“Open the Doors of Repentance to Me”
Each week in Lent, we will offer a new different piece of sacred music which will help us meditate on our Lenten pilgrimage. Listen to today’s beautiful Arabic hymn below:
Today’s hymn, sung by the Choir of Beirut, is a traditional Orthodox Christian hymn. If you attend a Christian liturgy in the Holy Land—either an Orthodox liturgy or the Catholic Melkite Mass—you might be surrounded by singing similar to this Arabic hymn. The music might sound strange and unfamiliar, but the words sung are quite familiar: this is a setting of Psalm 51.
This traditional Lenten hymn begins with the lines: “Open the doors of repentance to me, make my salvation come easily.”
As you listen to the hymn, we invite you to meditate upon the icon above, a traditional Orthodox icon of the parable of the Prodigal Son. In traditional iconography, the story of the entire parable is depicted here. On the left, the wayward son is despondent among the swine, on the right, he has returned home to his father. The merciful father of the parable is portrayed as Christ, who leaves his throne among the angels in heaven (center), and comes to earth via the Incarnation. He runs out, like the merciful father, to greet us sinners, while we were “still a long way off.”
As the words of the hymn say: we ought to tremble on the day of judgment, but we trust in the merciful kindness of our God who loves us more than we could ever love ourselves.
How is God calling you to trust ever more fully in his loving kindness this Lent? God desires us to come away from the swine and home to his loving heart so completely he runs out to meet us while we are still on the way back. Where has God been running out to greet you this week? And how can you open the doors of repentance in your heart to Christ this Lent?
Lyrics
Open to me, open to me the doors of repentance, O life giver
For my spirit rises, rises early to pray, to pray towards thy holy temple,
bearing the temple of my body all defiled, but in thy compassion purify me,
by the loving-kindness of thy mercy.
Make straight for me the paths of salvation, O Mother of God,
For I have profaned my soul with shameful sins and have wasted my whole life in easy-going indifference
But by thy intercessions deliver me from all uncleanness
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy,
and according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.
When I think of the multitude of ghastly things I have done, wretch that I am,
I tremble at the fearful day of judgment, but trusting in the mercy of thy loving-kindness,
like David, I cry to thee
Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, have mercy on me,
O God, according to thy great mercy
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy
