was usually conducted.  Even more effective in obscuring the identity of penitents was the sheer number of confessions priests heard.  A confessor could not possibly remember particular people, a diocesan liturgical commission newsletter pointed out in 1966, "when he is faced with one hundred or more confessions" at once.  "you don't have much capacity for remembering the sins of any individual," another priest said frankly; "all the stories blur together" and all the voices "are like the one great voice of humanity."  A lay woman from Louisiana in the 1970s found all this "a great comfort," since she knew that she could say anything without fear of embarrassment.  A woman in Maine agreed:  "I feel shy and uncomfortable discussing my faults face to face with a fellow human being," she said, even a priest, and the darkness of the confessional was thus very welcome.  The clergy were no less glad to be spared having to see their penitents.  "It is much easier to avoid embarrassment in dealing with people outside of confession," said Gerald Kelly in his advice to "good" confessors, "when we have no confessional knowledge of them."

The salutary impact of confession may also have derived in part from the very fact that it was a difficult and serious business.  "Confession gives you that little rush," one appreciative lay man said, "that bit of fear that keeps you on your toes."  Fear had its uses, and many found in the sacrament echoes of familiar devotional themes.  The "purgative way" in the American Catholic spirituality, which Joseph Chinnici has described, stressed the benefits of doing things that were difficult, and many thought confession worthwhile for just that reason.  The priest who had encouraged the men of his parish to "do the manly thing" by going to confession was tailoring his message particularly for them, but priests often stressed the value of "heroic virtue" of penitents of any gender or age.  "Get the habit of doing things because they are hard," a counselor to teenagers said in 1949; "it will be difficult at first, but they will become easy as time goes on." .... The language of jails and trials proved remarkably resilient, and this reinforced both the sense of dread a penitent might feel before entering the box and the feeling of relief on leaving it.  The force of such imagery might even be missed if an individual abandoned the sacrament.  The narrator of John R. Power's Last Catholic in America gave up going to confession, but he was nonetheless wistful whenever he recalled the last time he had done so:  "I was never again to feel ... the exhilaration of rising from the spiritually dead.  Never again to be free from sin, free from sin, free from sin."

Perhaps because of its inherent difficulties, confession served as a badge of honor for American Catholics, one that stood out in sharp relief from non-Catholic alternatives.  In particular, it offered a striking contrast to Protestant and other "peace of mind" movements in the middle of the twentieth century.  For years, Catholic writers continued to trumpet remarks by Harry Emerson Fosdick in 1927 that Protestants should consider reviving a form of confession, not as a sacrament but rather as a system of counseling in which "the confession of sin and spiritual misery is met with sympathetic and intelligent treatment."  Catholics had no need of such a revival, since they were sure they already had it a purer and better form.  Other writers pressed the same point.  Without mentioning Norman Vincent Peale by name, the Paulist John Sheerin took on the best-selling author in 1951 and scoffed at those who thought that they could find a "rosy way of the Cross." Peale's techniques for self-realization and harmony with the divine were "religious in tone," Sheerin said dismissively, "but how soft and namby-pamby."  Others agreed that there was no getting around the "brutal and humbling" fact of human nature that confession underlined:  sometimes, it was necessary simply to admit "I have sinned" and to take the consequences.  Confession was "not a pleasing prospect; but then, the sacraments are not devices for making us pleasing to ourselves.  They make us pleasing to God."

The Feast of SS. Peter & Paul (June 29)

From Hymn melodies for the whole year from the Sarum Service-books:

On the Feast of SS. Peter & Paul, (June 29) & during the 8ve (when the Service is of the Feast) :

    Ev. & Matt:   Áurea luce

    On the day (E. & M.) & on the 8ve day (E.) ... ... ... ... 46
    Within the 8ve (E. & M.) & on the 8ve day (M.) ... ... ... ... 47

I have written about this hymn (and this feast) already, but that was before I'd found Hymn melodies for the whole year;  that post refers instead to the Roman Breviary, and contains a discussion of two other hymns as well.    (It's worth reading, too, this separate post about Felix per omnes festum mundi cardines, "sung at First Vespers of SS. Peter and Paul according to the use of the Church of York.")  Here I'm attempting to complete the Sarum hymn listings for the whole church year - and add links on my Resources page! - so I'll do it "by the book," and just use what I've found in Hymn melodies.
Here are the chant scores; the tunes are the same ones used for the hymn Annue Christe "on Feasts of Apostles and Evangelists throughout the year" - including St. John Evangelist on December 27.  Peter and Paul, though - as you can see - are special cases and have their own hymn for this joint celebration.

This rendition of Áurea luce, from Giovanni Vianini, is sung to tune #46 above; it's a beautiful melody and a terrific text:



Here is the Latin and English text, taken from a page at CPDL.  The translation for verses 4 and 5 are not included on that page, so I took those verses from Early Christian Hymns, written in 1908 (I believe)  by one D.J. Donohoe:

1. Aurea luce et decore roseo,
Lux lucis, omne perfudisti saeculum:
decorans caelos inclito martyrio.
Hac sacra die, quae dat reis veniam.

2. Janitor caeli, doctor orbis pariter,
Judices saecli, vera mundi lumina:
Per crucem alter, alter ense triumphans,
Vitae senatum laureati possident.

3. O felix Roma, quae tantorum principum
es purpurata pretioso sanguine,
non laude tua, sed ipsorum meritis
excellis omnem mundi pulchritudinem.

4. Jam, bone Pastor Petre, clemens accipe
Vota precantum, et peccati vincula
Resolve, tibi potestate tradita,
Qua cunctis cœlum verbo claudis, aperis.

5. Doctor egregie, Paule, mores instrue,
Et mente polum nos transferre satage:
Donec perfectum largiatur plenus,
Evacuato quod ex parte gerimus.

6. Olivae binae pietatis unicae,
fide devotos, spe robustos maxime,
fonte repletos caritatis geminae
post mortem carnis impetrate vivere.

7. Sit Trinitati sempiterna gloria,
honor, potestas atque iubilatio,
in unitate, cui manet imperium
ex tunc et modo per aeterna saecula
   

1. O light of dawn, O rosy glow,
O Light from Light, all ages show
Your beauty, and the martyrs fame,
That gain us pardon from our blame.

2. The heavens' porter, and earth’s sage,
The world’s bright lights who judge the age.
One wins by cross, and one by sword,
And life on high is their reward.

3. These are your princes, happy Rome!
Their precious blood clothes you, their home.
We praise not you, but praise their worth,
Beyond all beauty of the earth.

4. Kind Shepherd, Peter, unto thee was given
The keys to close and ope the gates of heaven;
Strike from our souls the galling chain of crime,
And gain the grace for which our hearts have striven.

5. O learned Paul, inspire us from above
With all the graces of the Heavenly Dove;
Bring us the faith to see the truth of God,
And brighten earth with the sweet reign of love.

6. One love, one faith, twin olive trees,
One great strong hope filled both of these.
Full fonts, in your matched charity,
Pray that we may in heaven be.

7. Give glory to the Trinity
And honor to the Unity,
And joy and pow’r, for their reign stays
Today and through all endless days.

It's a wonderful hymn, isn't it?   It's "been attributed" to Elpis, the wife of Boethius; I'm gathering, though, as I Google, that there may be some question as to whether a) she was actually his wife, and b) she ever existed and wrote this hymn (and a couple of others)!   However, I'll give you what I've found about her in Early Christian Hymns:

Wife of the illustrious Roman writer and statesman, Boetius, Elpis was born, perhaps not later than 475, of a noble Sicilian family. In 500, when King Theodoric came to Rome he made Boetius master of the palace. He was chosen consul three times, and his two sons, by Elpis, were made consuls in their nonage, in 523.

Her husband was cruelly put to death by the barbarian king in 525, and his estates confiscated; but these were restored to Elpis, who survived Boetius, by the king's daughter Amalasunta, on the death of Theodoric, which took place soon after the martyrdom of Boetius. It is not known when the death of Elpis occurred.

Elpis was noted as a lady of great learning, wit and beauty.

The following hymn is divided, and adapted for three several hymns in the Roman Breviary, one for January 25, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, the other two for June 29, the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

"Elpis," I find it interesting to note, is the mythological Greek personifcation of "hope" -the single thing left inside Pandora's Box after all the evils of the world had escaped.

Unfortunately, I still haven't found an audio file of melody #47; still working on it.  Meanwhile, here are all kinds of chant propers for today at MMDB.

According to this Catholic News Agency article, the celebration of Peter and Paul together is ancient:

As early as the year 258, there is evidence of an already lengthy tradition of celebrating the solemnities of both Saint Peter and Saint Paul on the same day. Together, the two saints are the founders of the See of Rome, through their preaching, ministry and martyrdom there.

The article also notes that:

In a sermon in the year 395, St. Augustine of Hippo said of Sts. Peter and Paul: “Both apostles share the same feast day, for these two were one; and even though they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, and Paul followed. And so we celebrate this day made holy for us by the apostles' blood. Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith.”

The Orthodox call them "The Holy Glorious and All-Praised Leaders of the Apostles, Peter and Paul"; here are Troparions and Kontakions for their joint feast:

Troparion — Tone 4

First-enthroned of the apostles, / teachers of the universe: / Entreat the Master of all / to grant peace to the world, / and to our souls great mercy!

Kontakion — Tone 2

O Lord, You have taken up to eternal rest / and to the enjoyment of Your blessings / the two divinely-inspired preachers, the leaders of the Apostles, / for You have accepted their labors and deaths as a sweet-smelling sacrifice, / for You alone know what lies in the hearts of men.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Today Christ the Rock glorifies with highest honor / The rock of Faith and leader of the Apostles, / Together with Paul and the company of the twelve, / Whose memory we celebrate with eagerness of faith, / Giving glory to the one who gave glory to them!

Below are couple of icons and a painting that put Peter and Paul together; they had quite a few dust-ups, by all Biblical accounts, so it's interesting to think how they'd feel about being celebrated on the same day, together!


This one says:  "English: SS. APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL 13th Century From the Church of Ss. Peter and Paul, Belozersk":

This one's even older:  "Icon of Sts. Peter and Paul from Saint Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, circa 1050":

In comparison, this one is almost brand new - from the 17th Century and Guido Reni: