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 appeared in the inaugural edition of The English Hymnal (1906), which also first presented the tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams to which we sing “For all the saints.” We sing Chesterton’s text (most fitting for an election season) to an English folk tune discovered by Vaughan Williams during his research for the Folk Song Society.
Our second Communion Hymn this week is “Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,” the story of which you may read here.
From the 23rd Sunday after Trinity until the first Sunday in Advent, the opening words from Psalm 130 are chanted in the propers repeatedly:
Out of the deep have I called unto thee O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.
There is a pre-Advent urgency in this penitential psalm, eagerly awaiting the definitive Word of grace that is anticipated more explicitly during Advent.
During these weeks, the choir often sings settings from Psalm 130 for the offertory anthem. This Sunday, we sing Thomas Tallis’s brief and simple Out from the Deep.
Our communion motet this week is Tomás Luis de Victoria’s setting of O sacrum convivium.