St. John Henry Newman
Mount Calvary Church
A Roman Catholic Parish
The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter
Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Trinity XVII
Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor
Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choirmaster
Midori Ataka, Organist
8:00 A.M. Said Mass
10:00 A.M. Sung Mass
Brunch to follow in the undercroft
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Prelude
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Postlude
Praise to the Holiest in the Height, by R. R. Terry
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Common
Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan
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Anthems
Gaudeamus omnes, William Byrd (1540-1623)
Gaudeamus omnes in Domino diem festum celebrantes sub honore Sanctorum omnium: de quorum solemnitate gaudent angeli, et collaudant Filium Dei. Exsultate iusti in Domino: rectos decet collaudatio. Gloria Patri. Gaudeamus.
Let us all rejoice in the Lord celebrating the feast in honour of all the saints, in which solemnity the angels rejoice, while the Archangels praise the Son of God. Ring out your joy to the lord, O you just; for praise is fitting for loyal hearts. Glory be. Let us all rejoice.
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Beati mundo corde, William Byrd (1540-1623)
Beati mundo corde quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt, beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur, beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter iustitiam quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Hymns
Praise to the Holiest in the height (GERONTIUS) is an 1865 hymn by John Henry Newman (1801—1890). The hymn is a profound meditation on 1 Corinthians 15: 20-47, in which God in Christ, the second Adam, restores the world which had been lost by the sin of the first Adam. He does so by his Incarnation: his becoming human is an even higher gift than grace. In human form he undergoes the ‘double agony’ (the agony in the garden, and the suffering on the cross) which will teach and inspire, and demonstrate the power of ‘generous love’. The actions of the Incarnate God are appropriately enclosed within the ‘praise’ motif of the first and last verses.
Like the hymn Firmly I believe and truly, it forms part of The Dream of Gerontius (1865) , which describes the passage of the soul through death. It is sung by the angels as the soul approaches judgment. Jesus, who is true God and true man, undergoes for the human race the “double agony,” the one in the garden and the one on the cross. In his Discourse 16, Newman placed equal emphasis on Jesus’ Agony in the Garden and on His Crucifixion as central to understanding the work of redemption. In the garden Jesus felt the full horror and degradation of all the sins and guilt and sorrows of the world. Newman also intimates that we his brethren should learn from Him to do our share in bearing the burden of the sins of the world.
Lead, Kindly Light (LUX BENIGNA). Newman write this while sick and becalmed at sea in June 1933. Angry at the state of disunion and supineness in the Church he still loved and in which he still believed; confident that he had ‘a mission,’ ‘a work to do in England;’ passionately longing for home and the converse of friends; sick in body to prostration, and, as some around him feared, even unto death; feeling that he should not die but live, and that he must work, but knowing not what that work was to be, how it was to be done, or to what it might tend, he breathed forth the impassioned and pathetic prayer, one of the birth-pangs, it might be called, of the Oxford movement of 1833.
Firmly I believe and truly (NASHOTAH). As an Evangelical, Newman (1801—1890) rejected the doctrines of purgatory and the intercession of saints, but as part of his conversion (1845), he came to a realization of the fullness of the communion of saints: those striving on earth, those being purified by the divine fire, and those in heaven moved by love to pray for those on earth and in purgatory. The poem (Greek Geron: old man), relates the journey of a pious man’s soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. As the priests and assistants pray the prayers for the dying, Gerontius recites this creed and prays for mercy. Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus is from the Good Friday liturgy and is alluded to in the line “him the holy, him the strong.”