Listen to Thomas Tallis Holy Week Lamentations – Read John Donne’s Good Friday (1613) and his Sonnet 6- “And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die”; and from the fourteenth century, Mother Julian of Norwich – who lived in self isolation as an anchoress – and facing death wrote these hopeful words “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”

Apr 10, 2020 | News

 

Listen to Thomas Tallis Holy Week Lamentations – Read John Donne’s Good Friday (1613) and his Sonnet 6- “And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die”; and from the fourteenth century, Mother Julian of Norwich – who lived in self isolation as an anchoress – and facing death wrote these hopeful words “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”

John Donne, sixteenth/seventeenth century scholar, poet, soldier and secretary and Thomas Tallis, the sixteenth century English composer.

Not long before he died, a good friend gave me a copy of John Donne’s Divine Poems. Among them is a beautiful Meditation on Good Friday, written in 1613, and a Sonnet about death, written in 1633. Another friend sent me this beautiful recording of Thomas Tallis’ Lamentations, traditionally sung during Holy Week and composed in the 1560s.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAFeCLDSgE

John Donne Good Friday

John Donne Sonnet 6

 

And from the fourteenth century, Mother Julian of Norwich, an anchoress and mystic who set herself apart to live in total isolation, contemplates her own death and has sixteen visions. As the last rites were  administered to her she said :“ Jesus,  in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

“These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian

Lord David Alton

For 18 years David Alton was a Member of the House of Commons and today he is an Independent Crossbench Life Peer in the UK House of Lords.

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