Alleluia!
We often forget that God has a name ― a personal name, like you and I have a name.
In the third chapter of the Book of Exodus, Moses asked God about it. God had just instructed Moses to free the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. Moses asked him: “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them” (Ex 3:13)?
Transliterating the Hebrew, God answered: “I am YHWH.” It’s a strange thing for him to say. In Hebrew, YHWH simply means to be. Conjugated, this verb can be used to say things like you were, or it will be, or they are, and so on. But, as it is, it simply means to be, and so it’s difficult to ascertain what God is getting at. In English translations, we sometimes see “I am who I am,” or perhaps “I am he who is.”
In time, the transliterated name had vowels added to it. YHWH became Yahweh (pronounced “yaw-way”). There’s more we could say about why this is God’s name. But, for our purposes, it’s enough to remind ourselves of God’s words to Moses: “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Ex 3:15). This name is what sits behind our prayer in the Our Father: “hallowed be thy name” (Mt 6:9). This is behind the commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex 20:7).
But this is, perhaps oddly, also where the word “alleluia” (or “hallelujah”) comes from ― which Catholics sing at Mass just before the Gospel is proclaimed.
In Hebrew, hallel ― the first bit of hallelujah ― simply means “praise.” The Jewish “Hallel Prayer,” offered on major festivals, is a recitation of Psalms 113-118, precisely because these are psalms which offer God exalted praise.
The last part of “hallelujah” is jah. Jah, you’ll notice, is a bit like Yahweh. In fact, Jah is the shortened form of God’s name ― like Joe is short for Joseph.
Put together, then, the word “hallel-u-jah” (or “alleluia”) simply means “praise Yahweh.” And so, when we sing the Alleluia, we offer praise, not just to any god, but to this God ― to YHWH ― the God who gave us his name when freeing the Israelites from slavery.
But why do we sing this just before the Gospel is proclaimed? It’s to highlight that we praise the same God who, having freed the Israelites, now, in the very proclamation of each Gospel, frees us.
We sing “praise Yahweh” just before the Gospel is read because, in the very reading of those scriptures, God acts. Indeed, when the Gospel is proclaimed, the events described are not just retold, they are made present. Not metaphorically, but really. And so we come face-to-face with Yahweh’s act of liberating us. Indeed, we are liberated ― just as the Israelites were liberated from Egypt.
And this is worth singing about. Jeremy Driscoll comments that “we sing [the Alleluia] now because in the proclamation of the Gospel our risen Lord intensifies his presence in this assembly.” Yahweh is about to act, and so the Alleluia expresses our exuberant anticipation. “We know it; we believe it; we are glad about it; we are on our feet; we are singing,” Driscoll says. “We shall hang on his every word and deed.”1
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Jeremy Driscoll, What Happens at Mass (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2011), 46.