Fourth Sunday of Advent
The Fourth Sunday of Advent turns from the Second Coming of Christ and the preparation for his adult ministry, the foci of the first three Sundays, to events in the Gospel narratives that prepare for his birth: the Annunciation and Visitation, and this year, the angelic announcement to St. Joseph in a dream. At the 11:15 Eucharist we honor this saint with a hymn for his feast day, ‘Come now, and praise the humble saint’ [260]. This modern text ties his profession of carpenter to God’s role as Architect, and contrasts his earthly humility with the glory he enjoys in heaven; it is set to one of a handful of tunes written by English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis for a metrical psalter.
We begin our liturgies with a hymn by Charles Wesley, ‘Come, thou long-expected Jesus’ [66], a fine and familiar text that has been discussed in these pages before. The tune to which it is sung, named ‘Stuttgart’ by modern English-language hymnal editors, comes from a 1715 German collection; its original version is typical of tunes of that time and place in that it was conceived more for domestic solo singing and playing (perhaps with stringed instruments) than for congregational use, displaying a certain lightness and naïveté as well as including little ornamental figures that would not suit larger groups. (Compare ‘Salzburg’ [135], ‘Unser Herrscher’ [180], ‘Straf mich nicht’ [187], ‘Zeuch mich’ [286], and ‘Liebster Jesu’ [440].) Our own Director of Music Mark Wischkaemper has adapted the familiar melody to form a suite of service music for the 9 a.m. Eucharist.
Our focus on St. Ambrose’s hymn ‘Veni redemptor gentium’, the basis of our 11:15 service music and organ preludes in Advent, culminates this week with a choral setting of the entire hymn, only parts of which are paraphrased in the Hymnal (‘Savior of the nations, come’ [54, with a simpler version of the melody] and ‘Redeemer of the nations, come’ [55, with its fuller chant melody]). The translation sung by the choir is my own (save stanza 6, whose version by John Mason Neale is difficult to better) and begins with the hymn’s original first stanza, a scene-setting paraphrase of Psalm 80.1–2 (which, as it happens, is the appointed Psalm this Sunday; it balances another Psalm-paraphrase, that of 19.5–6, in the hymn’s stanzas 5–6, where Christ takes on the role of the Psalm’s sun/bridegroom). A rhythmic version of the chant melody, transcribed from what I believe is the oldest extant source, alternates with contrapuntal settings by living composer Christoph Dalitz and a simple harmonization of my own.
The hymn is much concerned with both the Blessed Virgin’s pregnancy and her chastity, and is unabashed in dealing with the physical circumstances involved. It was not my purpose to avoid any of the foregoing – sacramental Christianity believes fully in the ability of the created order to bear the Uncreated, and 2025 is a bit late to be prudish – but at the same time our sensibilities are slightly different from those of the fourth century, and St. Mary surely has many other qualities worth celebrating (‘virtutum’ in the text is plural, after all). Certain words and images in my version refer, however obliquely, not only to her ‘honor’ but also to those other, God-given, virtues; stanza 3 follows more exclusively the agricultural meanings of certain terms and images than does the original, which allows a welcome nod to the wild and willful Spirit, while stanza 7, slightly obscure in the Latin, depicts the Incarnation (literally, ‘enfleshment’) as sign and means of our salvation.
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