An Entrance Hymn
“Restore us again, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be whole.”
Advent is a season of entry. We are descending into darkness, as we deepen towards winter, and the light dims. At the same time, we are yearning towards the coming of the light, the culmination of all of God's good and beautiful promises.
Marco Cazzulini captures this dynamic in his digital artwork, "Choral Cathedral" (2017). Cazzulini is channeling the energy of Psalm 24:7 -- "Lift up your head, O gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!"
Fascinating in Cazzulini's depiction is that we see the light only in the gates and the doors. The entry is dark and empty. It awaits the coming of the King of Glory, whose presence is felt in the infinite gloaming warmth of the golden frame. Cazzulini comments on his image thus:
This triumphal and celebratory cry ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’ seems to herald the entry of Christ into the vaunted place of His dominion. That which is closed, opens, and that which is worn, patinated by age, is commanded to lift up its head and acknowledge the arrival of the King of Glory. He who stands, and waits, at the doors of our own closed hearts, worn out by bad experience, shut through unbelief, locked by fear, ruined by sin, is the same King of Glory. He comes, knocks, but never forces entry, and on His ‘coming in’ we are lifted up by His own virtuous majesty. His entry transforms and illumines. Jesus comes in divine eminence and meek humanity. He wears His crown with humility and His presence welcomed is like opening a door to a fresh scented breeze.
Great lofty cathedral interiors soaring into the void inform this artwork. Caught in the half light, their ceilings dissolve into a penumbral space as if no roof or limit existed. Their naves running into infinity, their transepts stretching into the unknown.
Bearing equal creative weight is the image of a path running through a grove of tall trees with light filtering through the canopy, camouflaging shapes and creating deep shadows.
Advent is thus a season of luminous darkness. Our waiting, our anticipation is full of the brightness of promise and hope. It is also dark, empty, and cold, recognizing the absence of what is longed for and sought after. Let us therefore make space, for this paradoxical spaciousness. Let us lift up our heads, and look east.
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down...
— The Holy Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:1)
First Sunday of Advent
Texts for this Week
Prayer
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
This tune was originally penned by Hubert Parry and arranged by Edward Elgar to accompany the text of Blake’s famous poem, “Jerusalem.” Blake’s Jerusalem is a passionate, romantic riot — looking with fiercest hope towards the establishment on earth of the peace and joy of the heavenly city in the midst of this world’s brokenness. It is also irreducibly nationalistic — drawing on English historical legend, and projecting this dream upon the English landscape specifically — and in that, it is tacitly colonial in its overtones. In this, it paradoxically negates the very universal hope that it professes!
In this updated hymn, Carl Daw builds upon the same basic yearnings — the prophetic and biblical vision — but tries to articulate the Advent hope liberated from the historical and contextual constraints that can make Blake’s eschatological vision feel too narrow.
Vox clara ecce intonat — A clear voice, behold, cries out!
Below are two contemporary renditions of the office hymn for the Lauds (early morning prayer) during the Advent season, used in the Latin church from at least the 6th C. (If you’re the kind of person who likes to geek out over the Latin, here it is in parallel with Neale’s translation over at the ever-edifying Thesaurus Precum Latinarum, and here is the hymn tastefully chanted to its original Gregorian melody). Both capture the rich gravitas of the lyrics better than the tradition hymn tune MERTON, although for those who have a strong association between the tune and the beginning of the journey towards Christmas, the more upbeat version from the Folk Hymnal might better fit the mood.
Introitus
Ad te levavi anima meam
This week’s introit comes from Psalm 25:1-3.
Unto you, O Lord, I lift up my soul: O my God, I trust in you. Let me not be ashamed, neither let my enemies laugh at me: for no one who trusts in you will ever be ashamed. Ps. Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.
Because it is the first psalm in the Western antiphoner, it is often beautifully illuminated in medieval manuscripts with rich themes of the season, and has been subject to multiple extraordinary musical treatments over the centuries, as Stephen Brannen points out. Here’s the text chanted according to the Gregorian melody, and a polyphonic setting of the text by Palestrina.
