The Pearl's Great Price

As Father Heaven, Jupiter, was born
and scaled a  hill to thunder off command;
and Alexander spread his father’s land
to claim as Son of God his crown was worn;
when fortunate Octavian settled power
and called the order ‘Peace’, himself ‘God’s Son’,
there dawned a Light that lightens everyone
and majesty and armour passed their hour.
A father’s field is for a treasure’s grave,
a hill for dwelling and a rock the throne,
where all a loving son will pay is shown,
and force of glory’s arms are Mars unbrave.
I know not where the pearl, this victor, lies,
but buy the field and search for peace, His prize.

(c) Mark Woodruff, 30 November 1996

The Revd Dr Joe Cassidy, Canon of Durham, Principal of St Chad's College, and sometime member of the Society of Jesus, RIP

The wonderful, kind, excellent and inspiring Canon Dr Joe Cassidy, principal of St Chad's College, Durham has died after a heart attack that he and we all thought he was steadily recovering from. May his memory be eternal! Joe has been vitally important not only for those who were at St Chad's in his time, but also for us who there before and had been worried so many times that it might not survive. Friends will know that my achievement during my time at Durham was hardly illustrious, but I loved St Chad's for everything it gave me, including a formation and a challenge that bore fruit later and that have shaped me from that day to this.

After many years of cyclical decay, restoration, implosion, improvement and perennial uncertainty, one wondered how on earth St Chad's could last as a credible academic body with a distinctive Church tradition in a higher education institution, itself facing the challenges of modernisation and harshly competitive economic realities. Then along came Joe. Scarcely a term went by without news of a new record being broken - highest retention/completion rates, no 1 of the Durham colleges for applications, highest number of firsts and 2:1s, new eminence in the SCR, an MCR, financial stability, ambitious new building projects, expansion, 6% reduced energy consumption more than any other college in the university, and - at last - a positive engagement with the alumni that tapped into our ready response with enthusiasm, resource and renewed pride. It was an honour to be drawn into Joe's St Chad's project, and to note that the vital element of what made St Chad's what it was "in our day" was still there - a community of people living, learning and working together, and still rooted in the inspiration that had founded it as a place for those who didn't fit in, or couldn't afford to go, anywhere else, namely its distinctive and even at times ever so slightly eccentric Christian Church tradition.

I once told Joe that Chad's was now so good that it would have been impossible for me nowadays even to hope to be given a place. His reply was gracious, humbling and disarming; and I cast my mind back to the interview with Fr Fenton on the floor with his back out, and then the searching hour with Fr Johnson under the glare of his desk spotlight back in 1976, leading me to resolve to go nowhere other than that ramshackle, sideline of a place - with its prefab chapel and John Cosin woodwork, and an organ scholar but no organ - in which it was clear to me that real humans lived and where I might hope to become one. Joe has understood and maintained this sense of personality in the College, which is why he is loved, thanked, admired and sorely missed now that it has become the magnificent beacon that it is today. I strongly suspect that, had he been Principal in the late 1970s, I would have worked very much harder than I did, not just to do the best I could in the environment he animated, but also because he was so intently interested in the minds of other people and wanted the best from them, and for them.

Joe - thank you for giving us back something precious in St Chad's that we had either lost or had not quite had the first time around. And may your memory be eternal!

Judica Me

Lord Jesus Christ, with faith in Your deep love
and mercy, now I eat Your Body racked
and torn by all the extent of trust I lacked
till to Your City’s peace You had me move.
I waited long that true ‘God’s good’ might prove
and, now I drink Your Blood with joy, the fact
of suffering’s cup from memory is blacked
(Patience’s fruit fell from a Tree above).
Swift to the Prodigal the Father ran -
so swift the Saviour runs to kiss the Cross,
that judgment and resentment at a loss
are found and vinegar dumbs doom of man.
Judge only this: my healing, Saviour kind -
my body to be Yours and Yours my mind.

(c) Mark Woodruff, 30 November 1996


 

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.