Dismissal of the Elect (Ephphetha) GA 167

* NB I have rewritten this post after Chris Wroblewski educated me on what this song was and where it was from – see comments.

I am going back to delve into Gather Australia again. I only did the songs under the hymns section last time, which left out a whole lot of songs. A lot of parishes still use this collection and to be honest it still is a better collection than Catholic Worship Book 2 in many ways. Because of the paucity of new material in CWB 2, GA is nearly as up to date, despite its 1995 publication date. It also includes guitar chords in the accompaniment edition, which were specifically left out in CWB 2.

I’m still skipping the psalms and the redundant mass settings, and will also skip the songs previously covered and those that are too hard (7/8 time signatures for example!).

So I’ve jumped straight to 167, a song by Marty Haugen with a specific function in the RCIA. I’ve never heard of it before but Chris let me know it was from Haugen’s Mass of Creation. I think it is an excellent song with uses way beyond what its title suggests. I can see it as a gathering song at least.

He used Ephesians 1:4-5, 17-23; 2:19-22.

I really like this tune, but would drop it 2 semitones.

GIA sell the sheet music here, and the text is in their preview. I originally posted the text here but now that I know where it is from I have taken that down. Ephphetha means “be opened” and occurs before the baptism of an adult, hence its place in the RCIA. More information is available here.