Sabbath: Songs for Worship

Kathleen Deignan, Schola Ministries, 2000

There is an art to keeping the Sabbath day, and praise is its form. It is a day for singing our wonder at being alive. On the Sabbath we gather the world in our song and offer it as a sacrifice of praise. On the Sabbath we draw the Spirit’s own breath to sing of the mystery that first sang us forth from the infinite silence of all beginnings. On the Sabbath day we join the choir of all beings to intone in inexhaustible harmonies the hymn of creation – renewed and restored in the liturgy of thanksgiving.

These songs are the fruit of “endless Sabbaths,” shared by the liturgical community at the Benedictine Grange of West Redding, Connecticut. As they have sustained our worship and transformed our hearts for decades, we offer them to the Christian community, hoping they may enrich the art of Sabbath-keeping for other worshippers as well.

This recording is a special expression of the ensemble’s creativity, with members investing their loving energies in a host of ways. A detail from Fr. John Giuliani’s icon, Navajo Christ Breaking Bread, beautifully mirrors the way his own faithful hands have blessed and broken the Bread of Life with and for us these many decades. I am delighted it graces the recording – which Greta Sibley designed and Gina Sader-Rubenstein guided in production.

I am especially grateful to Marion Najamy whose vision an passion brought this recording to birth and under whose direction each member interpreted particular songs in his or her own voice and style. The result is the refreshing novelty and variety of a repertoire that we hope will re-sound beyond the rafters of our Sabbath place.

– Kathleen Deignan, CND

Cover: Icon of Christ Breaking Bread by Fr. John Giuliani

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