What did you go out to see?
“He must become greater; I must become less.”
This is the Dutch renaissance master Pieter Bruegel the Elder's depiction of the crowds hanging on every word of John the Baptist in his 1566 painting, The Preaching of John the Baptist.
In Bruegel's depiction, a vibrant, diverse crowd surrounds the prophet, reacting with visible intensity to his preaching. People of many nationalities, social strata, and physical ability are united in their rapt focus on John's call to repentance. Just as our Advent scriptures speak of Christ's salvation being for all people, Bruegel shows John's revelation gripping everyone - Jew and Gentile, powerful and peasant.
The towering, dense crowd threatens to swallow his figure. John almost completely disappears into the swelling mass of humanity: it's almost like a 16th C "Where's Waldo." And yet, even as he is almost invisible, he is still the focal point. Arrayed around him, the crowd strain and reach to grasp his proclamation that "among you stands one whom you do not know." Bruegel's peasants display longing and anxious joy at the promise that the Messiah is already in their midst.
Even as he remains the visual magnet defining the space and binding together its diverse occupants, John the Baptist is fading from the center as he gestures to One mightier than himself, just as our Gospel lesson describes. And the people surrounding him are so focused on his words that they miss the grand vistas opening up just beyond the horizon: the great river Jordan, and the mountain in the distance ...
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
—Psalm 126:3
Third Sunday of Advent
Texts for this Week
Prayer
O Lord Jesus Christ, you sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may likewise make ready your way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient toward the wisdom of the just, that at your second coming to judge the world, we may be found a people acceptable in your sight; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.
The Man comes around
Johnny Cash's vision of the Second Coming has quickly become canon for American folk apocalypticism. With his stark mix of biblical imagery, gritty realism and prophetic warning, Cash gives poetic voice to the hope and anxiety surrounding Christ's return to "judge the quick and the dead."
Written late in Cash's career (2002), the song surveys the promised signs and cataclysms heralding judgment day. The four winds are unleashed, seven trumpets sound, and multitudes stand before the throne as the Book of Life is opened. Yet Cash repeatedly zeroes in on the essential choice each soul must make when faced with the returning Son of Man - whether to plead mercy and confess his name, or vainly call for the rocks to hide them.
Here Cash's raspy baritone grows heavy with the weight of truth telling. The man himself faced this reckoning, walking the line between light and darkness. Now stripped of pretense before the throne, Cash issues a kind of musical last will, hoping his lifelong musical testimony to the Man rings out louder than his missteps.
The spare and haunting melody transports us to a wind-blown plains landscape, echoing with the ancient cries of prophets like John the Baptist making straight the highway of repentance. Cash calls us to walk that hard and lonely road, no longer distracted by the world's din and glamour. For when the Man comes around at the Advent of judgment, all idols will dissolving, leaving only our running into the arms of mercy. Or fleeing in futility from the piercing gaze of Truth.
Verbum supernum prodiens — Supernal Word proceeding forth
Likely composed sometime in the 6th or 7th C, by the 10th C, this hymn was all the rage during the Office of Readings in the monasteries of Latin Christendom. It’s lyrics beautifully align the theme of Christ’s first coming in the Incarnation with his second coming in judgment — two of the primary things we anticipate in the Advent season. (Here’s a brief entry in the TLP with parallel English-Latin lyrics!)
In the 13th C, Thomas Aquinas penned a remix of the hymn for the newly-established feast of Corpus Christi, added to the calendar in 1264 for the Thursday after Trinity, to celebrate the presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The homage to the Advent hymn completes the major senses of Christ’s coming, that he comes to us also in the Sacraments.
If you’re really in the mood to hear the hymn chanted in English, there’s a simple, well-produced version done by the Schola Cantorum at St. Peter’s in the Loop, Chicago. If you have the patience for eight minutes of Latin in beautiful Renaissance polyphany, however, Adrian Willaert’s setting of Aquinas’s lyrics is certainly worth listening to!
Introitus
Gaudete in Domino
This week’s introit comes from Philippians 4:4-6, with the Psalm verse deriving from Ps 85. This Sunday is sometimes called “Gaudete” from this first word of the introit, “Rejoice!” It is also a Sunday of refreshment. For those observing a strict Advent fast, this Sunday is a Sunday of respite, when the rules are relaxed. Hence, the blue/purple of the season is mixed with a little bit of white, to form the attractive rose (not pink!) color that adorns many Altars this Sunday.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ps. LORD, You have been favorable to Your land; You have brought back the captivity of Jacob.
The Graduale Project offers a splendid version of the introit chanted over an image of the chant from a manuscript antiphoner. Henry Percell’s setting of the Philippians text is clutch — so much so that it has it’s own nickname as “the Bell Anthem.”
