Coming Soon …
“O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
The Christmas Tree display in the Tate Museum in London in 2016 by the British-Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary is arresting for its simplicity and its power. A live pine tree is suspended upside-down, with its exposed roots reaching up towards heaven, rather than down into the earth. Not only that, the roots are covered in gold leaf, evoking the wonder of heavenly things.
The provocative display is abundantly appropriate for the Advent season. “Drop down, O heavens!” cries the Prophet Isaiah. We sense the heaviness of this time. We feel the darkness and the gloom that presses in upon us; the imminence of divine judgement. Christmas does not “come” so much as it “descends,” it falls upon us, often quite unprepared. And yet, what falls is not everything we dread, and all we fear we might deserve, but life, and light, and hope, and peace. This is the mystery we anticipate and we celebrate in this darkening and darkest time of the year: God-in-the-flesh come down into the midst of this broken world, and establishing forever his presence among us.
The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
— Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Matt 24:44)
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.
New Zealand based singer Anna Hawkins — noted for her “classical crossover” performances — here sings the classic hymn for latter Advent, Veni Emmanuel: uniquely, in English and Hebrew.
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.
