Penance and Pilgrimage: Solidarity in Suffering

Dr. Leon J. Podles

From the Mount Calvary talks on Spiritual Disciplines

March 23, 2018

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We have just come from a mini-pilgrimage; we walked with Jesus along the way of the cross as he did penance for the sins of the world, even unto death.

He did everything. Isn’t Christ’s sacrifice sufficient atonement for all sins? Why should we do penance?  Is asceticism really Christian, or is it a mixture of works righteousness and masochism?

And why do we go on pilgrimages? Isn’t God everywhere? Isn’t Christ present in every tabernacle? Why do we travel to holy places?

First I will discuss the whys and hows of penance. Then I will turn to a penitential pilgrimage, the great Holy Week pilgrimage from Santa Fe to Chimayó in New Mexico and then to the even greater pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which I made in 2010.

I will also give some practical hints for those leading ordinary Christian lives who feel called to do penance or to go on a pilgrimage.

Penance is the voluntary affliction of pain on oneself. We all have pains that are not voluntary; they range from an annoying neighbor to cancer. Mostly, these pains are sufficient for Christians as a road to sanctity; St. Therese of Lisieux taught this little way and it is the way most Christians should follow most of the time.

Asceticism is not quite the same as penance, even if both involve pain. Asceticism comes from the Greek word askesis, which means athletic training. Paul frequently uses this metaphor to explain the Christian life. All men know that we need self-discipline; without it we cannot accomplish anything worthwhile. To gain any virtue, natural or supernatural, we have to be willing to accept pain, that is, we have to show fortitude.

Fortitude in Greek is andreia, which means manliness, and both pagans and Christians are exhorted Be a man. Die to defend your country, die to give witness to Jesus – and to do this, we must have fortitude, and to have fortitude, we must learn to suffer pain, to beat our body to subdue it.

Christians accepted pain and torture and death in the arena. After the age of the martyrs the monks saw themselves as warriors, struggling against the armies of demons. Fasting was a struggle in which men were called to compete and show themselves men, but fasting was usually seen in light of the struggle for chastity. Gerald of Wales tells numerous stories of men who fought sexual temptations: St Benedict by rolling in nettles, St. Amonius by piercing his body with a red-hot iron.

These practices were designed to combat evil tendencies, to clear the ground of vices so that the virtues could grow, to assert the power of the soul over the body and its desires.  But there is something beyond that for Christians, something which the pagans could not envision.

The Franciscan movement in the Middle Ages emphasized our identification with the humanity of Jesus, especially with his passion and death, just as we have tried to do in making the Stations of the Cross. Francis was the first person in the history of Christianity to bear the stigmata, and many saw him as the angel of the Apocalypse, bearing the seal of the living God, heralding the end of the world.

Penance is not self-discipline, it is our participation in the innocent suffering of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.  Christ who knew no sin, became sin for our sake so that we might become the righteousness of God.  He bore the sins of the world, but he did not commit the sins of the world.  He was blameless, and opened not his mouth, says Isaiah.  Paul declares that he fills up in his flesh what is lacking with respect to the suffering of Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church (Colossians 1:24).  That doesn’t mean “Jesus didn’t do enough so I have to make up for his inadequate effort on the Cross.”  Rather, it means that as Christians, as part of the Totus Christus, the whole Christ, we bear the cross with Jesus and offer our innocent sufferings, voluntary and involuntary, in union with His sufferings for the good of others—including others who are sinners as guilty as hell. It is in the awareness of our radical solidarity with each other and with Jesus that we can offer penance for one another.

What could be lacking in the sufferings of the God-man? Only one thing – our participation in them. We were bankrupt and could never satisfy the demands of divine justice. Yes, Christ paid our debt in full. No, we don’t have to suffer any more, but if we are honorable, if we seek to honor Jesus, if we would be honored by His Father, we will desire to share in his sufferings, as we have just sought to do in the Stations of the Cross. We can honor God by voluntary suffering to expiate our own sins – and the sins of others, living and dead.

In his 1984 encyclical “Salvifici Doloris” (Of Salvific Suffering), which deals with human suffering and redemption, Pope John Paul II noted that: “The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished.”

In doing so, we share in Jesus’ expiation of sins: our sins, and the sins of the world. We can do penance for sinners, for our enemies, for the enemies of God, for those who hate Him and commit unspeakable acts. In the Middle Ages priests were encouraged to do penance for the sins of the penitents who confessed to them. The Curé of Ars gave light penances to serious sinners, and did the rest of the penance himself.

The saints have done severe penances, including flagellation. The Penitentes in the Southwest of the United States have continued the Franciscan tradition of severe penance. It was sensationalized by Protestants who encountered them, but the impulse is deeply Christian. To understand the Penitentes and to understand penance I recommend the novel Dayspring by Harry Sylvester.

The premise is that an Anglo anthropologist Bain is trying to study the Penitentes. He pretends to convert to Catholicism and he joins the Penitentes and shares in their penances, including flagellation.  The Anglo Bain is married, but his wife is in California, so whenever he feels the urge he gets a local girl for his bed, and thinks nothing of it. At one ceremony at the morada, the chapel of the Penitentes, the Penitents are carrying large crosses in the deep snow around the morada. One falls, and Bain tries to get him to get up, warning him that he may die. The Penitente replies, I deserve to die, I committed adultery.

In their Holy Week procession, the penitents wear robes and hoods in humility to conceal their identities. The Anglo anthropologist Bain is pulling the death cart by a harness around his chest. It contains a skeleton figure with an arrow pointed at him. As he drags it, and its wheels are fixed, the harness digs into his flesh and he bleeds. He looks at the corrupt Anglos who have come to sneer at this procession and the superstitions Hispanics.

Because of the heat or fasting or whatever, Bain sees the faces of the Anglos distorted into almost diabolical evil, showing the vices that had twisted them. He thought:

“For all of them, for himself, it was suddenly possible for Bain to believe that he was doing penance… As in a haze…he saw the procession come to its little Calvary. The blank cross stood above them…the morada was having no crucifixion this year, with a live Hermano bound by ropes to the cross…Standing there, for one brief instant Bain thought of offering himself for a crucifixion. In terror he rejected the idea; thought, later, that he had never had it. Immolation, he knew, in anything, save possibly his work, was not common to him.”

Such severe penances should be undertaken only with the permission of a wise and experienced spiritual director, and never on one’s own. They can sometimes contain, as has long been recognized, elements of pride, of male competition, and even of sexual masochism, and are generally regarded by the clergy with suspicion.

But there are many small penances we can do in our ordinary life. The Little Way of Therese of Lisieux and Opus Dei both suggest many ways of cultivating the spirit of penance in ordinary lay life. Don’t take an aspirin the second you feel a headache coming on. Kneel up straight in church when you can. Take over unpleasant tasks from other people, for example, cleaning out a noisome trash can.  I have to do physical therapy at the gym, and sometimes it hurts. Whenever I feel like skipping it, I offer the pain I will feel for my sins and for those for whom I am praying. In general, for the laity, the best penances are those that help other people directly or that make us able to help other people, physically or spiritually.

Pilgrimages

A pilgrimage is a journey to a holy place. It is an act of natural religion, found in most religions. It is an enacted parable. We all sense that our life is a journey from the mysterious darkness from which we have all come into the mysterious darkness into which we are all going. The Son of God himself made a pilgrimage, coming forth from God and returning to God. We also sense that, in some places, the veil between this visible world and the invisible world is thinner than it is elsewhere.

The ancestor of Christian pilgrimages is the Jewish journey up to Jerusalem, to the temple, the dwelling place of God on earth. The great Christian pilgrimages were to the Holy Land, to Rome, and to Santiago de Compostela, to which I will return.

A pilgrimage is not necessarily penitential, although travel is often uncomfortable and inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. But most pilgrimages include a more or less strong penitential emphasis. We have our own penitential pilgrimage in the United States. The poor Hispanics of New Mexico in the 1930s joined the National Guard to escape starvation during the Depression. They were stationed in the Philippines and therefore were on the Bataan Death March. After the war the survivors began to walk from Santa Fe to the shrine at Chimayó. Now tens of thousands of pilgrims walk from Santa Fe through the desert to that shrine every Holy Week.

Their penitential pilgrimage involves taking on some hardship, some deliberate suffering. As the priest at Chimayó put it, “In coming to Chimayó, people participate in Christ’s journey to Calvary.” Some penitents do this quite literally, carrying homemade crosses along the road, some of them as much as eight feet tall. One of them, a young man from Santa Fe, carried a cross to Chimayó, hoping for personal transformation on this pilgrimage. “I’m kind of the bad seed of the family,” he told a reporter from the Albuquerque Journal, “and no one could believe I was going to do this, and do it alone. But I needed some direction in life and I came to ask God to help.” For others the hardship is in the long journey, like that of the man who walked all the way from Albuquerque for the healing of his church community. Still others make the last mile of the journey on their knees, like the mother who came with prayers for her son, who has been diagnosed with HIV. An Anglo agnostic walked it; by the end he was weeping for the sins and sorrows of the world, and knelt at the foot of the cross.

The greatest pilgrimage in Christendom for over a thousand years has been the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Jesus had commanded his apostles to go to the ends of the earth, so James went to Spain and preached in Galicia, the rainy corner in the northwest, facing the Atlantic. Later, he returned to Jerusalem, became its bishop, and was killed by Herod—the first apostle to be martyred. His followers put his body in a boat, which they then put adrift on the sea. It came ashore in Galicia, and his body was taken and interred in what is now Santiago de Compostela. (There is in fact a first-century Roman cemetery there). The memory of his tomb was lost.

But then, in the ninth century, a Galician shepherd looked up and saw, above a certain field, stars dancing in the sky (a meteor shower?). He told his bishop, who investigated the site and found the tomb of St. James, Santiago, where he built a church. Pilgrims started coming, and churches and refuges were built all along the route to accommodate those who were coming to the campus stellae, the field of stars. During the Middles Ages a half million people a year walked to and from Santiago. Today hundreds of thousands of people each year still walk that path.

In 2010 I walked from St. Jean Pied-de-Port on the French border across northern Spain to Compostela, 500 miles in 40 days. People often asked me, How did I find the Camino? It would be more accurate to say the Camino found me. Churches have their angels; so perhaps pilgrimages also have them. Many pilgrims sense that the Camino has a personality that has called them and guided them. The angel of the Camino reaches out to those whom God wants to walk the Camino, and sometimes they are the most unlikely people.

A gay German comedian, couch potato, and Christian Buddhist, Hans Peter (Hape) Kerkeling was lounging on his bed when day when he suddenly got the idea I am going to walk the Camino de Santiago. So he began. About halfway through he was sitting exhausted in a café thinking Why am I doing this? I don’t even believe in all this stuff. A stranger sat down at his table. He glanced up, and saw the message on the stranger’s t-shirt: KEEP ON GOING! So Hape did, to the end. He wrote a book about it, which became a best seller in Germany, and I came across a graffito, Sankt Hape, Bitt’ für uns.

So the angel of the Camino also reached out to me, although at least I am a hiker and a Christian. I began preparation by hiking in the Rocky Mountains, making my will, and making a general confession. Walking 500 miles at age 63 presents hazards.

In 2010 my friend, Father Al Rose, said mass for me in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral  on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. He said this blessing over me, which uses the themes of journeying that are so deeply embedded in the history of salvation:

Handing me my backpack, my mochila, he said:

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, shoulder this backpack, which will help you during your pilgrimage. May the fatigue of carrying it be expiation for your sins, so that when you have been forgiven you may reach the shrine of St. James full of courage, and when your pilgrimage is over, return home full of joy.

As he handed me my walking stick, my baston, he said:

Receive this staff as support for the journey, so that you are able to arrive safely at Saint James’s feet.

Receive this shell as a sign of your pilgrimage. With God’s grace, may you behave as a true pilgrim throughout your entire journey.

As he handed me the scallop shell, the symbol of St, James, he said:

O God, you who took up your servant Abraham from the city of Ur of the Chaldeans, watching over him in all his wanderings, you who were the guide of the Hebrew people in the desert, we ask that you deign to take care of this your servant, who, for love of your name, makes a pilgrimage to Compostela.

Holding his hands over me, in blessing he said:

Be a companion for him along the path,
a guide at crossroads,
strength in his weariness,
defence before dangers,
shelter on the way,
shade against the heat,
light in the darkness,
a comforter in his discouragement,
and firmness in his intention,
in order that, through your guidance, he might arrive unscathed at the end of his journey and, enriched with graces and virtues, he might return safely to his home, filled with salutary and lasting joy.

May the Lord always guide your steps and be your inseparable companion throughout your journey.

May the Virgin Mary grant you her maternal protection, defend you in all dangers of soul and body, and may you arrive safely at the end of your pilgrimage under her mantle.

May St. Raphael the Archangel accompany you throughout your journey as he accompanied Tobias, and ward off every contrary or troublesome incident.

Go in the peace of Christ.

And do I went. The next day I left my home, quoting the title of Kerkeling’s book: Well, I’m off then – Ich bin mal weg. I walked from the French border to Compostela, 500 miles, 1,000,000 steps, in forty days.

For hours I would hear nothing but my own footsteps. I was mostly alone with my thoughts, like most pilgrims, even those who travel in groups. I examined my conscience and my life, and faced some truths about myself, acknowledging things in me I did not like, and turned them over to God. I was a hermit on the road.

But I was not alone. I was in a file of pilgrims five hundred miles long. People were always offering to help, were always wishing me a Buon Camino. My ancestors in Germany lived on a branch of the Camino, the Jacobsweg. They had almost certainly walked the Camino, on the very stones of the Roman road I was walking on. Perhaps they were praying for their descendants, for me. I was praying for them. I heard some young Dutchmen offer to help an older woman find her hotel. She told them she didn’t want to delay them. They replied, the important thing is not to arrive first in Santiago, but to arrive together. We would all arrive at our final goal together – that is what I hoped for. I felt solidarity with them, with everyone who is making the mysterious journey through life.

I decided to devote every morning to thinking about everyone I had known in my life, trying to remember all the good things about them. I prayed for my family, my friends, my playmates, my teachers, my coworkers, my neighbors. I prayed for my enemies and those who had injured me. The hardest day was when I prayed for the sexual abusers in the Church that they would repent and turn to God for healing that they might be saved.

For hours and days and weeks I said Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner, thousands of times, tens of thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times. It is engraved on my mind. Once I woke from general anesthesia repeating that prayer; another doctor told me I was saying that prayer under anesthesia.

The Camino was full of prayer of every type. People walked along praying. Their walking itself was a prayer. The Camino itself was a prayer. There were formal monuments with prayers along the path, but I liked the informal ones best.

For a mile or so, the Camino runs along the expressway, and a chain-link fence separates the path and the roadway. On this fence pilgrims have woven tens of thousands of crosses of sticks and twigs and bark. I added mine. In forest roads pilgrims had gathered and arranged stones in the shape of a heart, crowned by a cross enclosing the words Paz and Amor, peace and love. People had written in yellow paint on their houses: Yo soy el Camino I AM the Way.

The Camino is a parable of the Christian life, which is a life in Him who is the Way. I frequently felt I was living in a parable or an Ingmar Bergman film. I would look ahead of me to see a red clay road with a line of pilgrims walking up to a tall cross silhouetted against the sky. I would kneel at the foot of the Cruz de Hierro, the cross of iron, and leave the stone I had brought from my home, as millions of pilgrims had done for over a millennium, casting my burdens at the foot of the cross. I would sit on plazas in front of Romanesque churches, watching the grapes and wheat being harvested, and then go in to receive the Bread and Wine of life eternal. Pilgrims would say to me, You look very tired, can I help you carry your pack? And so fulfilling the law of the Lord.

On October 31, 2010 I arrived in Santiago. I looked up to the baroque façade of the cathedral at Santiago Peregrino, St. James the Pilgrim, who was welcoming us, but he had been with us all along, even if we did not know it. Groups of young people would come into the plaza and burst into song. Pilgrims would spot fellow pilgrims they had met somewhere along the Camino and embrace them: “Amigo, Peregrino! You made it—how wonderful.” That was the most important thing, not just that I had made it, but that we all had made it. I felt as many pilgrims feel: just one more step and I would be through the veil, into heaven, which was drawing close around me, especially in and through my fellow pilgrims

I met my wife, who had flown to Santiago ahead of me. As we embraced, I quoted the Bard: Journeys end in lovers’ meeting. We stayed in the building which had been built for pilgrims by Ferdinand and Isabella.

The next day I presented my passport, which had been stamped all along the way, and received my certificate, my Compostela, testifying that I had completed the Camino to honor St. James. I then entered the cathedral. Above the main altar is a life-size statue of Santiago, and behind the altar are stairs to climb to give Santiago an abrazo and to tell him one’s dearest prayer. I hugged him and asked him: “Santiago, please welcome me and my family into Paradise.” I then went to the chamber under the main altar that houses the reliquary that contains his bones. I knelt on the stone floor with other pilgrims, and we prayed, close to one who had walked with Jesus on earth, who had gone to the ends of the earth to tell people that Jesus was Lord and had risen from the dead. We were all pilgrims, still together on the way to Him.

I have spoken about the Camino. If you want to see it, watch Martin Sheen’s The Way. The premise is that a father, played by Martin Sheen, is alienated from his adult son who is bumming around the world. The son, portrayed by Martin’s own son Emilio, is killed at the start of the Camino, and Martin goes to retrieve the ashes. He decides to carry the ashes of his son on the Camino all the way Santiago, and meets others who are also on difficult journeys. The movie gives an accurate picture of the physical and emotional experience of the Camino – except the actors are much too clean at the end!

I have talked about major pilgrimages — but we all can do some sort of pilgrimage. It’s like fasting: do what you can. America being what it is, most pilgrimages will involve driving at least part of the way. Visit a church. Go to the Cathedral, walk around the outside one or twice or thrice saying the rosary.  Go to the Franciscan shrine in Washington. In the runup to the first Iraqi war, my family made a pilgrimage to the shrine in Emmitsburg to pray that war be averted. Our prayers were in part answered: deaths among the American soldiers in Iraq were fewer than they would have been in peacetime. If you can, do the last yard or five yards or ten yards of your journey on your knees.

The journey to God begins with one step. If we learn to detach ourselves from earthly things and undergo small inconveniences and hardships on the journey, we prepare ourselves for the last stage of our earthly pilgrimage.

Albert-Marie Besnard said of the pilgrim:

The day when the Lord calls him, he will be neither disturbed nor surprised. He will have known this departure, he will have loved it—this manner of going and leaving all things, ready to take them up again or never again to find them, as God wills. Renunciation will be familiar to him, he has rehearsed it and drilled it, he is ready. For one day, having taken the pilgrimage seriously, he finds death sweet and promising, and this fatherland which he has searched for on earth in parable, he is ready at last to find in eternity.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

(parking on adjacent church lot)

Friday March 23 2018

6 PM Stations

7 PM Soup and Salad

Talk

Spiritual Disciplines: Penance and Pilgrimage

Dr. Leon Podles

Quién es esta casa da la luz? Jesús

Quién la llena de alegría? María

Quién la conserva en la fe? José

The Fourth Sunday of Lent, Mid-Lent Sunday, Laetare Sunday, in the Anglican tradition is also called Mothering Sunday. The Introit for the day, from Isaiah, is “”REJOICE [Laetare] ye with Jerusalem: and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breast of her consolations.  I was glad when the said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord.”  The traditional Epistle from Galatians incudes the passage “But Jerusalem which is above is free; which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” The traditional Gospel tells of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand.

From these passages of Scripture arose the custom of visiting the mother church, that is, the church in which one was baptized. Young people who had left their home village to work as domestic servants were given the day off to see their mothers and to bring a gift of food.

During the Lent fast, people did not eat from sweet, rich foods or meat. However, the fast was lifted slightly on Mothering Sunday and many people prepared a Simnel cake to eat with their family on this day. A Simnel cake is covered with marzipan and twelve balls of   marzipan to represent Jesus and the eleven faithful apostles.

A modern carol by George Hare Leonard refers to these customs:

It is the day of all the year, of all the year the one day,
When I shall see my mother dear and bring her cheer, a-mothering on Sunday.
It is the day of all the year, of all the year the one day,
And here come I my mother dear, to bring you cheer, a-mothering on Sunday.

So I’ll put on my Sunday coat,
And in my hat a feather,
And get the lines I writ by rote,
With many a note,
That I’ve a-strung together.

And now to fetch my wheaten cake,
To fetch it from the baker,
He promised me, for Mother’s cake,
The best he’d bake
For me to fetch and take her.

Well have I known, as I went by
One hollow lane, that none day
I’d fail to find – for all they’re shy –
Where violets lie,
As I went home on Sunday.

My sister Jane is waiting-maid
Along with Squire’s lady;
And year by year her part she’s played
And home she stayed
To get the dinner ready.

For Mother’ll come to Church, you’ll see-
Of all the year it’s the day-
‘The one,’ she’ll say, ‘that’s made for me
And so it be:
It’s every Mother’s free day.

The boys will all come home from town,
Not one will miss that one day;
And every maid will bustle down
To show her gown,
A-mothering on Sunday.

It is the day of all the year,
Of all the year the one day;
And here come I, my Mother dear,
To bring you cheer,
A-mothering on Sunday.

Here it is sung by Jane Peppler of Pratie Heads.

Jesus and Nicodemus, Crijn Hendricksz Volmarijn (1601-1645)

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Laetare Sunday

March 11, 2018

8:00 AM Said Mass

10:00 AM Sung Mass

Hymns

Rejoice the Lord is king (DARWELL)

The King of Love my shepherd is (ST COLUMBA)

When I survey the wondrous cross (ROCKINGHAM)

Anthems

God so loved the world, John Stainer

Super flumina Babylonis, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594

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Hymns

Rejoice the Lord is king

Rejoice the Lord is King is by Charles Wesley (1707-1788).

The hymn has four principal sources. First, it begins with a clear allusion to Psalm 97:1, 12. Second, the 2-line refrain, with which each verse except the last concludes, begins with a citation of part of the Third Century Eucharistic text, Sursum Corda (‘Lift up your hearts.’). Third, the refrain continues with a reference to Philippians 4: 4. Fourth, the content of the hymn is influenced by that section of the Nicene Creed which deals with Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension, the belief that he will come again as Judge, and the unending nature of his Kingdom.

The final stanza concludes with a modified version of the refrain, in which the words of Sursum Corda are replaced by an allusion to 1 Thessalonians 4:16. This modification may have suggested itself to Wesley because the final verse itself draws upon 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

1 Rejoice, the Lord is King!
Your Lord and King adore!
Rejoice, give thanks, and sing,
And triumph evermore:
Lift up your heart,
lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

2 The Lord, our Savior, reigns,
The God of truth and love;
When He has purged our stains,
He took His seat above:
Lift up your heart,
lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

3 His kingdom cannot fail,
He rules o’er earth and heav’n;
The keys of death and hell
Are to our Jesus giv’n:
Lift up your heart,
lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

4 Rejoice in glorious hope!
Our Lord the Judge shall come
And take His servants up
To their eternal home:
Lift up your heart,
lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

Here is John Rutter’s arrangement.

John Darwall (1731-1789) was the son of the rector of Haughton, Randle Darwal. Educated at Manchester Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford, he took Holy Orders (deacon 1756, priest 1757), becoming curate of Haughton, and then Bushbury, 1757, followed by Trysull, 1758. He moved to St Matthew’s, Walsall, in 1761, becoming vicar in 1769, and remaining there until his death. He composed tunes for all 150 metrical psalms during the 1760s. He is remembered for the magnificent DARWALL’S 148th, first published in Aaron Williams’s The New Universal Psalmodist (1770).

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The King of Love my shepherd is

Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877) recast George Herbert’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 into this hymn, The King of love my shepherd is. The true Shepherd -King is Jesus, who cares for His flock by His redemptive death which flows to us through the sacraments. “The streams of living water” flow from Jesus’ pierced side. He ransoms our soul from the captivity of sin, and feeds us with food celestial, “the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.” On our own we never keep to the righteous paths. That is why Jesus comes in love to us, sinners as we are. In his persistent and tender mercy Jesus seeks us, when, “perverse and foolish,” we stray from Him. The wood of the shepherd’s staff is the wood of the cross that guides the strayed soul. Delights flow from Jesus’ pure chalice. The “wine that gladdens the heart” is the Eucharist, the blood of Christ; His is the chalice that overbrims with love. In the Old Testament, our ancestors in faith longed to dwell in the “house of the Lord,” before the revelation of eternal life was clear. But now Christ fulfills that mysterious longing. Jesus is the King who came not be to served but to serve, the one who “giveth his life for the sheep,” the ultimate gift, eternal life with Him.

Here is a Reformed analysis of the hymn:

“We note immediately that the usual way of naming God (“the Lord”) has been replaced with a nonbiblical yet immediately comprehensible allegorical title, “the King of Love.”  This unfamiliar opening and the inversion in the first line (“my shepherd is”) prepare the singer for a text that is intentionally—even self-consciously—allusive and aesthetic. This perception of the text is reinforced by the archaic verb forms (“leadeth,” “feedeth”) and the Latinate diction (“verdant,” “celestial”) in the second stanza. The third stanza intensifies the Christological overtones of this paraphrase with allusions not only to the Good Shepherd passage noted earlier but also to Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4-7; cf. Matthew 18:12-14). The fourth stanza follows the biblical shift from third person to second person, but adds to the images of the shepherd’s rod and staff the suggestion of a processional cross familiar to many nineteen-century Anglican congregations. There is a similar churchy slant in the fifth stanza, where the psalter’s “oil” takes on sacramental tones by being called “unction,” and the usual English translation “cup” becomes a comparably Latinate and ecclesiastical “chalice.” As a result, the reference to God’s “house” in the final line of the sixth stanza does not suggest the Temple in Jerusalem so much as it does the church building in which the hymn is being sung.” (ReformedWorship.org)

I doubt that in the last line “Thy house” is simply the church building; heaven is clearly meant and specified by the “forever.” Anglo-Catholic services are long, but not that long.

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.

2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

4 In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Here is the Cardiff Festival Choir singing the hymn. Here is John Rutter’s lovely arrangement with harp accompaniment.

Henry Williams Baker

Sir Henry Williams Baker was the eldest son of Admiral Sir Henry Loraine Baker. Henry was born in London, May 27, 1821, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated, B.A. 1844, M.A. 1847. Taking Holy Orders in 1844, he became, in 1851, Vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire. This benefice he held to his death, on Monday, Feb. 12, 1877. He succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1851. His hymns, including metrical litanies and translations, number in the revised edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, 33 in all.. The last audible words which lingered on his dying lips were the third stanza of his rendering of the 23rd Psalm, “The King of Love, my Shepherd is:”—

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

This tender sadness, brightened by a soft calm peace, was an epitome of his poetical life.

The tune is ST COLUMBA. Because the compilers of the 1906 English Hymnal were denied permission to use Dykes’s original tune, musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) turned to a folk tune that his former teacher Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had recently edited for a collection of Irish music (A Complete Collection of Irish Music as noted by George Petri (London, 1902-1905); ST. COLUMBA is no. 1043). The two most notable improvements Vaughan Williams made in the hymn tune known as ST. COLUMBA were the lengthening of the second and fourth lines to extend the Common Meter tune to 8787 in order to accommodate Baker’s text—this being their first appearance together—and the use of a triplet (rather than an eighth and two sixteenths) in the sixth measure. (ReformedWorship.org).

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When I survey the wondrous cross

Isaac Watts write this hymn for Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), Book III, ‘Prepared for the holy Ordinance of the Lord’s Supper’, with the title ‘Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ; Gal. 6.14.’

When preparing for a communion service in 1707, when he himself was thirty-three years old, Watts wrote this personal expression of gratitude for the love that Christ revealed by His death on the cross. Watts echoes Paul: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6: 14). The third stanza repeats almost verbatim phrases from St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s hymn “Salve mundi salutare”:  such sentiments would be felt by any sincere Christian who meditated upon the crucifixion.

This is one of the greatest hymns on the Passion of Christ, almost certainly the greatest hymn in English on that subject. The singing ‘I’ surveys the crucifixion of Christ, as though from a distance; though reference is made to the blood which is shed, what flows down from ‘his head, his hands, his feet’ is ‘sorrow and love.’ Perhaps in no other English hymn is the use of ‘I’ and ‘me’ less egotistical. The self here is totally centred on the crucified Christ, in whose dying presence gain is loss and pride is contemptible. At the last line, the singer leaves the scene knowing that this ‘amazing’ love demands nothing less than ‘my soul, my life, my all’. That last line should surely be sung, not with confident gusto, but almost silently, with profoundest and almost incredulous reverence.

1 When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
2 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them through his blood.
3 See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?
4 Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

Here is King’s College.

The tune is ROCKINGHAM. Edward Miller (1735 —1807) adapted ROCKINGHAM from an earlier tune, TUNEBRIDGE, which had been published in Aaron Williams’s A Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature (c. 1780). Its name refers to a friend and patron of Edward Miller, the Marquis of Rockingham, who served twice as Great Britain’s prime minister. In his version the tune has a fine symmetrical contour, and it can inspire a glowing sense of well-being as it twice sweeps the singers up to the highest tonic.

Miller’s father had made his living laying brick roads, and the young Edward became an apprentice in the same trade. Unhappy with that profession, however, he ran away to the town of Lynn and studied music with Charles Burney, the most prominent music historian of his day. A competent flute and organ player, he was organist at the parish church in Doncaster from 1756 to 1807. Miller was active in the musical life of the Doncaster region and composed keyboard sonatas and church music. His most influential publications were The Psalms of David for the Use of Parish Churches (1790), in which he sought to reform metrical psalmody (and which included ROCKINGHAM), and David’s Harp (1805), an important Methodist tunebook issued by Miller with his son.

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Anthems

God so loved the world, John Stainer

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

It is from the oratorio The Crucifixion: A Meditation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer, composed by John Stainer in 1887.

Here is St Paul’s Cathedral.

John Stainer (1840-1901)

John Stainer (1840 – 1901) was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.

Stainer was born in Southwark, London in 1840, the son of a cabinet maker. He became a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral when aged ten and was appointed to the position of organist at St Michael’s College, Tenbury at the age of sixteen. He later became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently organist at St Paul’s Cathedral. When he retired due to his poor eyesight and deteriorating health, he returned to Oxford to become Professor of Music at the university. He died unexpectedly while on holiday in Italy in 1901.

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Super flumina Babylonis, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Super flumina Babylonis illic sedimus et flevimus, cum recordaremur Sion. In salicibus in medio ejus suspendimus organa nostra.

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept: when we remembered thee, O Sion. As for our harps, we hanged them up: upon the trees that are therein.

Here is St. Luke’s Ordinariate Church in Washington. Here is the Collegium Musicum – Coro e Orchestra dell’Università di Bologna. 

Palestrina’s four-voiced Super flumina babylonis was first printed in his second book of motets. This 1581 volume, from the Gardano press in Venice, contains a large number of his most popular works, some of which must have graced the liturgy of the papal chapel for many years. As is common in Palestrina’s motet style, each phrase of his text receives one musical phrase; several begin with classic Points of Imitation. The Psalm text, however, paints the extraordinarily somber image of the Israelites in captivity: they sit by the side of the rivers in Babylon and hang up their harps, unable to sing in this strange country. Palestrina responds to this text by allowing each voice to sing the first melody in the mournful Hypophrygian mode. There follows a phrase about the Israelites’ weeping, and the composer sets it to an uncharacteristically chromatic series of chords, flats following sharps. This is not his usual “perfection!” A second imitative passage, again to a downward-leading melody, speaks of the memory of lost Zion. The last and longest phrase of the piece actually contains two musical puns. At the word suspendimus (we hang), Palestrina gives each voice a melody just like a common “suspension” figure. In Latin, the object of the hanging is the organa; here he writes a clever evocation of “ancient music,” or organum.

Both in his life and after, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was renowned for the perceived perfection of his style. Legends quickly grew that he had “saved church music” during the Council of Trent, and the papal choir continued singing his music for centuries after his death. The seventeenth century viewed the “Palestrina style” as antique, but classical and still worthy of emulation; it remained an active musical language in the eighteenth. The nineteenth century’s Cecilian movement sought to reclaim church music’s Golden age by revisiting Palestrina’s music, and in the twentieth, the early music revival gave him yet another vogue. Each era has looked at Palestrina’s music and seen something that is balanced and pure, that deals judiciously with dissonance, and that carefully molds each phrase into an elegant arch. This is not to call his music bland; Palestrina was perfectly capable of writing poignant and affective melodies as well as classically elegant ones. He also frequently used subtle “madrigalisms” to paint the nuances of his text. All these elements of style are present together in one of his more famous motets, Super flumina babylonis.

Baltimore Sun article :

Highlandtown ax-throwing venue and bar gets OK from liquor board

I came across this by Cranach, and it was irresistible. We had six children in eight years, so I know how Jesus feels.

Drug companies have been busy pushing opioids and doctors think that every pain should be treated with narcotics. When I fractured my foot, Urgent Care offered me Oxycontin. I said ibuprofen was sufficient.

In the nineteenth century patent medicines were  full of unadmitted ingredients, contributing to a massive problem with drug addiction.

Therefore, on that same Frederick News  page of June 1,1895, I noticed this ad, I was suspicious:

Sure enough, a quick Internet search revealed what was calming the babies so quickly: morphine.

In researching old newspapers for genealogical and historical purposes, my eye sometimes alights upon articles too good not to share. This one is from the Frederick News of June 1, 1895.

A comment diagnosed this condition:

Ichthyosis vulgaris is an inherited skin condition that occurs when your skin doesn’t shed its dead skin cells. This causes dry, dead skin cells to accumulate in patches on the surface of your skin. It’s also known as “fish scale disease” because the dead skin accumulates in a similar pattern to a fish’s scales.

The majority of cases are mild and confined to specific areas of the body. However, some cases are severe and cover large areas of the body, including the abdomen, back, arms, and legs.

Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XVII

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Prelude

Hymns

Christ is made the sure foundation

In heavenly love abiding

O worship the King, all glorious above

Anthems

Vinea mea electa, Johann Michael Haydn

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Giaches de Wert

Postlude

Christ is made the sure foundation was translated by the great Anglican hymnologist John Mason Neale (1818-1866) from the Latin hymn Angularis fundamentum. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church; insofar as we are aligned to Him, we are made into a unity, a temple where God is praised. We ask for His blessings that we may praise Him forever.

The hymn is based on Ephesians 2:20-22: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

And on I Peter 2:4-7: “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious,
And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.’

Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient,
‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.’”

Christ is made the sure Foundation,
Christ the Head and Cornerstone,
Chosen of the Lord and precious,
Binding all the Church in one;
Holy Zion’s help forever,
And her confidence alone.

All that dedicated city,
dearly loved of God on high,
in exultant jubilation
pours perpetual melody;
God the One in Three adoring
in glad hymns eternally.

To this temple, where we call Thee,
Come, O Lord of Hosts, today:
With Thy wonted loving-kindness
Hear Thy people as they pray;
And Thy fullest benediction
Shed within its walls alway.

Here vouchsafe to all Thy servants
What they ask of Thee to gain,
What they gain from Thee forever
With the blessed to retain,
And hereafter in Thy glory
Evermore with Thee to reign.

Here is a parish (RC? Anglican?) singing it.

Here is the Latin hymn which Neale translated-paraphrased:

Angularis fundamentum
lapis Christus missus est,
qui parietum compage
in utroque nectitur,
quem Sion sancta suscepit,
in quo credens permanet.

Omnis illa Deo sacra
et dilecta civitas,
plena modulis in laude
et canore jubilo,
trinum Deum unicumque
cum fervore prædicat.

Hoc in templo, summe Deus,
exoratus adveni,
et clementi bonitate
precum vota suscipe;
largam benedictionem
hic infunde jugiter.

Hic promereantur omnes
petita acquirere
et adepta possidere
cum sanctis perenniter,
paradisum introire
translati in requiem.

Here is the Gregorian chant for this Latin hymn.

The son of an Anglican clergyman, James Mason Neale (1818-1866) intended to follow the same path. Hymn scholar Leon Litvack notes, “Neale entered Cambridge as an Evangelical, but emerged an Anglo-Catholic.” Fascinated by the tracts of the Oxford Movement, he became intensely interested in the medieval church. The result was an interest in a “high church” in contrast to an “evangelical” perspective that influenced developments in liturgy and architecture as well as hymn singing.

Neale was a student of worship in the early church and one of the first to translate ancient Greek and Latin texts into metrical English for singing. American hymnologist William Reynolds notes that “His strong attachment to the old Breviary hymns [of the medieval church] caused him to urge the omission of the Protestant hymns from the Anglican service in favor of translations of medieval hymns.”

Though an ordained Anglican priest, Neale was unable to serve a parish due to his health. He was appointed as a warden of a home for indigent old men, but was not permitted to serve as a priest because he had alienated the hierarchy of the Anglican Church due to his independent spirit regarding his beliefs and rigorous devotional practices. His minimal caretaker duties, however, allowed Neale time to pursue his scholarly studies.

Henry Thomas Smart

Henry Thomas Smart composed REGENT SQUARE for the Horatius Bonar doxology “Glory be to God the Father.” The tune was first published in the English Presbyterian Church’s Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), of which Smart was music editor. Because the text editor of that hymnal, James Hamilton, was minister of the Regent Square Church, the “Presbyterian cathedral” of London, the tune was given this title.

Henry Thomas Smart (26 October 1813 – 6 July 1879) was an English organist and composer. He was born in London, a nephew of the conductor Sir George Smart and son of a music publisher, orchestra director and accomplished violinist (also called Henry Smart). He was educated at Highgate School and then studied for the law, but soon gave this up for music.

In 1831 Smart became organist of Blackburn parish church, where he wrote his first important work, an anthem; then of St Giles-without-Cripplegate; St Luke’s, Old Street; and finally of St Pancras New Church, in 1864, which last post he held at the time of his death, less than a month after receiving a government pension of £100 per annum. Smart was also skilled as a mechanic, and designed several organs.

Though highly rated as a composer by his English contemporaries, Smart is now largely forgotten, save for his hymn tune Regent Square, which retains considerable popularity, and which is commonly performed with the words “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation”, “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem”, or “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. His many compositions for the organ (some of which have been occasionally revived in recent years) were described as “effective and melodious, if not strikingly original” by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which also praised his part songs. A cantata by him, The Bride of Dunkerron was written for the Birmingham Festival of 1864; another cantata was a version of the play King René’s Daughter (1871). The oratorio Jacob was created for Glasgow in 1873; and his opera Bertha was produced with some success at the Haymarket in 1855.

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In heavenly love abiding was written by Anna Letitia Waring. Abide is key word in Scripture: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Jesus Himself is obedient to His Father and keeps the Commandments that the Father has given Him, and in that way Jesus abides in His Father’s love. The Father’s will was that the Son should become man and die for us, trusting in the Father to raise Him from the dead. We likewise trust in Jesus in the storms of life. The hymn then refers to Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus walks with us, especially as we receive Him in the Eucharist,  and we know that he will lead us to the green pastures of heaven.

1 In heavenly love abiding,
no change my heart shall fear;
and safe is such confiding,
for nothing changes here:
the storm may roar without me,
my heart may low be laid;
but God is round about me,
and can I be dismayed?

2 Wherever he may guide me,
no want shall turn me back;
my Shepherd is beside me,
and nothing can I lack:
his wisdom ever waketh,
his sight is never dim,
he knows the way he taketh,
and I will walk with him.

3 Green pastures are before me,
which yet I have not seen;
bright skies will soon be o’er me,
where darkest clouds have been;
my hope I cannot measure,
my path to life is free;
my Saviour has my treasure,
and he will walk with me.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here is a boys’ choir.

Anna Letitia Waring (or Anna Laetitia Waring) (19 April 1823 – 10 May 1910) was a Welsh poet and hymn-writer. She was born at Plas-y-Felin, Neath, third of the seven children of Elijah Waring (1787-1857) and his wife, Deborah. Her family were Quakers, but she became an Anglican and was baptized into the Church of England in 1842, at St Martin Church, Winnall, Winchester. Several members of her family had literary interests. She learned Hebrew in order to study the Old Testament in the original.

In 1850, Anna published her first work, Hymns and Meditations. This was to be reprinted and extended many times. Additional Hymns (1858) was integrated into later editions of Hymns and Meditations.

Anna was pious, reserved, and given to “good works”. Anna became involved in philanthropic work, particularly as a supporter of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society. According to her friend Mary S. Talbot, Waring “visited in the prisons of Bridewell, and at Horfield, Bristol, for many years. To one who spoke to her of the painfulness of such work she answered, ‘It is like watching by a filthy gutter to pick out a jewel here and there, as the foul stream flows by.'” Waring died unmarried at her home in Clifton, Bristol on 10 May 1910.

NYLAND, named for a province in Finland, is a folk melody from Kuortane, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. In fact, the tune is also known as KUORTANE. NYLAND was first published with a hymn text in an appendix to the 1909 edition of the Finnish Suomen Evankelis Luterilaisen Kirken Koraalikirja. It gained popularity in the English-speaking world after David Evans’s use of it in the British Church Hymnary of 1927 as a setting for Anna 1. Waring’s text “In Heavenly Love Abiding.”

David Evans was an important leader in Welsh church music. Educated at Arnold College, Swansea, and at University College, Cardiff, he received a doctorate in music from Oxford University. His longest professional post was as professor of music at University College in Cardiff (1903-1939), where he organized a large music department. He was also a well-known and respected judge at Welsh hymn-singing festivals and a composer of many orchestral and choral works, anthems, service music, and hymn tunes.

NYLAND is a modified rounded bar-form tune (AA’BA’) with a wide-ranging melodic contour and a fine harmonization for part singing.

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O worship the King, all glorious above was written by Sir Robert Grant (1735-1838).

In 1835 Robert Grant wrote a text that helps us see the creation story in a new light. His meditation on the creation theme of Psalm 104 consists of six verses that parallel the six days of creation. Grant focuses on how creation is a testimony to God’s “measureless might.” The fourth and fifth verse we celebrate God’s saving grace to his creation. When God took that seventh day of rest, he was not signaling an end. He continued to bless His creation, even those as feeble and frail as us. In the last verse, Grant points to Christ as the ultimate reconciler of a broken, but still beautiful creation. The last rhyme end/Friend, emphasizes that the purpose (telos-end) of our creation was that we should in the end (forever) forever enjoy the friendship of God in Christ.

O worship the King all glorious above,
O gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

The earth with its store of wonders untold,
Almighty, Thy power hath founded of old;
Hath stablished it fast by a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast, like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend!

Here is the tune for the organ, for the piano and women’s choir, for hand bells, for two violins, for women’s choir and drums and stuff, for praise band, for acoustic guitar, for piano and cello, for euphonium and piano, with handbells AND ballerina, for trombone and drums, on the harmonium.

Robert Grant

Sir Robert Grant was the second son of Mr. Charles Grant, sometime Member of Parliament for Inverness, and a Director of the East India Company, was born in 1785, and educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1806. The Grants were members of the Clapham set, an Evangelical group in the Church of England. Called to the English Bar in 1807, he became Member of Parliament for Inverness in 1826; in that position, through his persistent efforts a bill was eventually passed which emancipated England’s Jews.

He became a Privy Councillor in 1831; and Governor of Bombay, 1834,  where he had opportunity to put his social concerns into practice, for the poverty and spiritual condition of the common people were appalling. He died at Dapoorie, in Western India, July 9, 1838. As a hymn writer of great merit he is well and favorably known. His hymns, “O worship the King”; “Saviour, when in dust to Thee”; and “When gathering clouds around I view,” are widely used in all English-speaking countries. Some of those which are less known are marked by the same graceful versification and deep and tender feeling. The best of his hymns were contributed to the Christian Observer, 1806-1815, under the signature of “E—y, D. R.”; and to Elliott’s Psalms & Hymns, Brighton, 1835. In the Psalms & Hymns those which were taken from the Christian Observer were rewritten by the author. The year following his death his brother, Lord Glenelg, gathered 12 of his hymns and poems together, and published them.

Joseph Martin Kraus

The tune is LYONS, composed by Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), a composer in the classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Germany. He moved to Sweden at age 21, and died at the age of 36 in Stockholm. He is sometimes referred to as “the Swedish Mozart”, and had a life span which was very similar to that of Mozart’s.

Anthems

Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis. Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum et dedit illi nomen, quod est super omne nomen.

Christ became obedient for us unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above all names.

Johann Michael Haydn (1707-1806) was an Austrian composer, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn. Michael Haydn, like his brother, was a chorister at St Stephen’s in Vienna. Shortly after leaving the choir-school, he was appointed Kapellmeister at Großwardein and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and much instrumental music. He was an intimate friend of Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and the teacher of Carl Maria von Weber.

Haydn’s sacred choral works are generally regarded as his most important; his musical taste and skill showed themselves best in his church compositions and were already in his lifetime old-fashioned. Michael remained close to Joseph all of his life. Joseph regarded his brother’s music highly, to the point of feeling Michael’s religious works were superior to his own (possibly for their devotional intimacy, as opposed to Joseph’s monumental and majestic more secularized symphonic style

Here is a Hungarian performance.

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Jerusalem, quæ occidis prophetas, et lapidas eos qui mittuntur ad te, quoties volui congregare filios tuos, quem admodum avis nidum suum sub pennis, et noluisti?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

Giaches de Wert (also Jacques/Jaches de Wert, Giaches de Vuert; 1535 – 6 May 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal.

The style of his sacred music varies from simple homophony, designed for absolute clarity of textual expression in conformance with the dictates of the Council of Trent, to motet settings similar in expressive intensity to his madrigals including passages of surprising chromaticism not unlike that of Gesualdo. This is particularly true in the 1581 collections: Ascendente Jesu, for example, contains colorful examples of text-painting such as he used in the works he was composing for the Ferrarese court at the time.

Here is his Egressus Jesus.

“Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity X

Hymns

In Christ, there is no east or west 

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy 

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun 

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In Christ, there is no east or west is by John Oxenham (1852—1941). Oxenham opposes Rudyard Kipling’s sentiment: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” from Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses (1892). Paul in Galatians 3:28 proclaimed: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.’” Mount Calvary was the leading Episcopal church in Baltimore in its mission to African-American, It welcomed all as members, and sponsored two missions in Baltimore, St. Mary the Virgin and St. Katherine. St Mary the Virgin was the most prominent African-American Episcopal church in the United States, and had more communicants than Mount Calvary. Mount Calvary sponsored the first African- American seminarian at the General Theological Seminary. The Catholic vision of Mount Calvary has always included all races.

1 In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.

2 In Him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord
Close binding all mankind.

3 Join hands, then, brothers of the faith,
Whate’er your race may be!
Who serves my Father as a son
Is surely kin to me.

4 In Christ now meet both East and West,
In Him meet South and North;
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.

Here is St. John’s, Detroit.

John Oxenham (William Arthur Dunkerley)

William Arthur Dunkerley (12 November 1852 – 23 January 1941) was a prolific English journalist, novelist and poet. He was born in Manchester, spent a short time after his marriage in America before moving to Ealing, west London, where he served as deacon and teacher at the Ealing Congregational Church from the 1880s, and he then moved to Worthing in Sussex in 1922, where he became the town’s mayor.

He wrote under his own name, and also as John Oxenham for his poetry, hymn-writing, and novels. His poetry includes Bees in Amber: a little book of thoughtful verse (1913) which became a bestseller. He also wrote the poem Greatheart. He used another pseudonym, Julian Ross, for journalism. Dunkerley was a major contributor to Jerome K. Jerome’s The Idler magazine.

He had two sons and four daughters, of whom the eldest, and eldest child, Elsie Jeanette, became well known as a children’s writer, particularly through her Abbey Series of girls’ school stories. Another daughter, Erica, also used the Oxenham pen-name. The elder son, Roderic Dunkerley, had several titles published under his own name.

McKee is a tune adapted from a spiritual by the famous African-American composer and songwriter, 

Harry T. Burleigh (1866—1949).

It was named for the rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York City, Elmer M. McKee, where Burleigh was the baritone soloist for over 50 years.

With the aid of a scholarship (obtained with the help of Frances MacDowell, the mother of composer Edward MacDowell), Burleigh at the age of 26 was accepted to the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in New York, eventually playing double bass in the Conservatory’s orchestra. Though at first the Conservatory denied Burleigh entrance, citing low grades, Mrs. MacDowell (the registrar) insisted that he try his entrance exam again. Days later, he received a scholarship. To help support himself there, Burleigh worked for Mrs. MacDowell as a handyman, cleaning and working on anything she needed. Reputedly, Burleigh, who later became known worldwide for his excellent baritone voice, sang spirituals while cleaning the Conservatory’s halls, which drew the attention of the conservatory’s director, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, who asked Burleigh to sing for him. Burleigh said: “I sang our Negro songs for him very often, and before he wrote his own themes, he filled himself with the spirit of the old Spirituals.” Dvořák said: “In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”

From what he called “Negro melodies” and Native American music, Dvořák took up the Pentatonic scale, which appears in some places in his Symphony “From the New World” and at the beginning of each movement of the “American” String Quartet. In the Symphony, a flute theme resembles the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which may well be among those Burleigh sang to Dvořák, and which may have been written by a Black (African-American, by descent) Native American (by legal status) Choctaw freedman, Wallis Willis.

In 1922, another student of Dvořák, William Arms Fisher, wrote the spiritual-like song “Goin’ Home” based on an English horn melody from the second movement (Largo) of the Symphony. No evidence seems to exist that the song existed before 1922, or the melody before the Symphony (1893), although both are disputed. In 1893 Burleigh assisted Dvořák in copying out instrumental parts for the symphony.

The following year, Burleigh sang in Dvořák’s arrangement of Pennsylvania native Stephen C. Foster’s classic Old Folks at Home. He graduated in 1896, and later served on the conservatory’s faculty.
In the late 1890s, he also began to publish his own arrangements of art songs. About 1898 he began to compose his own songs and by the late 1910s, Burleigh was one of America’s best-known composers of art songs. Beginning around 1910, Burleigh also worked editing music for G. Ricordi, an Italian music publisher with offices in New York.

Burleigh published several versions of the Negro spiritual “Deep River” in 1916 and 1917, and he quickly became known for his arrangements of spirituals for voice and piano; one of his arrangements in Common Metre is the hymn tune “McKee”, used with John Oxenham’s hymn “In Christ There Is No East or West”. His arrangements helped to make spirituals a popular genre for concert singers, and within a few years, many notable singers performed Burleigh’s arrangements.

Burleigh’s art song arrangements of the spiritual and other sentimental songs were so popular during the late 1910s and 1920s, that almost no vocal recitalist gave a concert in a major city without occasionally singing them.[citation needed] John McCormack sang a number of Burleigh’s songs in concert, including “Little Mother of Mine” (1917), “Dear Old Pal of Mine” (1918), “Under a Blazing Star” (1918), and “In the Great Somewhere” (1919). In many ways, the popularity of Burleigh’s settings contributed to an explosion of popularity for the genre during the 1920s. He also set some poems by Walt Whitman to music, and also published songs for piano and violin. (Wikipedia)

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There’s a wideness in God’s mercy was written by Frederick Faber (1814—1863). He was born an Anglican and reared a strict Calvinist. After attending Oxford, he took orders as an Anglican priest and began his ministry as a rector. Influenced by his friend John Henry Newman (1801—1890) who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845, Faber also converted to Catholicism that same year.

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea:
There’s a kindness in His justice,
Which is more than liberty.

2 There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Saviour;
There is healing in His blood.

3 For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

4 If our love were but more simple,
We should take Him at His Word;
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the presence of our Lord.

Fredrick Faber

Frederick Faber was born in 1814 at Calverley, then within the Parish of Calverley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where his grandfather, Thomas Faber, was the vicar. His father served the local bishop of the Church of England as his secretary.

Faber attended grammar school at Bishop Auckland in County Durham for a short time, but a large portion of his boyhood was spent in Westmorland. He afterwards attended the Harrow School for five years, followed by enrollment in 1832 at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. In 1834, he obtained a scholarship at the University College, from which he graduated. In 1836 he won the Newdigate Prize for a poem on “The Knights of St John,” which elicited special praise from John Keble. Among his college friends were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne. After graduation he was elected a fellow of the college.

Faber’s family was of Huguenot descent, and Calvinist beliefs were strongly held by them. When Faber had come to Oxford, he was exposed to the Anglo-Catholic preaching of the Oxford Movement which was beginning to develop in the Church of England. One of its most prominent proponents was the popular preacher John Henry Newman, vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Faber struggled with these divergent forms of Christian beliefs and life. In order to relieve his tension, he would take long vacations in the Lake District, where he would write poetry. There he was befriended by another poet, William Wordsworth. He finally abandoned the Calvinistic views of his youth and became an enthusiastic follower of Newman.

Faber was ordained in the Church of England in 1839, after which he spent time supporting himself as a tutor. In 1841 a travelling tutorship took him to the continent; on his return he published a book called Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples (London, 1842), with a dedication to his friend, the poet Wordsworth.

In 1843, Faber accepted the position of rector at a church in Elton, then in Huntingdonshire but now in Cambridgeshire. His first act was to go to Rome to learn how best to carry out his pastoral charge. Faber introduced the Catholic practices of celebrating feast days, confession and the devotion of the Sacred Heart to the congregation. However, there was a strong Methodist presence in the parish and the Dissidents packed his church each Sunday in an attempt to challenge the Roman Catholic direction he was taking the congregation in. Many of his parishioners were reputed to be living in de facto relationships and the village was notorious for its double standards. He developed the thought of following a monastic way of life and was joined by several men with whom he formed a small community at the rectory.

Faber caused a small furore through his publication of a Life of St. Wilfrid, in which he supported the claim of primacy by the pope. Nonetheless he was accepted by the people of the parish.

Few people were surprised though when, after prolonged mental struggle, Faber left Elton to follow his hero Newman and join the Catholic Church, into which he was received in November 1845 by Bishop William Wareing of Northampton. He was accompanied in this step by eleven men of the small community which had formed around him in Elton. They settled in Birmingham, where they informally organized themselves in a religious community, calling themselves the Brothers of the Will of God.

Faber and his small religious community were encouraged in their venture by the Earl of Shrewsbury, who gave them the use of Cotton Hall in Staffordshire. Within weeks they had begun construction on a new Church of St. Wilfrid, their patron saint, designed by the noted church architect, Pugin, as well as on a school for the local children. All of this was for a region which had no other Catholics at that point, other than the household of the Earl. The exertions took their toll on Faber, who became so ill that he was not expected to live and was given the Last Rites of the Church. He recovered, however, and was ordained a Catholic priest, celebrating his First Mass on 4 April 1847. In the course of his illness Faber had developed a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. Prompted by this devotion, he translated St. Louis de Montfort’s classic work, True Devotion to Mary, into English.

Along with Newman, Faber felt drawn to the way of life of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, with its decentralized authority and greater freedom of life than in religious institutes. His interest was heightened when he learned that Newman himself had become an Oratorian while in Italy. Faber envisioned having his community at Cotton Hall form a new community of the Oratory, with Newman as Superior. However, this could not happen at Cotton Hall since the Oratorian rules required that they be an urban community.

The Earl, who had handsomely financed the construction of a new parish for the community, felt betrayed by such a quick departure. Additionally, the Wilfridians, as the Brothers were called, wished to wear a traditional religious habit, upsetting the old Catholic families who had survived centuries of persecution by keeping a low profile. Newman thus proposed that Faber’s community settle somewhere other than Birmingham, and suggested London as the best option. Thus in 1849 a community of the Oratory was established in London in William IV Street.

On 11 October 1850, the feast of St. Wilfrid, the community in London was established as autonomous, and Faber was elected its first provost, an office he held until his death. He took ill again, however, almost immediately, and was ordered by his physicians to travel to a warmer climate. He attempted a trip to the Holy Land but had to turn back, and instead toured Malta and Italy. The community still lacked a permanent home, and in September 1852 a location was chosen at Brompton. The Oratorians proceeded with construction despite public protests at their presence.

Faber had never enjoyed good health. He had suffered from illness for years, developing what was eventually diagnosed as Bright’s Disease, which was to prove fatal. In spite of his weak health, much work was crowded into those years. He published a number of theological works, and edited the Oratorian Lives of the Saints.

Faber died in 1863 and was buried in the Oratorian cemetery in Rednal, in the West Midlands.

Father Faber was the great-uncle of Geoffrey Faber, co-founder of the publishing house “Faber and Gwyer” which later became “Faber and Faber”, a major publisher of both literary and religious works.

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Jesus shall reign where’er the sun  is by Isaac Watts (1674—1748). In 1719, Watts published a hymnal entitled The Psalms of David, Imitated. In this hymnal, he paraphrased many of the Psalms, but in a very different style than many of his predecessors. The custom of the day was to keep any paraphrase as close to the text as possible. Watts decided to do otherwise, and his interpretations of the psalms are quite loose, in an effort to write something new while keeping the spirit of the Psalm. His versification of Psalm 72 is no different. He interprets the psalm using a Christological lens. The king referenced in the psalm is Christ, and could be no one else. For Watts, as for the Fathers of the Church, the Old Testament makes sense in light of the New, and vice versa.

1 Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
does his successive journeys run;
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
till moons shall wax and wane no more.

2 People and realms of every tongue
dwell on his love with sweetest song,
and infant voices shall proclaim
their early blessings on his name.

3 Blessings abound where’er he reigns:
the prisoner leaps to lose his chains;
the weary find eternal rest,
and all the sons of want are blest.

4 To him shall endless prayer be made,
and praises throng to crown his head;
his name like incense shall arise
with every morning sacrifice.

5 Let every creature rise and bring
peculiar honours to our King;
angels descend with songs again,
and earth repeat the loud Amen.

Here are Nebraskans singing. Here are Koreans. Here are Yorkshiremen. And the Hong Kong Hymn Society.

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

The Dormition of the Theotokos

(The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Hymns

Daily, daily sing to Mary

 Sing of Mary

Hail Holy Queen enthroned above

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Daily, daily sing to Mary is a translation of the Latin hymn Omni die dic Mariae, by St. Bernard of Clairvaux.  St. Casimir, patron of Poland and Lithuania (1458—1484), had a devotion to this poem, and it is sometimes attributed to him, as it was found in his tomb. It was translated by Henry Bittleston (1818–1886), an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism and joined the Oratory at Birmingham with John Henry Newman.

Sing of Mary is by Roland Ford Palmer (1891—1985). He was a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and joined the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the Cowley Fathers, in 1919.

Hail Holy Queen enthroned above is an anonymous translation of Salve regina coelitum by Hermanus contractus (The Crippled or The Lame). Hermann was a son of the Count of Altshausen. He was crippled by a paralytic disease from early childhood. He was born in 1013, with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy and is said to have had spina bifida.  Hermann possibly had either amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or spinal muscular atrophy. As a result, he had great difficulty moving and could hardly speak. At seven, he was placed in a Benedictine monastery by his parents who could no longer look after him. He grew up in the monastery, learning from the monks and developing a keen interest in both theology and the world around him. He spent most of his life in the Abbey of Reichenau. He was renowned as a musical composer and wrote a treatise on the science of music. When he went blind in later life, he began writing hymns, the best known of which is Salve Regina Coelitum.

Here is the hymn sung at the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Atonement.