Lo, he comes with clouds descending

 

Behold, he is coming with the clouds 

and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, 

and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.  

Even so.  Amen. 

(Revelation 1:7, ESV)

This is my favourite Advent hymn.  It anticipates Christ's Second Coming, which is one of the major themes of Advent - the others being preparation to celebrate his First Coming at Christmas, and the individual believer's preparation to receive him in their heart.   Michael Dougherty comments that this hymn, which is a complete reworking of a previous hymn by John Cennick, shows "the facility with which Charles [Wesley] uses the English language and how he effortlessly mirrors the images of the book of Revelation . . . " (cf the verse quoted above).  C Michael Hawn comments that "this poem comes as close as poetic verse can in scaling the heights of spendour, majesty, and mystery as described in Revelation."

The earlier hymn was published by John Cennick in the fifth edition of his Collection of Sacred Hymns in 1752.   You can see the text as quoted by John Julian here (scroll to page 681).  Julian goes on to quote Wesley's version of the hymn, which was published in 1758 in Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind.  Modern hymn books follow this text, with one or two alterations.  It's interesting to note that in the Methodist hymn books of 1933, 1983 (Hymns and Psalms) and 2011 (Singing the Faith), the last line of the first stanza is Wesley's "God appears on earth to reign", while the Anglican hymn books from the Ancient and Modern stable, published in 1922, 1950 and 2013 all replace "God" with "Christ" in that line.  (The second and third stanzas, with their references to the Messiah's death, pierced and nailed to a tree, make it clear that Wesley was indeed referring to the Second Person of the Trinity at the end of the first stanza).  The other common change is in the penultimate line of stanza 4, which successive Methodist hymnals have replaced with "Hallelujah!" or "Come, Lord Jesus!", while Ancient and Modern has consistently used, "Alleluia!  Thou shalt reign, and thou alone" for the final two lines.  Other versions use "O come quickly!" (which was the wording in Cennick's version) in the penultimate line.  John Julian's (see link above) entry on Lo, he comes, as published in 1907, gives details of various other reworkings of this hymn, but it seems to me that Wesley's version, with a couple of alterations, is what is in common use today.

Charles Wesley's hymn, as it was first published in 1758

As I said, this is my favourite Advent hymn.  In Anglican hymnals it usually appears in the Advent section.  Methodists place it under Advent in 2011, but in earlier hymn books it was under "The Lord Jesus Christ: his kingdom, present and future" (1933), and "Christ's Coming in Glory" (1983).  But as Hawn (see above) points out, "the context in which it appears in John Wesley's collection [1758] offers a very different understanding of the text."  He goes on to say, "the hymns in Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind address in amazing detail various categories of intercessory prayer."

Lo, he comes appears near the end of Wesley's collection, under the heading "Thy Kingdom Come!"  This is one of the petitions which Jesus commands us to pray near the beginning of the Lord's Prayer.  Hawn comments on the collection, and the place of Lo, he comes within it, 

Charles Wesley, having enumerated a comprehensive list of intercessory needs, establishes that God, in Christ, is the cosmic "monarch" of all earthly kings, nations, institutions, individuals in need, and all religions and theologies, and philosophies found on earth, even if they do not recognize God.

Lo, he comes is almost always sung (at least, in my experience!) to the tune Helmsley, which is attributed in modern hymn books as follows: 'Select Hymns with Tunes Annext (1765)', a book published by John Wesley, where the tune is called 'Olivers'.  It's been attributed to Thomas Olivers (1710-1778), but its origins are obscure.  However, in Hawn's words, "it is a magnificent pairing with this majestic text."  Dougherty comments further,

When sung together, this text and tune help the worshipping community observe with wonder the events of Jesus' crucifixion.  Well-place tune-driven repeats of text create a sense of excitement and urgency.  This drives us toward the . . .  day when we sing,   

Yea, Amen! Let all adore thee,

high on thy eternal throne;

Saviour, take the power and glory,

claim the kingdom for thine own.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!

Everlasting God, come down!  

You can hear this hymn here.

For more information about Charles Wesley, see my post on O, thou who camest from above.

Photo by Jeff Jacobs on Pixabay

Make me a channel of your peace

 

Most hymn books tell us that this song is based on the Prayer of St Francis, so I was fascinated to discover that the prayer concerned is entirely absent from his writings, and can be traced back no further than 1912, when it was published anonymously in France in a small Catholic spiritual magazine called La Clochette, under the title Belle prière à faire pendant la messe (A beautiful prayer to say during the Mass).  The original text of the prayer, with an English translation taken from Wikipedia, is as follows: 

Not only was this prayer not written by St Francis, but according to one biographer, "Noble as its sentiments are, Francis would not have written such a piece, focused as it is on the self, with its constant repetition of the pronouns 'I' and 'me', the words 'God' and 'Jesus' never appearing once."

Dr Christian Renoux, who wrote a study of the origins of this prayer, says that it was first attributed to St Francis in 1927 by a French Protestant movement, Les Chevaliers du Prince de la Paix.  The earliest known English translation dates to the same year, and was also attributed to St Francis.  It became very popular in America during the Second World War, and has remained so ever since.  Although written in a Catholic Christian context, it has been widely adopted by people of many different faiths.  According to Kevin Flannagan of the United Methodist Church, this has been possible because of the "broadly inclusive language" of the prayer.

The hymn based on this prayer, Make me a channel of your peace, was written by Sebastian Temple (1928 - 1997), and published in 1967.  Temple was born in South Africa, spent some time living in London  working for the BBC, and moved to America in 1958, where he joined the Franciscan Third Order.  He wrote Make me a channel of your peace as one of a collection of songs commissioned by the Franciscans.  In a letter quoted by Ian Bradley in his book, The Daily Telegraph Book of Hymns (p 277), Temple described writing the song:

I wrote so easily and so prolifically that I took for granted that I could write music to the peace prayer of St Francis . . . its strange form drove me crazy.  I could not come up with anything that sounded like music to my ears . . . Finally, I was disgusted, looked at the little statue of St Francis on my shelf and said angrily, 'Well if you want it, YOU do it.  I can't.'  I got up, went to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and drank it.  When I returned to the guitar, I picked it up, had the tape running, and the song fell out of my mouth as it was recorded a few days later.

The hymn is well-known and very popular in the UK.  Both GodSongs.net  and Kevin Flannagan (see above) put that popularity down to its inclusion in the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.  However, it appeared in British hymn books well before that: Mission Praise (1983) and Songs of Fellowship (1991) both include it.

This week, as we mark the anniversary of the end of World War One, (Remembrance Day in the UK and Commonwealth, Veterans Day in the US, Armistice Day in France, Volkstrauertag in Germany), it seemed appropriate to choose a song based on a prayer for the grace to bring peace and all that is good into our relationships and dealings, one with another.    

You can hear Sebastian Temple's original recording of Make me a channel of your peace here.  There's a Songs of Praise recording with lyrics, featuring Tessera, here. 

A word about the picture above (link and accreditation below): When I found this picture, and read the notes with it, I decided that it was perfect to illustrate this post.  The photo was taken in the Philippines on 26 June 2020.  The photographer was enjoying the sunset on his/her way home from work:  

And then I saw a kid approaching with his bike.  I quickly grabbed my phone, hoping I'd catch him . . . He looked so safe and secure.  There's so much beauty, peace, and calmness.  A little different from what the world is going through right now.  Fear.  Hate.  Injustice.  Pain.  Despair.  Confusion.  Unbelief.  The list can go on.  But that doesn't mean that we can no longer live like the kid in the photo.  We still can.  Think of the beauty that's still left.  Have Faith.  Believe.  Hope.  The world needs you.  Us.  Keep praying.  Remember, peace is not the absence of chaos.  It is that despite the chaos, we still surprisingly experience extraordinary, unexplainable peace . . . only God can give us that kind of peace.  The peace that transcends all understanding!   

Picture: Peace undeniable.  Calm so tangible; trimmed. by Arch.elam  CC BY-SA 4.0.