"My people, what have I done to you?"

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/reviews/r0000287.shtml

At last - a truly Catholic Passion
James MacMillan's Passion is magnificent, says Damian Thompson
2 May 2008
When we think of music for Holy Week we think of the Catholic Church, but when we think of settings of the Passion we think of the Protestant J S Bach.
Perhaps it is because the Church commemorates the suffering and death of Jesus with its own intricate liturgy that Catholic composers have rarely felt the need to set the four Gospel accounts to music.
James MacMillan has risen magnificently to the challenge of creating a Catholic Passion. ...Bach's Passions supplement the scriptural narrative with arias drawing on pietistic Lutheranism; MacMillan clears a space for a Stabat Mater and also sets the traditional Good Friday "reproaches", a litany of accusations accompanying the veneration of the Cross...
And who, precisely, is "you" in that context? It is a measure of the inconvenience of that question that some Catholic parishes omit the reproaches from their Good Friday services, even though they are in the new Missal.
....The high point of Bach's St John Passion are the fugal choruses depicting the hypocritical venom of the Jewish mob. MacMillan's Passion is even more richly choral, since the narrator is a chamber choir singing in closely harmonised chant and the role of Pilate is taken by the large choir. This redistribution of Pilate's words - also a feature of modern Good Friday services - has the effect of blurring the distinction between the guilt of the Jews (clearly indicated by the author of the Gospel), that of the Roman authorities, and of ourselves, the common man and woman. This is a serious theological insight, not an exercise in revisionism. Proper, old-fashioned guilt saturates this work. Christ dies with his reproaches still ringing in the audience's ears. There is no peaceful chorus anticipating the glory of Easter. Instead, the work closes with a long orchestral meditation, in which the restless and nervy strings part only briefly to reveal a beautiful Celtic melody before despair sets in again.

How refreshing, now we won't have to wait until Holy Week 2009 to hear the predictable objections to the Reproaches of people "so vain, the probably think this song is NOT about" them.
No, I'm kidding, that's not a fair description, just wanted to quote the Carly Simon song (or ketchup commerical, depending on your age, I suppose...)
But what is it about, is this some variation on the mote in the eye syndrome, have some people got planks in their EARS, so that they can't hear the liturgy, not accusing the other, but telling us, the Church, the people of God, us right their in the pews, it is our guilt, our sins, for which the Spotless Lamb utters reproaches?

As Jesus is handed over to the soldiers, the chorus sings from the canon, Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes: hoc est enim corpus quod pro vobis tradetur.

That's just brilliant. I am looking forward to hearing this work.