Pleas for Mercy
“I will pour out ... a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that ... they [will] look on me, on him whom they have pierced.”
This glass behind the altar of Roman parish of St. Tarcisius, Camberly dates from the church’s construction in the early 20th C. The gaze of the saints is fixed upon our crucified Lord, whose hands are stretched wide upon the Cross in embrace of all.
I have looked upon you in your holy place, that I might behold your power and glory.
— Psalm 63:3
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Hail, True Body, Truly Born!
This is the Ave Verum of the acclaimed 20th C English composer, Sir Edward Elgar, sung by the Hereford Cathedral choir in 1999.
The Ave Verum is a rich Eucharistic hymn of the 14th C, particularly suitable for the Feast of Corpus Christi, observed by some Christians this past Thursday. (It is a feast of the Latin Church established in the 12th C, fixed as the Thursday after Trinity as another celebration of doctrine: this one mirroring the mysteries of the Eucharist that have deepened for us on another Thursday — Maundy Thursday — which celebrates the historical drama of the Last Supper, from which Eucharistic doctrine draws its inspiration).
The Eucharistic devotion of the high middle ages was profound and beautiful, although it had the unfortunate side effect of inspiring so much reverence that most people rarely received the Sacrament, gazing upon it and following it in procession more readily than they would consume it. Such excesses were rightly corrected by the Reformation, but the contemplative yearning which such piety inspired — yearning reflected in hymns like the Ave Verum — highlights even for us something that is and has always been true of the Sacraments, that we from our demystified and historicized Protestant and modern vantage point often lose sight of.
