During Communion on Sunday, we will sing a familiar hymn text to a not so familiar tune. The bulletin will feature an insert with the music to “O Food to Pilgrims given.” You may recognize the words as almost exactly the same as hymn #192 in our Hymnal, “O Food of men wayfaring.” The story of the two different tunes and the slightly different texts is told here. The music sung by the choir during the Offertory and during Communion is from a 1641 setting of the Mass by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). This page offers more information about this work, and this article presents a introduction to the significance of…

The Collect for this Sunday speaks of God as our refuge, an image referenced in our opening hymn, Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, Lover of my soul.” Originally titled “On Temptation” — since sin and temptation are the foes from which the believer is most urgently seeking refuge — this hymn was first published in 1740, about two years after Wesley’s conversion experience. The words of the opening lines were sometimes regarded as too intimate for public worship, so, in the nineteenth century, some hymnal editors altered the text to describe God’s love less vividly. Our sermon hymn, “O God of earth and altar,” with its prophetic text by G. K. Chesterton, first…