Litany of the Passion of Christ Our Lord

“The term litany (popularly: létánia) has multiple meanings. It means the Sunday afternoon address-response service, and it means the prayer formula itself, the genre of prayer. It ultimately means all those – mostly – afternoon devotions and services, the program of which also includes the recitation of the litany.” 1. ; In those Hungarian villages where there was no priest, the faithful organized the community religious life themselves, and were zealously active in it. We now hear a beautiful example of this from the informant Ferenc Forró, born in 1906, in an uplifting performance, and with a beautiful archaic text and melody. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the collection of church folk songs and folk customs, we asked several informants from Vága about the Litany of the Passion of Our Lord Christ, and its version sung in Vága. All of the elderly people remembered the practice of this litany, but they could no longer recall the melody and the text. This is one of the reasons why this recording is extremely valuable. ; The recording features Ferenc Forró from Vága, who is recording a Lenten folk song. The multi-verse folk song was sung between the Stations of the Cross on Fridays of Lent. Many elderly churchgoers from Vága still know the song, but with a simpler melody variant. Uncle Feri embellishes the third line of the strophic melody more richly than it is in practice today in Vága. ;

(Mónika Józsa)

; The Litany of the Passion of Our Lord Christ ; The audio recordings were recorded by the Benedictine monk Teodóz Jáki Sándor from Győr in 1975 and the informant was Ferenc Forró from Vága. ; ; ; ; ; ; It was broadcast by Pátria Radio in Bratislava on Holy Thursday (April 9, 2020), and was also repeated on Good Friday (April 10, 2020).