De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

And finally, something very different, the aforementioned Eddie Kirkland cover of “How He Loves”.    

Here’s the Arvo Pärt (“Passio” - his own setting of St. John’s telling of the Passion narrative, John 18:1-40). This recording by the Hilliard ensemble is still my favourite, 30 years after it’s release. Pärt, a living Estonian composer born in 1935, is, together with Henryk Gorecki, one of the best known exponents of a musical style that is, at once, ancient and modern, that some call “Holy Minimalism”. The final moments of his Passio, when Pärt adds an extra line of text sung by the Chorus to round things off, breaks me every time I hear it, and I’m sure today will be no different. “You who have suffered for us, have mercy upon us. Amen."  

This Good Friday, I’ll be going to the Pantasaph Stations of the Cross in North Wales (outdoors, winding its way up a steep hillside). Back home, I’ll be listening to my Good Friday “standards”, in other words, Bach’s “St. John’s Passion” and Arvo Pärt’s “Passio”. This morning, I have begun with another old favourite: Eddie Kirkland’s cover of John Mark McMillan’s “How He Loves”, set to the drawings of Si Smith that imagine, in cartoon form, Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, but with symbolic references to the Passion story along the way. First up, here’s the Bach:   Bach’s Passion itself starts at 5min50secs. "In addition to the ensemble performing on period instruments, further elements of both authenticity and intimacy were added by inserting other music used in the Leipzig Good Friday service that Bach himself would have heard and by inviting the audience to sing the re...