Gij Die Het Woordeloze Bidden Hoort - Voorbede = You Who Always Hear The Wordless Prayer - Biddings, 1978 - 1981

Huijbers chose the melody Post haec autem rogavit Pilatum - After Pilate had interrogated him, he handed him over to them to be crucified, the final verse from the Good Friday Gospel chant (John 19:16) describing the suffering and death of Jesus and the timid indifference with which the Roman Governor, Pilate, finding the man innocent, nevertheless handed him over to the authorities for the Roman penalty of crucifixion. The bitter irony of this was not lost on Oosterhuis. This text intentionally links Jesus' experiences with all the struggles of oppressed humanity, indicating how closely the One who suffered is likewise found in their suffering, bonding with them to the extent that they too would live beyond the grave. Voorbede - prayer for is Oosterhuis' description of this piece, in common with the English word biddings, known more familiarly in America as intercessions. In Anglo Saxon, biddian was the name given to the 7th Century Benedictine monk-historian, the Venerable Bede, not as a bondsman put as a prayer man or partner. Intercessions is the Latin form of this word, from intercessionum, meaning a coming/going between. Yet what of those who to this day continue to live under oppression? How might the repressed reclaim their dignity? What does it mean to be saved, as though there were a disconnect in the continuum between this life and the next? Who holds out for them a Gospel of Liberation, of a caring God who continues to intervene in human history to break down structures of injustice? There is no magic involved here, the responsibility for justice is laid clearly in our own hands. This is the divine mandate. We are inseparably part of the groaning of creation (Romans 8) in the struggle of coming to birth, reaching fulfillment (being saved). This requires us to open our minds to the meaning of life and death, the very purpose of our existence on this planet. By embracing the flow of truth, we escape the dungeons of our mind which hold us in the thrall of deceit and false reality. While comfort zones lull us into complacency, this is embracing the false death; but dying to such comforts, we embrace the second death, the life-giving thrill which liberates us alongside all of humanity.--Tony Barr