My Hosanna

Hosanna has been sung so often that it now sounds like a cheer. It is not one. It is Hebrew — hoshia-na, from Psalm 118:25 — and it means save now, we beg you. The crowd shouting it on the road into Jerusalem were not congratulating anybody. They were asking to be rescued.

This song knows that, and refuses to let the listener forget it. The chorus stacks the word three times and then translates it in the next line: hosanna in the highest, hallelujah, hosanna in the highest — save us now, we pray. Praise and plea in the same breath, which is what the word has always been.

Both verses are people asking. In the first, a baby is crying and someone puts the question directly: can you save my son, King, today. In the second it is a father crying for healing.

The two openings differ by one word, and the difference is the argument. Verse one is a day like no other. Verse two is a day like the other. The first is the day it happened; the second is any day since, including this one. The request has not changed and neither, the song claims, has the answer.

Which makes My Hosanna the track on this album told entirely from the parent’s side. Most of Father is a son asking for a father. This one is a parent asking on somebody else’s behalf — and on a record about what fathers are for, that is not a small distinction.

The hook does not resolve it into triumph. It just says the thing again, quieter: never stops loving me.