The Angels for the Nativity of Our Lord
Run, shepherds, run where Bethlem blest appears,
We bring the best of news, be not dismayed,
A Saviour there is born more old than years,
Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed.
In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid
A weakling did him bear, who all upbears;
There is he, poorly swaddled, in a manger laid,
To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:
Run, shepherds run, and solemnize his birth,
This is that night - no, day, grown great with bliss,
In which the power of Satan broken is;
In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth!
Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,
And cope of stars re-echoed the same.
(William Drummond of Hawthornden 1585-1649)
Sequentia de Sancto Michaele, quam Alcuinus composuit Karolo imperatori
A Sequence for St. Michael, which Alcuin wrote for the Emperor Charlemagne
Michael, Archangel of the King of Kings,
Give ear to our voices.
We acknowledge thee to be the Prince of the citizens of heaven:
And at thy prayer God sends
His angels unto men,
That the enemy with cunning craft shall not prevail
To do the hurt he craves
To weary men.
Yea, thou hast the dominion of perpetual Paradise,
And ever do the holy angels honour thee.
Thou wert seen in the Temple of God,
A censer of gold in thy hands,
And the smoke of it fragrant with spices
Rose up till it came before God.
Thou with strong hand didst smite the cruel dragon,
And many souls didst rescue from his jaws.
Then was there a great silence in heaven,
And a thousand thousand saying Glory to the Lord King.
Hear us, Michael,
Greatest angel,
Come down a little
From thy high seat,
To bring us the strength of God,
And the lightening of His mercy.
And do thou, Gabriel,
Lay low our foes,
And thou, Raphael,
Heal our sick,
Purge our disease, ease thou our pain,
And give us to share
In the joys of the blessed.
Emperor, thy scholar made these melodies for thee.
(Alcuin 735-804, trans Helen Waddell 1889-1965)
Jesus Christ rose from the dead with a body which possessed the four most important principles of Grace:
Clarity, agility, subtility and impassivity...
The Saviour's Resurrection was not destruction but transformation of his adored flesh; its substance was not another, but the same, perfected...
This worshiped body, now subtle, agile, immortal and bright to the highest degree is the perfect example of the glory which surrounds the bodies of those chosen to be resurrected...
(From the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony)
RORATE coeli desuper!
Hevins, distil your balmy schouris!
For now is risen the bricht day-ster,
Fro the rose Mary, flour of flouris:
The cleir Sone, quhom no cloud devouris,
Surmounting Phebus in the Est,
Is cumin of his hevinly touris:
Et nobis Puer natus est.
Archangellis, angellis, and dompnationis,
Tronis, potestatis, and marteiris seir,
And all ye hevinly operationis,
Ster, planeit, firmament, and spheir,
Fire, erd, air, and water cleir,
To Him gife loving, most and lest,
That come in to so meik maneir;
Et nobis Puer natus est.
Celestial foulis in the air,
Sing with your nottis upon hicht,
In firthis and in forrestis fair
Be myrthful now at all your mycht;
For passit is your dully nicht,
Aurora has the cloudis perst,
The Sone is risen with glaidsum licht,
Et nobis Puer natus est.
Sing, hevin imperial, most of hicht!
Regions of air mak armony!
All fish in flud and fowl of flicht
Be mirthful and mak melody!
All Gloria in excelsis cry!
Heaven, erd, se, man, bird, and best,--
He that is crownit abone the sky
Pro nobis Puer natus est!
(Verses from On the Nativity of Christ William Dunbar 1465-c1520)
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
(Thomas Hardy: from The Darkling Thrush)
The plovers that dwell on the beach at Shio-no-yama
Are calling to affirm an everlasting life.
(Ancient Japanese poem)
Prayer
Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;
Engine against th'Almightie, sinners towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-daies world transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stares heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices; something understood.
(George Herbert)
from the Romance Que Va Por Super flumina Babylonis
I hung on the green willows all the joy I had in song, putting it aside for that which I hoped for in you. There love wounded me and took away my heart. I begged love to kill me since it had so wounded me; I threw myself in its fire knowing it burned, excusing now the young bird that would die in the fire. I was dying in myself, breathing in you alone. I died within myself for you and for you I revived, because the memory of you gave life and took it away.
(Juan de la Cruz, 1542-91 (St. John of the Cross) translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez)
Angel of this sacrifice, soaring on high with this hymn, make memorial of us before the Lord that he may forgive us our sins.
(Coptic liturgy of St. Cyril)
Earth ! Earth ! Shout your name !
Like the sailors of Columbus
Drunk on laughter, drunk on life
Carried naked by the wind on the open sea
Before their chances of greatness.
(Roger Michael, Matins du Monde)
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove the intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
(T.S.Eliot, from Little Gidding)