We’re singing two hymns this week in honor of St. Luke the evangelist, both of them relatively unfamiliar. Our opening hymn, “Come, pure hearts, in sweetest measure” (#134 in The Hymnal), presents three stanzas from a nine-stanza twelfth-century sequence hymn. (Traditionally, sequence hymns have been sung between the Epistle and the Gospel.) Unfortunately, the abbreviated form of the hymn that we sing eliminates the rich imagery of the original text.
That text is based on the imagery presented in Ezekiel 1:4–28 and 10:9–22 and Revelation 4:6–8. The bizarre vision of Ezekiel includes a reference to four living creatures, each with four faces — a man, a lion, and ox and an eagle. Those beings are also present in the vision of St. John in Revelation, and very early on, theologians associated those four identities with the four apostles. This sequence hymn develops the significance of this fourfold witness.
Here is an English translation by Digby Strangeways Wrangham (1831–1892).
1. O be joyful, faithful nation!
Seed of God’s own generation!
Mindful of the revelation
In Ezekiel’s prophecy:
In that witness John uniteth,
Who th’Apocalypse inditeth;
‘Witness true my true pen writeth
Of what truly met mine eye!’
2. Round the footstool of the Godhead,
’Mongst the blessed Saints included,
Stand four creatures there embodied,
Diverse in their form to view.
One an eagle’s semblance weareth,
One a lion’s likeness beareth,
But as man or ox appeareth
Each one of the other two.
3. As Evangelists, these creatures
Figure forth, in form and features,
Those, whose doctrines’ stream, like Nature’s
Rain, is on the Church outpoured;
Matthew, Mark, and Luke pourtraying,
Him too, who His sire obeying,
By the nets no longer staying,
Came to follow thee, O Lord!
4. Matthew as the man is treated,
Since ’tis he, who hath related,
How from man, by God created,
God did, as a man, descend.
Luke the ox’s semblance weareth,
Since his Gospel first declareth,
As he thence the Law’s veil teareth,
Sacrifices’ aim and end.
5. Mark, the lion, his voice upraises,
Crying out in desert places:
‘Cleanse your hearts from all sin’s traces;
For our God a way prepare!’
John, the eagle’s features having,
Earth on love’s twain pinions leaving,
Soars aloft, God’s truth perceiving
In light’s purer atmosphere.
6. Thus the forms of brute creation
Prophets in their revelation
Use; but in their application
All their sacred lessons bring.
Mystic meaning underlieth
Wheels that run, or wing that flieth;
One consent the first implieth,
Contemplation means the wing.
7. These four writers in portraying
Christ, His fourfold acts displaying,
Show Him — thou hast heard the saying —
Each of them distinctively:
Man — of woman generated;
Ox — in off’ring dedicated;
Lion— having death defeated;
Eagle — mounting to the sky.
8. These four streams, through Eden flowing,
Moisture, verdure, still bestowing,
Make the flow’rs and fruit there growing
In rich plenty laugh and sing:
Christ the source, these streams forth sending;
High the source, these downward trending;
That they thus a taste transcending
Of life’s fount to Saints may bring.
9. At their stream inebriated,
Be our love’s thirst aggravated,
More completely to be sated
At a holier love’s full fount!
May the doctrine they provide us
Draw us from sin’s slough beside us,
And to things divine thus guide us,
As from earth we upward mount!
Amen.
Here is the music we use to sing ”Come, pure hearts, in sweetest measure,” played by Andrew Remillard.
Our closing hymn today is a paraphrase of one of the most frequently sung texts handed down to us by St. Luke. The canticle we know by its Latin name, Nunc dimittis, is sung (or recited) in Evening Prayer as well as in the evening liturgies in many other Christian traditions.
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
In the Spring of 1524, Martin Luther wrote an extended paraphrase of the Nunc dimittis which was included in one of the first hymnals ever published. With the text was a tune that has been used for years to sing his words. We sing that tune with the English translation by Leonard Woolsey Bacon (1830–1907). The first of three stanzas is:
In peace and joy I now depart
At God’s disposing;
For full of comfort is my heart;
Soft reposing.
So the Lord hath promised me,
And death is but a slumber.
You can learn much more about this hymn — and about how Buxtehude, Bach, and Brahms found inspiration in its melody — on this page.
In addition to this Sunday being the Feast of St. Luke, it is the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. The choir’s Offertory Anthem is a setting of the text from Psalm 137 sung as the Offertory proper on Trinity 20: “By the waters of Babylon we sat down, and wept: when we remember thee, O Sion.” The setting we sing is by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–1594). This motet is sung here by The Marian Consort.
During Communion, the choir will sing the Agnus Dei from the Messa a quattro voci da cappella by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). You can listen to the entire mass in this performance by the Tallis Scholars, conducted by Peter Phillips.