Transmission

Kadosh, Sanctus, Holy, etc

July 4, 2009

One of the things I really love about mystical eucharistic theology is the idea that there is only one bread and one cup across all the world and throughout all time. The idea is that since each eucharist is mystically linked with the unique event of Christ’s death on the cross, every eucharist that has ever been celebrated (or ever will be celebrated) happens simultaneously. Mind-bending, huh?

I’m not sure that my own eucharistic theology is quite that high, but I am in love with the idea the eucharistic table is something bigger than the food that’s on it and the people sitting around it – that’s an act that unites us with all Christians everywhere and everytime.

This is one reason why so many liturgical traditions sing a sanctus as part of the liturgy, and why it’s important that it’s sung by the congregation and not just by the minister or choir. Isaiah had a vision of angles singing this song without ceasing, and so when the people sing it at communion they are singing along with the seraphim – when the minister says something like:

Therefore, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Your glorious name, evermore praising You and saying…

Or, at Transmission sometimes:

With strangers, neighbors, saviors, ravers, saints and angels, raise a song
As one with some whose work is done and others here or yet to come

This is what’s being referred to.

Angels aside, it is pretty amazing that this song has been song so often, so consistently, and in so many many ways throughout the millenia. Folks have never stopped singing it, but they’ve also never stopped coming up with new ways to sing it. Here’s a playlist of this song through the ages for your listening pleasure:

A sephardic cantor singing it in perhaps the oldest version of it I know: