Common Ground Song 14 ‘Bless the Lord, my Soul’
Words / Music: Jacques Berthier © Ateliers et Presses de Taizé.
YouTube recording:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y_2ZStGV58
Featured image: A chapel set up for Taizé worship, from estilotaize.blogspot.com

Like most of the short chants from the Taizé community, this one has very simple words, a memorable tune and harmonies. And the more we sing it, the deeper its effect. The words are ‘Bless the Lord, my soul, and bless his holy name; bless the Lord, my soul, who leads me into life’. We are invited to bless God, which when you think about it is extremely odd, as normally it is God who is asked to bless us.

I recently came across a vlog channel online (I can’t find the source again, sorry) which was a Jewish presenter explaining aspects of the Hebrew scriptures. One of them was this idea of ‘blessing’. The Hebrew word (b’racha), she explained, is cognate with other words for an overflowing cistern of water (an idea which Jesus took up and applied to himself in John 4:14), or irrigating the land to produce bountiful crops. So the idea of being blessed by God is that of being enabled to be the spring of hope in other people’s lives, a watering of their crops. To be blessed is not a gift only for oneself, it is to be made a blessing to others.

In that light, when we are invited to bless God in return, perhaps what it means is that we ask him to be that wellspring in our own lives. For him to pour out his love and power on us so that we can do the same in our turn, in our own limited way. Blessing, like love, is mutual. It is in that sense that God ‘leads us into life’ as the last line of the chant puts it. 

As an aside, I have heard this sung with an alternative last line, ‘who rescues me from death’. Which is true, if you believe in the Resurrection, but I thing ‘who leads me into life’ is a more positive way of putting it.