I led a devotion on Good Friday this year based on the writings of some of the Fathers of the Church. The imagery they use in meditating on the Passion is incredibly beautiful, and I was very keen to work some of it into a devotional hymn, suitable for Good Friday, or elsewhere in Passiontide. I’ve included the relevant extracts below. The anonymous homily for Holy Saturday is particularly astonishing.
I’ve chosen Arthur Somervell’s beautiful tune for ‘Praise to the holiest in the height’, from his oratorio, ‘The Passion of Christ’ (not to be confused with Mel Gibson's version...) There are enough contenders for this hymn already – Anglicans tend to go with ‘Gerontius’, and Roman Catholics with ‘Billing’, in my experience, and they’re both great tunes – so I think it’s time ‘Chorus angelorum’ had a few more outings, with a different text (provided it’s sung relatively slowly and reflectively).
Alexander Crawford
Tune: Chorus angelorum (NEH 439ii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gesUVTDsalU
A meditation on Christ in his Passion
O wondrous mystery of love,
That God should come to earth,
To take the form of feeble man,
That man may prove his worth.
Fullness of God, yet emptied then
In forty days of fast;
He hungered, thirsted, all to fill
The lost with food that lasts.
Sickness to cure, the dead to raise,
His spittle healed the blind;
And now they spit upon his face,
The Saviour of mankind.
See, the incarnate Word of God
To death in silence goes.
In weakness, suffering, and pain,
The pow’r of love he shows.
Martyrs he crowns with beauteous flowers,
Though he is crowned with thorns;
He clothes in white his faithful ones,
Though him no robes adorn.
To him who gives the bread from heaven
They give the bitter gall,
Foul vinegar, for him who pours
The saving cup for all.
His brothers slumber; none keep watch;
Their Lord, they all forsake.
And now he sleeps upon the cross,
That sleepers may awake:
Adam, whose hands defiled the tree,
Fast bound in death’s cruel chains;
Upon a tree, with bleeding hands,
Our freedom, Christ regains.
O wondrous mystery of love,
Our Christ upon the cross,
The altar of his sacrifice,
All to redeem our loss!
From ‘On the virtue of patience’ by St Cyprian of Carthage:
Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, said that he had come down to earth to do his Father’s will. Among the virtues that revealed his divine majesty was the endurance that mirrored his Father’s patience. Every act of his, from the moment of his first appearing, bore the stamp of the patience with which it was carried out. He was no sinner, but the Son of God; yet when he descended to earth from the heights of heaven, he did not disdain to assume human nature and bear the sins of men. Laying aside his immortality for a while, he suffered himself to be made mortal, in order that the innocent could die to save the guilty. He, the Lord, was baptized by a servant, and though he had come to grant forgiveness of sins he did not think it beneath him to wash in the life-giving waters. He fasted for forty days, yet it is through him that others are filled with good things. If he hungered and thirsted, it was to enable those who were faint for want of the word and grace of God to be filled with bread from heaven. He engaged in combat with the devil who tempted him, but was content to defeat his enemy by words alone.
He did not govern his disciples as a master rules his slaves. He was kind and gentle, loving them as brothers, even washing the feet of the apostles, showing by his example how a servant should bear himself toward his equals when his master dealt in such a way with his servants. No wonder he could show such goodness to the disciples who obeyed him, if he was able to bear so long and so patiently with Judas, eating and drinking with his enemy, recognizing the foe in his own household yet neither exposing him publicly nor refusing his treacherous kiss.
At the time of his Passion and Cross, even before it had gone as far as the inhuman crucifixion and the shedding of his blood, how patiently he bore reviling and reproach, insult and mockery! A little while before, he had cured the eyes of a blind man with his spittle, yet now he allowed his tormentors to spit in his face. His servants today scourge the devil and his angels in the name of Christ, but at the time of his Passion Christ himself submitted to being scourged. He crowns the martyrs with never-fading flowers, though he himself was crowned with thorns. Others he clothes in the garment of immortality, yet he himself was stripped of his earthly garments. He had fed them with bread from heaven, yet he himself was fed with gall; and he who had poured out the saving cup was offered vinegar to drink.
He the innocent, he the just, he rather who is the embodiment of innocence and justice, is counted among evil-doers. Truth is confuted by false evidence. The future judge is subjected to judgment; the Word of God is led to the Cross in silence. At the Lord's crucifixion the stars are thrown into confusion, the elements are disturbed, earth trembles, and night swallows up day. But he himself is silent, unmoved, hiding every sign of his godhead throughout the whole duration of his Passion. Enduring all things, he perseveres to the end, so that in him patience may be brought to its full measure of perfection.
From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday:
What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.
Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son. The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his Cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise. I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.
‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form, that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.
‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image. See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one. I slept on the Cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.
`But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God. The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness, the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.’
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