Last year they witnessed horror, this year they sing in hope
Stills from the video
Many of them were there when the clock stopped at 8.45 that morning and their beloved church turned into rubble, with death, injury, weeping and mourning all around them.
They stood still in shock around a blood-splattered organ…..but on Tuesday (April 21), a year later, their voices are raised in hope and prayer not in their beloved church but reverberating throughout homes in a YouTube video released sharp at 8.45 a.m. in memory of those who sacrificed their lives in the Easter Sunday bombings.
Spreading hope and the unwavering belief that in whatever troubled times we are in, God is the haven in stormy seas, the beautiful video, ‘Lord We Come to You’ with images of the children with lit candles cupped in their hands was released, when across the country people bowed their heads in a moment of silence.
The video is made more poignant because the very voices that rise up are of those children who beheld and experienced the devastation of that tragic day at St. Anthony’s Shrine at Kochchikade.
“We recorded it in our homes on our phones,” says one of them, going into detail how difficult it was in the highly-populated area of Kochchikade to keep out the din of adjoining homes or the vans hawking fish and vegetables and the garbage trucks.
Nearly 40 children and youth, a mix of male and female, from the Sinhala, Tamil and English choirs of St. Anthony’s Church, ranging in age from 9 to 27 years have lent their voices to the video with its theme music being the revered ‘Ave Maria’ sung in honour of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.
The youth says that Kochchikade is not just a church in one parish but a shrine which belongs to the whole country. The choristers of the three choirs, although from different parishes, have a special affinity to the shrine. When the bomb ripped through the shrine they were traumatized but even though they could not enter the church thereafter, they stumbled, still in a daze and gripped by shock, to a room in the premises where, along with the priests they recited the rosary daily until the shrine opened again.
It is the Administrator of the St. Anthony’s Shrine, Fr. K.A. Jude Raj Fernando, who tells the Sunday Times how the making of the video fell into place.
Having worked with children throughout his priestly mission in the staunch belief that if one makes children the frontline, miracles and wonders can be achieved, they had made plans how to commemorate the first anniversary of the Easter Sunday tragedy.
Fr. Jude and his assistant, Fr. Dilusha Chamara Perera, had been journeying with the children affected by the blast, being by their side, providing psychological counselling throughout.
Wanting to get the children involved in a programme for April 21, this year, Fr. Jude had contacted Soundarie David Rodrigo, the well-known pianist and Director of the award-winning all-female ensemble ‘Soul Sounds’.
“Soundarie promptly agreed and we met for a discussion and she came twice for a training session with the children in February,” says Fr. Jude.
Then the unexpected happened and COVID-19 gripped the country sending Sri Lanka into lockdown to curb the spread of the virus. Plans and practices for the commemoration were shelved.
However, during a discussion held at the Archbishop’s House on April 14, Fr. Jude had told His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith that Kochchikade too had something planned.
“But we had nothing concrete to show,” says Fr. Jude who once again contacted Soundarie and that’s how they produced ‘Lord We Come to You’, a bell tolling setting off the rendition, with haunting notes from the piano and singing in all three languages chiming in evoking much emotion.
“All done virtually,” smiles Soundarie, going into detail how before the original plans got disrupted she had trained the children and youth to sing a few bars.
Soundarie, unlike others who do it the other way round, usually plays the music and then seeks the lyrics and here too that is how the video was made, with lyrics being written in the three languages. Thereafter, the demo track was done.
With Fr. Jude and Fr. Chamara as Project Heads and Soundari as composer, the children and youth raising their voices in harmony, assisted by Shivanthi Subramaniam, Ranga Dassanayake had handled the orchestration, sound engineering, mixing & mastering, and Wimaladasa Samarasinghe, Senthil Kumar (Chennai) and Lilanthi Botejue had written the Sinhala, Tamil and English lyrics respectively. It has been produced by Motion Videos.
As ‘Lord We Come to You’ gets thousands of views and is passed around from home to home, what stays with the listener, even as the music and the echoes are heard no more, is the message of peace and hope.