Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my faults and my sin is ever before me. Thou shalt purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Thou shalt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

Verses from Psalm 51

Lent

Lent, or, in Latin, Quadragesima (fortieth), is a solemn observance in the liturgical year lasting for a period of forty days leading up to Easter Sunday. Different branches of Christianity calculate and recognise Lent differently, but in most western denominations Lent is taken to run from Ash Wednesday to Easter Saturday, excluding Sundays, which are said to be Sundays “in” Lent rather than “of” Lent. The forty days are symbolic, and represent the forty days which, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus spent fasting in the desert resisting the temptations of the devil before beginning his ministry. (It is also the traditional belief that Jesus lay for forty hours in the tomb which led to the forty hours of total fast that preceded the Easter celebration in the early Church.) The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, penance, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial. Its institutional purpose is heightened in the annual commemoration of Holy Week, or Passiontide, marking the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. During Lent, many of the faithful commit to fasting or to giving up certain types of luxuries as a form of penitence. The Stations of the Cross, a fourteen point devotional commemoration of Christ's carrying of the Cross and of the Crucifixion, are often observed. Many churches remove flowers from their altars, while crucifixes, religious statues, and other elaborate religious symbols are often veiled in violet fabrics (the liturgical colour of the season) in solemn observance of the event. In the late Middle Ages, as sermons began to be given in the vernacular instead of Latin, the English word Lent was adopted. This word initially simply meant spring (as in the German Lenz and Dutch Lente) and derives from the Germanic root for long because in the spring the days visibly lengthen. In the Roman and Anglican churches, the Gloria in Excelsis is removed from the Mass or Eucharist during Lent. The fourth Sunday in Lent, which marks the halfway point between Ash Wednesday and Easter, is referred to as Laetare Sunday by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and many other Christians because of the traditional Entrance Antiphon of the Mass. Because of the more joyful character of the day (since laetare in Latin means "rejoice"), any fasting and abstinence can be relaxed on this day. In the UK this is the day chosen for Mothering Sunday.

Christus Factus Est

Anton Bruckner

Christus factus est pro nobis obediens 
usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.
Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum
et dedit illi nomen,
quod est super omne nomen.

Christ became obedient unto death for us, 
even death upon the cross.
Wherefore God hath chosen him to be exalted, 
and hath given him his name,
which is higher than all other names.

The twenty-nine, mostly a cappella, motets of Anton Bruckner, written over a sixty-year period, are amongst the greatest short choral movements of the nineteenth century – a period perhaps associated more with an expansion in the scale and structure of operatic and orchestral music than with the development of Catholic ecclesiastical music. Remembered more nowadays as a builder of large scale symphonies, with a musical language not dissimilar to the extensive late nineteenth-century works of Mahler and Wagner, Bruckner was most revered during his own lifetime as a cathedral organist and choral director. He was born in 1824 in the upper Austrian town of Ansfelden, the son of a schoolteacher and church organist. At the age of 13, he was enrolled in the church school at St Florian as a chorister. There he studied organ, piano, and music theory. At the age of 16, he entered a teacher-training school in Linz, and began work as a schoolteacher at St. Florian in 1845. In 1848 he became the cathedral organist in Linz. On his own, Bruckner assiduously studied the a cappella music of Renaissance Italian polyphonic masters such as Lassus and Palestrina, and German Baroque composers such as Heinrich Schütz and J. S. Bach. He completed his studies at the Vienna Conservatoire 1861, and began to make a name for himself as a composer and an improviser at the organ. He moved to Vienna in 1868 to take appointments as the Emperor's court organist and Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory. He died in Vienna in 1896. 

Christus factus est, written in 1884, is a fine Romantic example of a Latin motet, a genre which had flourished in the hands of earlier masters such as Lassus, Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd and Bach. The music is dark and brooding, with dramatic dynamic extremes and rich chromatic harmony, both characteristics of music from the late Romantic period.