Shcho to za Predivo: What a wonder! Glad the news I bring you

Every so often I find a carol or hymn in another language that appears not to have a translation that would enable it to be sung in English.

Among the abundant patrimony of Christmas carols, in which the culture of Ukraine abounds, especially among the Greek Catholics, is this poignantly tender and beautiful beautiful meditation on the news that the Virgin who has given birth to Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man, is also the first to adore him; how Joseph who is identified as an old man helps to bring in the newborn Christ as Saviour. It also hints how the mother who holds Jesus in the swaddling clothes will one day hold him when he is taken down from the Cross, to be wrapped this time in graveclothes. Yet she does not weep for the loss of her own son alone, but loves the Son who has come as the Lord himself, the Saviour of all.

It is not easy to translate from Ukrainian metre into English verse, as the patterns of the languages, and thus who they are sung, are different. But I hope this offering, with a few rhymes within, will work and enable people to sing with the Christians of Ukraine with tenderness and adoration - and indeed faith and hope. A YouTube link to a lovely rendering of it by a student choir in America, to the setting by Vasyl Barvinskiy, is here:

The translation, such as it is, I dedicate to me dear friend and fellow pilgrim in Australia - Sister Marie Farrell rsm.

Hristos rozhdayetsya! Christ is born: Happy Christmas.

Glad the news I bring you:

"Earth to joy restored;

For to you a Saviour,

Christ is born, our Lord."

See the holy Virgin Mary,

She who bore Him, then adore Him:

“Jesu, my dear Son!”

 

In that cave the old man,

Joseph, see prepare

cloths, to swathe Messiah, 

Jesu, with all care.

Mary mild see in them fold Him,

to her heart more closely hold Him,

Pure Mother of God.

 

Ukrainian traditional carol for the Nativity of Christ. Translation © Mark Woodruff 23.12.2022

Music: Prayer for Ukraine

Here are again are the Latin-script transliteration and my attempt at a verse translation of the Prayer for Ukraine, Ukraine's national spiritual anthem, by Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900).

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaya, mnohaya lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

God, bless all our land and people,

With happiness and many years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959-). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

Here is the music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) with the Latin-script text in Ukrainian.

Here is the music with the English translation.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Visiting Lviv to give a lecture at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2016, I was very moved to hear this sung in the midst of a concert of spiritual and cultural music of many Ukrainian traditions. The whole audience silently stood up as soon as it began; and I was told that it was immensely significant to Ukrainian people of all faiths, for the sake of the "Heavenly Hundred", those innocent people killed at the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when the Ukrainian people brought about the removal of a corrupt regime and insisted on their liberty to pursue their own free, democratic European future. Since then, I have continued to be moved when I have served at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. It is not the national anthem, but it is the national hymn and prayer. Originally, it was written for a chorus of children, and perhaps that is why the generations have continued to take it to their hearts. Perhaps it is like "Jerusalem" for someone from England, except that in the past, and hopefully not in the future, singing it was forbidden and could come with imprisonment and torture for supposed treason.

The Prayer for Ukraine on YouTube

It is not my own nation's song, but I sing it in solidarity with my friends and the people whom I have come to love very dearly, and whom I love to serve and worship with. I can only imagine what they are feeling and going through; and I have shed many tears for them and with them. For those who wish to sing it with Ukrainians in the same spirit, but in English, I provide a verse translation below. God protect Ukraine with His shield and His love.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900) to music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)

Боже великий, єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Волі і світу промінням
Ти її осіни.

Світлом науки і знання
Нас, дітей, просвіти,
В чистій любові до краю,
Ти нас, Боже, зрости.

Молимось, Боже єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Всі свої ласки й щедроти
Ти на люд наш зверни.

Дай йому волю, дай йому долю,
Дай доброго світу, щастя,
Дай, Боже, народу
І многая, многая літа.

Transliteration:

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

Bless us, God, our land and people,

And grant [us] many, man[y] years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

An Office Hymn for Easter Eve

Over the Christmas break, I have been going through old books, to discard some and re-read others. In several, I have found folded notes of attempts at hymns that I had forgotten for decades. Here is a hymn to be sung at Vespers of Good Friday and on Holy Saturday.

I must have worked on this when I was at Mirfield (1982-84), where the Community of the Resurrection relied on the seminarian students of the College to sing the offices and liturgies of Holy Week and Easter while many of the Fathers were absent preaching in parishes. Following the custom in the Divine Office of the Liturgy of the Hours (though not in the classic Roman office, or the monastic office that Mirfield drew on to supplement the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer), there was an office hymn for Holy Saturday. It appears to be a version of the hymn used in The Divine Office, provided by Stanbrook Abbey ((c) 1974) - His cross stands empty in a world grown silent. An inclusive language version ((c) 1995) is included in Hymns for Prayer and Praise (Canterbury Press for the Panel of Monastic Musicians, Norwich 1996) at number 155. The Stanbrook hymn's metre is 11.8.11.8. While Stanbrook has its own Mode 3 melody for it, there appear to be few other reasonably known tunes (if there are any at all) that the unfamiliar form of verse may be sung to. I wonder, therefore, if the slip of photocopied typed text of a similar text, As earth is still, the empty Cross, was Mirfield's attempt at a version that could be sung to a Long Metre tune (8.8.8.8) with little practice. The tune given is a mode 1 melody from the Antiphonale Romanum in the English Hymnal at number 237.

I have kept that slip since my student days, when, in 1984, I was responsible as Precentor for music in the College chapel, the execution of the Gregorian chant at offices by the students, and especially at Holy Week and Easter. I chose the hymns, but not the Office Hymns, which were as set in the Community of the Resurrection's Daily Office. So I am pretty certain that As earth is still is not my own adaptation. I don't know where else it may have come from. If any one can shed any light, I should be interested to know.

Here is the 1984 Mirfield text, which I am supposing to be a compression of the Stanbrook Abbey hymn:

As earth is still, the empty Cross
Accounts the gain redeeming loss
Through hours of anguish, fear and dread,
While Christ descends to wake the dead.

He summons Adam and his seed;
His own, long captive held, are freed.
He claims the dead for to life regained,
Brings light where night eternal reigned.

Confessing Christ Who bore the cost
Who losing life so found the lost,
We praise You, Holy Trinity,
Restoring in eternity. Amen.

Evidently, I thought this unsatisfactory and reworked it, adding a further verse. From the many attempts at revised lines, here is the result:

In silence stands the empty Cross
And tells of gain redeeming loss:
Now earth in anguish waits in dread
While Christ descends to wake the dead.

First light, O Christ, to pierce the gloom,
Your dawning rise shall burst the Tomb;
First fruit of those that lay asleep,
A harvest in the morning reap.

You summon Adam and his seed;
Your own, long captive held, are freed.
You claim the dead to life regained,
Bring light where night eternal reigned.

Confessing You that bore the cost,
and losing life restored the lost:
with Father and the Spirit, Three,
One God, we praise eternally. Amen.

I gladly acknowledge the copyright and protection of the original by the Nuns of Stanbrook Abbey. I would like to acknowledge the possible editors at Mirfield. Hoping and assuming that I have their permission to share this old exercise of mine, I suppose I had better say that the adaptations and additions I have made are copyright to me (c) 1984 and 2020.

Wider than the heavens, our bearing of the Light of the World: Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Divine Liturgy of St John Chryostom, Ukrainian Cathollic Cathedral, London, 15th December 2019

In the six years since we have been celebrating the Divine Liturgy in English each month at the Ukrainian Cathedral, I do not think it has happened so far that we have encountered the Sunday chants of the Resurrection in the First Tone. So now here we are in the preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Advent in the flesh in 2019, and we encounter less familiar words to acclaim His rising from the dead.

But it is all of a piece. In the Troparion (see below), we see how the earth contains within it the body of the Lord, a stone laid to seal it in. At His resurrection the Lord gives life to the world of death, first arising within the Tomb before arising from it. It reminds us of how the Prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 45.8), “Drop down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth come open, and bring forth a Saviour”. In the same way as the Spirit from the Father flooded the Tomb on the Third Day, that in the living of the Trinity the Son of Man and Son of God might rise from the dead, so the Holy Spirit pours down grace upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, filling her with that righteousness that will have been won in the future by her Son’s bloodshed on the Cross, and interring within her, like a plant in the earth, the Incarnate Word Whom she will bring forth as the Saviour. The Tomb, the Womb, a Saviour emerging from within the world and bringing out through it the Kingdom of heaven: it could come no other way. We could not reach it. Instead it has reached into us. Its burst upon our scene is so surprising that it is unrecognisable; but that is what is facing us. Thus we sing, “Glory to Your Kingdom; glory to Your saving plan”. The Lord tells us (Luke 17.22f): “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘Look, there He is,’ or ‘Here He is.’ Do not go out or chase after them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so will be the Son of Man in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected.” In other words the Kingdom will come not in a spectacle, but within the life spent in human and divine love upon the Cross, from within a dead body laid in the earth; and that it all began to play out from within the womb of Virgin, just as it was all conceived when the Spirit of God brooded across the waters and the Creator spoke in His Word, saying, “Let there be Light” - the Word that would take flesh and dwell among us, the True Light who lights every man from within, even though the direction of that light from the very way He made it, caused it not to be recognised.

Both the Troparion and the Kontakion speak of the glory of this light, just as St Paul today exhorts us (Ephesians 5.9-19) to spurn the works of darkness and enjoy the fruit of light. But where is this light to be seen? How is it visible, seeing that we lack the bearings to see it and where it is coming from, even if we notice the shadows where it does not shine? He tells us that we can stand in the light by being awake to the wisdom and will of God in the present moment, not putting things off because we think the Kingdom of God, with the demands and opportunities of our new way of living eternally, can be dealt with all in good time. He tells us not to be fooled by the “business as usual” of the world we are in. He says the days are evil. In our current parlance, we could reply, “Yes, but let’s be realistic. Let’s do a reality check. Let’s deal with the world as it is, not as it’s not. Let’s meet people where they are, not blame them for being where we think they shouldn’t be. As for ourselves, you can only do so much. I am what I am. Take me as you find me. We can cross that bridge when we come to it. We have to live in the real world. We’ll think about heaven when we need to. There’s too much to do here and now. Life is not a rehearsal. Life’s for living, not for dying.” The parlance in the Lord’s time was “Relax and enjoy. Eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12.16-21); and “Eat and drink today. Die tomorrow” (Isaiah 22.13; I Corinthians 15.32). And to that, the Lord Who said, “Call no man a fool” (Matthew 5.22), says, “Fool – your soul is required of you tonight!”

It is interesting that St Paul’s antidote to living in this world, without paying attention to the direction from which the Kingdom is entering, is to sing hymns and spiritual songs. I have been singing hymns all my life. One can remember so much of them by heart. The way our brains work is that, often, we cannot remember the words so easily on their own, but when the music is recalled it unlocks the words. It is all to do with where the memory of music and thus lyrics is laid down in our heads. This is why so much of our Divine Liturgy’s prayer is sung, whereas in the Latin Church more of it is spoken. We not only remember it better. It sinks in; and we can call it forth from spirits when we sing. So I urge you to learn and sing our hymns and spiritual songs, not only in our Byzantine Liturgy, but also in our rich Christian culture in England. Try not to rely on texts and orders of services, but, as St Paul says, “sing and make melody to the Lord with your heart”. For this is the direction from which comes the light that we call radiant, and that others just cannot see, or that they dismiss as religious fervour. So, if you find it difficult to pray, or to concentrate on devotions – sing. Even if you are embarrassed to sing out loud, recall a tune in your head that unlocks the words of praise and devotion to Christ, and let your heart make joyful noise with it. Or gently hum. Or softly whistle. But hold the words with the melody, and St Paul says that in that very act the Spirit will fill you. This will be just as He filled the womb of the Blessed and spotless Virgin with the Divine Son, and just as He filled the body in the earth’s stone tomb when it arose from the dead.

It will be the same as the Angel Gabriel saying to the Virgin, “Rejoice”. In that instant she became Mother of God as the Lord took her flesh for His own. And in the same moment that we rejoice or lament with the Lord in our hearts, as today’s Theotokion tells us, we shall “become wider than the heavens carrying our Creator”. Imagine what it would be like if the words addressed to the Mother of God in the Theotokion were turned upon us. Then we should see where the complete surprise of the Light is coming from as we, even we, are told, “Glory to Him Who dwelt in you. Glory to Him Who comes forth from you.” We will be amazed, and just like the Mother of God, we would ask Saint Gabriel, “How can this be?” Yet it is. One of the great English hymns puts this profound dogmatic insight into how the Light comes into the World:

How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given;

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin

Where meek souls will receive him still

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray.

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell.

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel.

For Emmanuel, God is with us. If you cannot see His light, come to confession that with a purified heart you may sing. For as the Light dawned from the Womb of the Mother of God, and then from out of the Tomb, so the direction remains the same. The Light shines upon His world from within the light in the lives of the People of His Church.

Note: Hymns for Sunday in the First Tone

Troparion of the Resurrection

Though the stone was sealed by the Judæans* and soldiers guarded Your most pure body,* You arose, O Saviour, on the third day,* and gave life to the world.* And so the heavenly powers cried out to You, O Giver of life:* "Glory to Your resurrection, O Christ!* Glory to Your kingdom!* Glory to Your saving plan,* O only Lover of Mankind."

Kontakion of the Resurrection

You arose in glory from the tomb* and with Yourself You raised the world.* All humanity acclaims You as God,* and death has vanished.* Adam exults, O Master,* and Eve, redeemed from bondage now, cries out for joy:* “You are the One, O Christ, Who offer resurrection to all.”

Theotokion

When Gabriel uttered to you, O Virgin, his ‘Rejoice!’ * – at that sound the Master of all became flesh in you, the Holy Ark.* As the just David said,* you have become wider than the heavens carrying your Creator.* Glory to Him Who dwelt in you!* Glory to Him Who came forth from you!* Glory to Him Who freed us through birth from you!

Eyes speak to eyes and heart to heart: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, St Gregory, St Edward & St John Henry, at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 13th October 2019

It is the outsider that the Lord encounters today. First, St Paul tells us to separate ourselves out from those in whose midst we live: “Go out from them, and you shall be My sons and daughters”. (II Corinthians 6.16-7.1) He says that this purification is the way God brings about the completion of our holiness. Then, in the gospel (Matthew 15.21-28), a Canaanite woman implores Him to relieve her daughter from terrible spiritual affliction – it has depressed her mind and her body. At first the Lord says that salvation comes according to a certain plan, all in due course: first, those who had lost their place in the house of Israel, ahead of anyone else. But the insistence of her faith crying out, which has driven the disciples beyond toleration, tells the story that no one is ultimately outside the scope of salvation.


There is St Paul saying, “go outside from among them”; and here is an outsider forcing her way in. St Paul points out the way for getting rid of the stains and pollution in our personalities, our attitudes, our hearts and our habits, so that it is clear for the Lord to come all the way along it, to fill us with His life and love and presence. This is another way of saying that His holiness becomes our character, difficult and outlandish as that may sound. And then the Gospel tells us that the purification we need does not come from our efforts, or turning our back on what is wrong with life, but by turning toward faith in the One who has come flooding into our midst. You get the impression that the Canaanite woman was not planning this. She just heard that Jesus had arrived, and it is her instinct to believe in Christ and no other that surprises the disciples. As we often find in the Christian life, faith precedes our confession of belief, and grace from God precedes our response to turn to Him.


Notice that when she appeals to Him, He answers not a word. It is the same as in the manger. It is the same as when He is baptised and transfigured. It is the same when He stands before Pilate. It is the same when He is risen from the dead. It is not wording that is being strung together, but the extent of faith that is being tested and explored. Christ is the Word that need not be articulated, because it is His Person and His all-pervading Presence and His sheer significance that cause the cleansing out of what stands in the way of encountering Him - of bringing His holiness in us to completion, of bringing to flower the faith that has been seeded within us.


Look at what will happen in our midst in a few moments. Will Christ who will come among us take one look and say to Himself, “Be separate from them; go out from their midst; be separate from them”? Or will He, like He did at journey’s end on the road to Emmaus, without scarcely a word and by His presence and act, make Himself known to us in the Breaking of Bread? The Lord of hosts and the Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected, acquainted with grief, the outsider of all outsiders, becomes our insider.

This Sunday in London, for the Latin Church of Westminster among whom we live, it is the Feast of St Edward the Confessor, whose crown adorns our monarch, and whose remains lie close to the High Altar of Westminster Abbey, where only a few years ago they were venerated by Pope Benedict XVI. The great king of the Anglo-Saxons remains the patron of good government in our land, and the bulwark against misrule and injustice as he has been for 1000 years. Here in our Church, we remember Gregory, a refugee from pagan Armenia, who learned of Christ for himself when he was raised in Cappadocia, at the heart of Greek Eastern Christian spiritual life and theology, to became the “Illuminator” of his people when he returned to organise his nation’s Church, so that the oldest Christian state in the world remains a proud Christian civilisation in the East and in diaspora across the world to this day.  And in Rome, John Henry Newman, England’s son and its greatest Christian teacher and theologian, will be included in the canon of the saints of the whole Catholic Church, on account of his life’s dedication to the binding nature of the Truth and the Lord whose salvation in the One Church of Christ he embraced.


One of Blessed John Henry’s phrases described his spiritual journey. It was not one of picking up or looking for hidden messages, but a path of realising the plain reality before his eyes. So he spoke of moving “out of shadows and illusions into truth.” He also said that this was because “heart speaks to heart.” If we are honest, we all know what these two sayings mean, since we have all encountered them, in our truer moments, in our souls.  The second phrase is adapted from something St Frances de Sales said in his Treatise on the Love of God (Bk VI):

Speaking to God and hearing God speak in the bottom of the heart … is … a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart. And none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.

The Canaanite woman knew the silent conversing when she cried. The apostles cried back and told her to stop. But the Lord said not a word. For heart speaks to heart. And when St Paul told us to clear the temple of God that we are of all the clutter of noise to other idolised obsessions and our illusory falsehood, it is to make way for the presence and worship of God. Thus in the purity of lovers in relationship He may see only us as we are, and we may see only Him as He is, for “eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak”. This is why, when we pray to God, we do not hear with our ears; it is how we have an inkling that prayer is not something that we do to God, but what God does to us. It is the path of falling and being in love.

St Edward, St Gregory and Blessed John Henry all in their way knew what we are learning too. There is other light. There is no other faith. There is no other Church, save to be in that one place where He gazes in His heart upon us and we upon Him, where we are not alone, but see ourselves to be in the company of all the rest who have gone their way and found that it leads purely nowhere else than to the Church wherein He makes Himself know in this breaking of Bread. As St Bernard put it:

Jesu, the very thought of Thee/ With sweetness fills my breast;

But sweeter far Thy face to see, And in Thy presence rest.

O Hope of every contrite heart, O Joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind Thou art! How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this/ Nor tongue nor pen can show;

The love of Jesus, what it is/ None but His loved ones know.

And so, with St Paul, the Woman of Canaan and her daughter, with St Gregory, St Edward, St Bernard, and St John Henry Newman, we pray:

Jesus, our only Joy be Thou, As Thou our Prize wilt be;

Jesus, be Thou our Glory now, And through eternity.

A final verse to Tydi a Roddaist?

The fine hymn by T. Rowland Hughes, with its haunting tune and dramatic Amen by Arwel Hughes, is one of the most moving and typical Welsh Hymns. The words, however, leaves their subject of song and salvation at the summit of Calvary, which is beautiful; but what of the resurrection and the life of heaven to come? Back in 1992, I attempted a fourth verse to address this question, but forget entirely about it. Never throw a book away: today, I took down Baptist Praise and Worship from its shelf and found the card I had written on, complete with many crossings out and unsuccessful attempts. Twenty-five years on, I have taken another run. Here is the result.


The first three verses, by T. Rowland Hughes (1903-49), tr. Raymond Williams (1928-90). (Baptist Praise & Worship, no. 650)

O Lord, who gave the dawn its glow,
And charm to close the day,
You made all song and fragrance flow,
Gave spring its magic sway:
Deliver us, lest none should praise
For glories that all earth displays

2. O Lord, who caused the streams to sing,
Gave joy to forest trees,
You gave a song to lark on wing,
And chords to gentlest breeze:
Deliver us, lest we should see
A day without a song set free.

3. O Lord, who heard the lonely tread
On that strange path of old,
You saw the Son of Man once shed
His Blood from love untold:
Deliver us, lest one age dawn
Without the Cross, or crown of thorn.

 A proposed fourth verse:

4. O Lord, who sent Your Spirit’s power
To wrest Your Son from death,
And yield Creation’s crowning hour
in Resurrection’s breath:
Deliver us, lest none below
Heaven’s tune of praise to sing should know.

©  Mark Woodruff (1959- ), 25 vi 1992, 2 vii 1992 & 16 vii 2017.

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

St John the Theologian on a Sunday of Tone 7, Homily at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, London, 9 October 2016

We remember the Beloved Disciple John today, above all the apostle of the eternal life and love of God. But, being Sunday, we invariably commemorate the Resurrection, for week by week we are given a constant experience of the reality that we enter into and that enters into us. To this end, we have eight sets of hymns, one for each musical tone, that we sing each week in turn over a couple of months. This Sunday we sing the hymns of the seventh tone, last week the sixth and next week the eighth. In this way, the hymns are always familiar when they come round; but they are always fresh, too, because each week we move from one perspective to another. We do not get used to just one set; and with each new week we are surprised by a different angle upon Christ.

In this week’s troparion, we say to Christ our God, “You opened paradise to the thief, You turned the myrhhbearers’ lamentation into joy.” We go on to proclaim that this is because He is risen, and He replies – through the apostles and the Church’s songs – “Yes, I am risen, for I am merciful – that is the reason why.” In the kontakion, we go on to imagine the Saviour saying to us, “Now come forth to Me – Come to the Resurrection.” So it is not just that the Merciful Lord came to us at Bethlehem, went up on the Cross to bring mercy to us, or came up out of the Tomb to bring the Kingdom to us. His outward movement towards and into us is also about our coming to Him, being brought in our movement towards and into Him: “Come into the Resurrection!”

In a talk at the fascinating conference on paths to Christian Unity that has preceded this Liturgy, we heard how our shared Christian faith is not just a matter of body and soul, but of heart and imagination too. In the beautiful and striking hymns that we have sung in turn since the first millennium, we in our eastern Church for our part are taken, then, into this realm of imagination by which we enter the Kingdom of the heart of Christ Who adores us more than we can possibly adore Him. Here, we can meet, and love and worship together, with and in the Church of heaven which is invisible to us but where there is no division from Christ. As the Orthodox Metropolitan Platon (Gorodetsky) of Kiev, said, in words of pioneering mystical ecumenism that inspired Father Paul Couturier to reimagine the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, “The walls of separation do not rise as far as heaven.” So, perhaps the eastern imagination of the life of resurrection and being brought into it week by week – “Come into the Resurrection” – with our very visual worship and its movement of colour and image, and fragrance and sound – is something we can humbly offer to our fellow Christians, adding to the dimensions of body and soul, heart and imagination in the Life of Christ that we lead in His Body.

For the power of the liturgical and spiritual imagination – which is of course something that belongs to all our traditions in different ways – takes us back to reflect on the meaning and nature of God’s love with St John the Beloved. In the Catholic and Orthodox Churches of the East we often call him St John the Theologian, not just because of the words and mysteries he wrote out, but because it was the disciple whom Jesus loved that spoke to God, who has as a result spoken of God, and whom God has spoken to, close to Him, right to the heart. St John thus says, “No one has ever seen God” (Epistle – I John 4.12-19); and then he meditates profoundly on the perfect life of love in Christ as nonetheless the very vision of Christ in God. We have not seen God, but God has seen us. We have not loved God before He first loved us. We are to be seen, then, as those who are loved by God. More than that, what is seen us is none other than the love and eternal life of God, none other. “No one has ever seen God”; but they can see us.

And so, this angle that we have on Christ that I spoke about before turns out really to be His angle on us. We imagine we behold Him in His risen glory – and we are excited by love and life to the full. But while this is so deeply true of the nature of things even in this world, what we are really seeing is Him beholding us out of mercy. It is the Merciful who is risen from the dead, and our own resurrection from Him will be because we too have been changed into Mercy, that is the living vision of God’s life of eternal love. For when we say, “Save us,” it is from being merciless, being unloving, and thus unliving in Christ that we cry to be kept.

May this Christ, who is that Mercy Itself, save us; for He is good and He loves mankind.

Homily on the Seventh Tone Resurrection Hymns, Heavenly Hundreds, the Justice of Christ and the Massacre in Paris, 14/15 November 2015

The Byzantine Divine Liturgy, in the view of many Western people, is ornate and richly complex. In fact, while the prayers are longer than those in the Latin tradition and an obvious difference is the cumulative and insistent effect of the numerous litanies, its basic shape is quite similar to those of the mass of the Latin rite, suggesting a common tradition in the Church’s early days in the Roman Empire. In the core of the service there is even less variation than at a Roman Catholic Mass. The prayers hardly ever vary; the Introit is always the same – The Trisagion which is the response to Psalm 79; the Great Entrance or Offertory is nearly always the Cherubic Hymn, being the refrain to Psalm 23; and set verses from Psalms 22, 56 and 113 are sung every time –  "Save Your people and bless You inheritance"; "Be exalted, O God above the heavens"; "Blessed be the Name of the Lord!" The Scripture readings and the psalms linked to them for the Sunday or Feast are almost all that changes. This is how it developed in the Great Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and this is the Liturgy that was shared across the Eastern Roman Empire and up into Eastern Europe, and now across the world.

Except to say that in the ninth century, a monastic renewal flowered in a monastery in the south-western corner of the vast City of Constantinople, the famous Stoudion, or the Studite monastery led by St Theodore, who with his collaborators gathered together all the Christian hymns from the Greek, Syrian, Jerusalem and Sinai desert monasteries and cathedrals they could find, including those of St Romanos the Melodist, St Ephrem Syrus and St John Damascene. They arranged them into great cycles of weekly, daily, festival and seasonal hymns, mostly to add rich variety to the unchanging psalms of the monastic offices, but also so that great Christian poetry could bring out the meaning of the Scriptures and canticles as they reflect upon Christ and teach reveal His power of redemption. Each Sunday, we notice that these hymns are grouped according to one of the eight tones of Byzantine liturgical musical theory. Today we use Tone 7, which is known as the Grave Tone on account of its sweet but sometimes plaintive tone. In the west, for instance, this is the scale used for the gentle melody that opens the Requiem Mass. But in the East, the eight sets of Sunday hymns, are always about the Resurrection; and they glorify Jesus Christ for being risen from the dead and being the conqueror even of our destruction. So it makes no difference if the Tone uses a musical scale that to our modern Western ears sounds major, or minor, subdued, exotic, plaintive or joyful – each mood is a lens through which to view the Resurrection. Each kind of “mood music” thus becomes yet another way for the Resurrection to approach us and make itself understood whatever our disposition, whatever our circumstances, whatever our personality.

So it is no surprise that the main chants for each Sunday, weekday and feast gained popularity among the faithful. They were borrowed from the services of the monks and added to the Divine Liturgy with the highest place of honour in their own right – the very last of the songs to be sung as the priest arrives at the Altar itself. Thus it has been for over a thousand years; thus we have sung them today. It is as if a different way of praising Christ sets us up each Sunday to hear His Word, to behold Him in His Mysteries, to welcome Him in His Temple, to receive Him Who is our God into our human lives - as He once took the flesh that he raised from the dead, and as He will more and more receive us who are humans into His own life, the very life of God the Trinity.

I cannot help but feel that the chants for this Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, a Sunday of the Seventh Tone, are so deeply poignant this weekend, as we pray in shock at the murder of 127 innocent people in Paris, with many other critically injured too, by cowardly members of a psychopathic death-cult pretending to follow God and the path of Islam. At the same time, we remember the millions displaced and degraded by false Muslims across the Middle East, including our own brothers and sisters who have been called upon to give their lives for others and for Christ.

So today’s Troparion speaks of lamentation, but also how the Cross of Christ destroys death.  Once death has done its worst, what is left is mercy, capable of opening the door of Paradise, just like the stone rolled away from the Tomb that shows to the mourners that God’s new reality for humanity has prevailed, and in the midst of lamentation there can be signs of hope and joy.

Likewise, the Kontakion realises that death has no hold over us. Christ too, it says, “went down”; but the collapse shattered the power that drags humanity down, and falls in on top of it.

Then the Theotokion, the hymn to the Mother of God, confronts the fact that, if all that is true, then it is not just something that happened to Jesus in ancient history, nor is it purely something that we have to look forward to after we have ended life here, and passed upon our way: it turns everything inside out now. For Mary is the treasury of Christ’s Resurrection from before she gave birth, through to this very moment and beyond. It was then that she brought us up from the pit, when our Salvation – not an idea or an act but a Person - was born; and it is now that we are saved as she pushes us out, by our own hope, from the depth, towards the Resurrection. And, again, the Resurrection is no mere idea, nor an act, but a Person. So He says to us, as our hope turns toward His voice, “Come forward – come to the Resurrection”.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches of Ukraine are conscious of a special bond with “those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness”, by those who “insult… and utter every kind of evil word falsely” (Matthew 5), because less than two years ago 130 defenceless, civilian protesters in Kyiv, mostly Christians seeking a peaceful resolution to their society’s problems - and demonstrating for nothing more than you and I in Britain take for granted as our birth-rights of honesty, truth, freedom and democracy - were killed by the forces of a corrupted state. In Ukraine these innocent, brave and hope-filled people are revered as the Heavenly Hundred. So very many of them were Eastern Christians, Catholics and Orthodox, whose spiritual life was constantly animated by the rhythms, hymns and music of the Byzantine tradition of the Church’s worship. Every eight weeks they will have heard the same songs we have sung today and taken them to heart, living with the Cross, with Salvation, with the Resurrection as second nature - the simple truth of what it is to live in this world as in the next, on earth as it is in heaven, in my own skin as if in Christ’s, joyful in Christ’s life because on my own I can do nothing.

And now in France, as in Iraq and Syria, Egypt and Libya - and also as in London ten years ago and New York in 2001 - more people are being robbed of their lives and hopes, by the enemies of righteousness and the Kingdom of Heaven (The Beatitudes, Matthew 5, Third Antiphon). What does our confidence in Christ say to them and to the devastated friends and family who love them, as well as to the fear of the rest of us who wonder what more lies ahead? There is a message that not many will want to hear at the moment, but it is the message that dwelt in the heart of the Heavenly Hundred in Kyiv and richly with our fellow Christian Copts who, on the seashore of Libya moments before their martyrdom, calmly prayed, “Lord, have mercy.” It is the message of our salvation, the message of the Cross, the message of the Resurrection, the message of the Person who is our life, our hope. Here it is in the readings that, providentially, our Church has appointed for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost in uneven years:

"If you want the world to change and for the Kingdom of God to come:

-         Love your enemies and do good. Be children of the Most High who is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6. 35-36)

Why? Because you must never forget, even when you pray for the thorns in the flesh to be taken away:

-         My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. (II Corinthians12. 8-9)

So, "blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." May this Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.

“O Mother of God, all-praised treasury of our Resurrection, we hope in you; bring us from the pit… for you have given birth to our Salvation.”

 

Hymns: The Sound of Communion

This paper first appeared in Anglicans & Catholics in Communion, Special Edition of The Messenger of the Catholic League, April-August 2010). It was published again in two parts in Bulletins 272 & 273 of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 20, 2012.

It considers the place of English metrical hymnody in the Mass of the Roman Rite, and the science of their selection and deployment. The title is a phrase of Rowan Williams'.

The article can be read and downloaded here.

Eastern Hymn to the Holy Spirit

Tsaryu nebesnyi

King of the Heavens, Lord God Almighty,
Advocate, Spirit, Truth from above:
Fill with Your blessing all things in bounty,
Set every heart on fire with Your love.

King of the Heavens, Treas’ry of graces,
Good One, bestowing life in Your might.
Dwell now within us, enter all places;
Shine in our darkness Your cleansing light.

King of the Heavens, in truth and virtue
Come as Christ promised, Life-giving Fire.
Save us and make us holy, to meet You;
Strengthen our service, our hearts’ Desire.

O. Nyzhankov’skyy, 1919, from a sticheron of the Holy Spirit
Trans. Anon., adapted and revised © Mark Woodruff 2014


"Heavenly King" is prayed at the beginning of nearly all Liturgies and services in the Byzantine rite outside the season of Pascha. There is an existing versification, very popular in Ukrainian, with a beautifully haunting tune, but the traditional English translation known in North American is only a loose rendering of both the Ukrainian hymn and the Byzantine chant on which it is based. As it is a custom sometimes to sing metrical hymns and carols before and after the Divine Liturgy in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, we wanted to embrace something that would be engaging to our English-speaking worshippers familiar with hymns from Western traditions. So last year, the adaptation above was made, for the faithful to sing prior to the Divine Liturgy in English at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London, which takes place on the second Saturday of each month.

O living flame of love

O living flame of Love,
how tenderly You wound
my soul’s deep heart.
Make happy ending of
our sweet embrace that, bound,
would pains impart.

O searing, are you sweet;
O wound, are you delight
from such a hand.
Your mortal touch of heat
sets dying life alight,
all debt thus banned.

Now deep, where feeling dwelt
in caverns blind, obscure,
shine lamps of fire !
In warmth let them be felt,
and lovely light be pure
for their Desire.

Where good and glory rest
Your secret breathings wake
from sleep and move,
so gentle in my breast,
by tender pains to make
me fall in love.


St John of the Cross ODC 1542-1591
English translation and adaptation by Mark Woodruff (c) June 1999.
This is a compact version of a fuller translation with another line in each stanza from 1998 that I am revising still.  It goes with a musical setting that I have also been written, but the verses are more poem than hymn.

A Passiontide Hymn

King, in the majesty of Truth
Your justice stands decreed:
Ancient of Days, when comes the hour
Your subject world shall heed?
When will the people grant Your crown,
and take Your yoke of peace;
when will they bid You take the sin,
for evil ways to cease?

Not in the world’s grand walks of power,
not in the rule of state,
not in the counsels of the wise,
for judgment need we wait:
Christ in a stable holds His court,
the stall His bench of law;
shepherds and kings the meaning see,
when princes dwell in straw;

Then in high time’s appointed turn
the world You moved to gain:
Seizing for love the weight of sin,
You bowed Yourself to pain.
Drawn to the lifting of Your Cross
come all, forgiven, free:
here is Your crowning, here our peace,
King, reigning from the Tree.

Mark Woodruff © 1990 & 1996
I first started to work on this when I was precentor at the Cathedral of St James in Bury St Edmunds. We used the prototype for a Passiontide service, to the lovely tune Coe Fen by Ken Taylor, for which the Organist at the time, Paul Trepte, was seeking more words.

A Third Candlemas Hymn

The third and last response to Fr Daniel Lloyd's challenge to me, to translate some German hymns for the Presentation into English.

The first two (see here, and here) were from the Reformation tradition, dating from the 17th century. Here is one from the Paderborn Catholic diocesan hymnal of 1874, Sursum Corda. The authorship is unattributed.


Word of the Father, Light to every nation,
Bright in the Temple, all the world’s salvation,
Here sees glad earth in You its consolation,
Saviour appearing.

Small in your Mother’s arms Your life is proffered;
Vast in compassion comes the life You suffered
Sacred to be, the spotless Victim, offered
For our redeeming.

Thus dawns the Light that lightens every mortal;
Thus comes foretold the sacrifice that bought all;
Thus in the Temple opens heaven’s portal,
Mary, God-bearing.

Simeon departs in peace, Your Light perceiving;
Hannah goes forth in joyful song, believing.
Out from our dark we follow, grace receiving,
Your face achieving.

Wort des Vaters, Licht der Heiden,
Heil und Trost der ganzen Welt;
heute bist Du unter Freuden
in dem Tempel dargestellt.
Klein, auf Deiner Mutter Armen
ziehst Du in den Tempel ein;
und du läßt Dich voll Erbarmen
zum Erlösungsopfer weih’n.

„Nun“, ruft Simeon voll Freuden,
„nun will ich in Frieden geh’n!
Das verheiß’ne Licht der Heiden,
unser Heil hab ich geseh’n!“
Freudig tritt, vom Geist geführet,
Anna in der Frommen Kreis;
und, von Gottes Huld gerühret,
stimmt sie ein in Dank und Preis.

Fröhlich wollen wir Dich preisen,
aller Menscheit Heil und Licht,
mit den beiden frommen Greisen
harren Dein mit Zuversicht.
Laß in Deinem Licht uns wandeln,
stets die Nacht der Sünde scheu’n;
nur nach Deinem Vorbild handeln,
einst im ew’gen Licht uns freu’n!

From Sursum Corda, Paderborn, 1874
trans. Mark Woodruff © 21.03.2015

The English translation is best sung to Iste Confessor. The German tune is unremarkable and what you need to say is not easily to be fitted into its metre (Fr Daniel had proposed Abbot's Leigh). Hence the choice above of the English form of the Sapphic metre.

Another Candlemas Hymn

Following an earlier post, my friend Fr Daniel Lloyd of the Oxford Ordinariate group sent me another German text.

Here is my effort at translating it and putting it into hymn-verse. We will use it at the 2015 Biennial Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage to Walsingham, 17-20 March.

Maria ging geschwind mit ihrem lieben Kind;
sie ging von Betlehem zur Stadt Jerusalem
und trug zum Tempel ein das zarte Jesulein.

Sie opfert diesen Hort nach des Gesetzes Wort.
Sie gab das Kindlein dar, von Täublein auch ein Paar,
und löset ab mit Geld den Herren aller Welt.

Sankt Simeon, der Greis, kam auf des Herrn Geheiß.
Er nahm mit großer Lust das Kind an seine Brust,
davon sein Herz aufsprang, und er vor Freuden sang.

Auch kam Sankt Anna hin, die fromme Seherin.
Auf tat sie ihren Mund und macht das Kindlein kund.
Sie lobt das Kindlein sehr, und sagte, wer es wär.

O Kind, o Gottes Sohn, wie froh ist Simeon.
Wie froh Sankt Anna ist, daß Du gekommen bist!
Ach, komm und mach also von Herzen alle froh!


From Bethlehem with haste the Virgin on her way
went forth to Sion’s hill with thankful heart to pray:
And in the Temple to present
The tender Child from Heaven sent.

By sacrifice for love, keeping the Law’s decree,
Her arms their Son release His world at length to free:
The pair of doves, the store of gold,
Are naught beside the Lord foretold.

Now Simeon beholds the Light of all the world;
God’s glory he perceives in human frame unfurled.
Salvation in his heart’s embrace
Breaks forth to praise for endless grace.

By wonder’s silent hope the righteous Anna nears,
Redemption’s rise to see, expectant all her years:
Then lifts her voice in song to praise
The Saviour come to crown her days.

For Simeon the Light to human eyes revealed;
For Anna, Son of God, redemption born a Child:
As once You came, their whole delight,
So earth entire, all hearts, make bright.

Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, 1623 trans. Mark Woodruff © 21.2.2015
This goes to Harewood or Crofts 148th

Lenten Acclamations To Genevan Psalm Tunes

The following article was invited for "Views from the Choir Loft" on the CC Watershed liturgical music resource and publisher website (February 11, 2015)

DURING THE 1980s, a great friendship developed between the Catholic Diocese of Bruges (Brugge, in Belgium) and the Anglican Diocese of St Edmundsury & Ipswich, facing each other on opposite sides of the North Sea, four hours away by ferry. Not only were there friendly ecumenical visits and dialogue (it had been in Belgium in the 1920s that Cardinal Mercier had conducted the Malines Conversations to explore the possibility of reunion, through an “Anglican Church, united not absorbed), but also spiritual exchanges: Bruges houses the shrine of the Holy Blood, with its world famous Procession each Ascensiontide, and the Anglican Cathedral in Bury is adjacent to the site of the Shrine of St Edmund King & Martyr, England’s first patron saint. In 1989 I heard about a retreat for English priests (Catholic and Anglican) arranged every year at the Benedictine Abbey of St Andries at Zevenkerken, just outside Brugge. Famed for its school and history of theological scholarship it had been a medieval foundation, closed under the French Revolution that swept the old Austrian Netherlands and refounded in an independent Belgium as part of the Beuronese monastic renewal and mission movement. It was also a centre for the Liturgical Movement. A monk of Maria-Laach Abbey in the Rhineland was the architect, and the community formed the Benedictine Belgian Annunciation Congregation along with two other monasteries associated with the Liturgical Movement, Keizersberg (Mont-César at Leuven, to which Lambert Beauduin belonged) and Blessed Columba Marmion’s Maredsous. Those with old missals and chantbooks will recognise the Abbey of Zevenkerken more easily as the editorial seat for the liturgical works of the Desclée press: the Abbaye de St André les Sept-Églises, at Bruges (the nave, aisles and chapels of the remarkable Abbey Church correspond with the seven principal basilicas of the city of Rome).

Following the permission of vernacular language at worship in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, northern Belgium translated the liturgical books into Flemish, the local version of Dutch spoken by the majority. This coincided with the decline of French as the main language of public life, St André les Sept-Églises became Zevenkerken St Andries; and the Abbey’s relationship with the historical Liturgical Movement as part of a French-speaking world changed. Now it was part of Flemish-speaking Church with close relations to the Catholic Dutch to the north in the Netherlands. What was striking to an English visitor was the vigour of the psalmody, in a liturgical translation from the early 1970s, Het Boek der Psalmen, a collaboration of Dutch and Flemish Benedictines and Cistercians, set to newly composed simple tones in the eight modes, with antiphons. Anyone knowing the Coverdale psalter in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer could become familiar with the import and rhythmic structure of the Dutch text.

But Dutch, like French, is familiar with another and very historic way to sing the psalms: the metrical psalms of the Genevan Reform. It was Dom Lambert Beauduin who realised that the singing of psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in divine worship was the greatest bond between Catholics and Protestants; at the monastery he founded at Amay (now at Chevetogne) he not only provided for the celebration of the Slav-Byzantine rite but also increased the readings from Scripture at the offices to intensify desire for recovering unity with Christians of the post-Reformation traditions by a demonstrable and liturgical enrichment of Scriptural fare, especially from the Old Testament. While the psalms at the western offices at Amay were of course in Latin, by the time of the liturgical changes after Vatican II, across Belgium and the Netherlands there emerged a new possibility to make use of the 400 year old liturgical patrimony of the Protestants – not only reading the Scriptures in the vernacular but also singing psalms in famous metrical versions, integral to Dutch-speaking religious and musical culture, and even familiar to Catholics. Thus at Lauds, Vespers and Readings at Zevenkerken, one of the psalms is a metrical version sung to an exhilarating tune from Geneva or Strasbourg. It made me think that such singing as this must have been why the Reform in Geneva was at first so exciting—no organ, no choir, no harmony, but a strong and rhythmically engaging monody in which all participated as one Body and internalised the words of the Psalms, not in their translated Scriptural form but as memorable verses.

The melodies struck me as especially powerful because, despite being a Church musician (I was precentor of the Anglican St Edmundsbury Cathedral at the time), I hardly knew them. The English tradition of metrical psalms is different, employing different metres more suited to the way the language works in metred verse. Perhaps the most famous is “The Old Hundredth” Psalm, All people that on earth do dwell, which has outlasted its update. Another is The Lord’s my Shepherd, well known in Scotland but all but forgotten in England until Princess Anne chose it for its tune and descant at her wedding. So, despite the Dutch-French-Swiss psalms and their tunes being so appealing, it was not easy to imagine how to make us of them in English worship. Those that had not died out were associated with an old-fashioned way of singing hymns, already losing ground to new kinds of worship songs. Thanks to one of those retreats at Zevenkerken, within a few years I made my journey to the full communion of the Catholic Church and was ordained priest in 1995. I continued to take part in the retreats alongside my old Anglican friends in this Belgian Catholic Benedictine abbey and the metrical psalms of the Dutch Reform, gladly appropriated by the Dutch and Flemish Catholics, approached me in a new way.

Having grown up in a liturgical Church where there is a great deal of singing—the classic English hymns, the ordinary of the Eucharistic rite, and the canticles and psalms of the Office—it dismayed me that the reforms in the Catholic rite had hardly engendered the restoration of the Mass as normatively a solemn sung celebration as I had been used to in the Church of England or, for that matter, the Catholic places of worship I had visited on the Continent. In England, as in Ireland, Low Mass had given way to a spoken mass with hymns (and not the best of what the English religious culture had to offer by any means, let alone appropriately selected and deployed) and new worship songs: not even the proper chants either in Latin or English (I had been used to the propers in English translation arranged to Gregorian chants, but suggesting we used these, even provisionally or as ancillary to the songs, was dismissed as belonging to the past). I was most dismayed by the gradual/responsorial psalm almost invariably being said by a reader instead of sung with the leading of a cantor. And with nearly always the same tune for the Alleluia (the simple beauty of the chant from the office at the end of the Paschal Vigil now debased from overuse all but every day), Lent was no relief because the Gospel Acclamation was rarely sung by a cantor, let alone with the involvement of the people.
     
It struck me then that those wonderful Reform tunes beloved at Zevenkerken could at last be put to use in English Catholic worship. So I adapted the texts of the Lenten Acclamations in the Lectionary for each of the three years into metrical form and harmonised four of the tunes. I make no claims for the verses, but at least they have been used to make singing the Lenten Acclamations possible.

Here is the link to the resource, from which it can be downloaded:

* * Website • Lenten Gospel Acclamations to Four Genevan Psalm Tunes

A Candlemas Hymn

I was recently told there were no hymns for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ (known in the East as the Feast of Encounter with the Lord, i.e. Simeon's and Hannah's in the Temple). This assertion is demonstrably mistaken, but it got me thinking. I looked up the text of the motet, Maria wallt zum Heiligtum, by Johannes Eccard (1553-1611) in the well known translation by John Troutbeck (1832-1899), When to the Temple Mary went, finding it was not a good translation and also realising that its metre means it cannot be used as a conventional hymn.

Regardless of whether what follows is 'good', I set my hand to a fresh translation that would fit to a triple 10.10. tune, such as Unde et Memores or Song 24, Old 50th, or even Yorkshire (Stockport).


When Mary to the Temple brings her Child,
The Christ foretold to Simeon is revealed;
As arms that aged in waiting hold the Boy,
The Spirit thrills his voice with ageless joy:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.

Lord Jesus Christ, now hold us through our days,
And show our greatest joy to be Your praise.
Help us, at life’s last hour, depart in peace
With Simeon raised in song by love’s increase:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.

Maria wallt zum Heiligtum und bringt ihr Kindlein dar,
das schaut der greise Simeon, wie ihm verheißen war.
Da nimmt er Jesum in den Arm und singt im Geiste froh:

Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.

Hilf nun, du liebster Jesu Christ, dass wir zu jeder Frist
an dir wie auch der Simeon all uns're Freude han
und kommt die Zeit, sanft schlafen ein und also singen froh:

Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.

Johannes Eccard, 1553-1611
trans. Mark Woodruff, February 2015

Three new Music items uploaded, with more to come:

• Hymn to St Edmund, King & Martyr (recalling my time as precentor at St Edmundsbury Cathedral) - the words are by John Mason Neale
• A Pilgrimage Hymn to Our Lady of Walsingham, commissioned from me in the early 1980s by the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, but never used there
• The Gospel Acclamations in Lent set to Genevan psalm tunes. There is a venerable tradition (in which Neale was the master) of setting the chants of the ancient liturgies to post Reformation hymn and psalm tunes in the tradition of Anglican Patrimony. I make no claims for the adaptations of the appointed chants from the Roman Lectionary, but it may be useful to have this noble music available for them to be sung to, rather than their being merely said, or replaced by a hymn or other liturgical song. The excellent Christoph Tietze did the same service for the Introit Chants, which are versified and sung to chorale tunes - dignified and beautiful effect - at the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption at San Francisco.

Please go to the Music page for the downloads. Everything I place there is free to use for personal and liturgical purposes.