Sussex-born Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623) was organist at Winchester College and then at Chichester cathedral. This piece of music is a setting of the Evensong canticle known in Latin as the Nunc Dimittis, and also as the Song of Simeon. According to St Luke’s Gospel, Simeon had waited for many years in the Temple at Jerusalem, in the belief that God had promised he would not die before he saw the promised Christ or Messiah, the heir of King David who would bring to fulfilment the prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament seers. When Mary and Joseph brought their infant son Jesus there, Simeon apparently saw something special in him, and taking him into his arms he sang this song.

LORD, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
According to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people:
To be a light to lighten the gentiles
And to be the glory of thy people, Israel.

The choir sings ‘salvation’ as sal-va-si-on, ‘prepared’ as pre-pare-ed and ‘Israel’ as Is-ra-el, which is correct for church music of this period. The translation is from the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549.

The canticle is performed here by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, conducted by Andrew Nethsingha.

Recording provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises.

This short anthem for unaccompanied choir is by Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). The text is the Collect for the Third Sunday after Epiphany.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God,
mercifully look upon our infirmities,
and in all our dangers and necessities
stretch forth thy right hand to help and defend us,
through Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is sung here by the Oxford Camerata in a recording supplied to YouTube by Universal Music Group.

Come, Holy Ghost, All-Quick’ning Fire

By Charles Wesley

I have added a new hymn to the collection, Come, Holy Ghost, All-Quick’ning Fire by Charles Wesley.

Hymns and indeed prayers to the Holy Spirit are not particularly common, but Charles Wesley composed several hymns to or about the Spirit. This hymn focuses on the idea (taken from St Paul’s letters) of the Holy Spirit as God’s royal seal on the Christian’s soul, a stamped image marking the believer out as redeemed by and for God. The idea comes from St Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians:

Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

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Holy Cross Day is the name given in the Book of Common Prayer to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, which is kept on September 14th. In The Rites of Durham (1593) it is still called Holy Rood Day, after the Anglo-Saxon manner.

The feast goes back to the fourth century, when Helen, dowager Empress of Constantinople, declared that the true Cross of Christ had been found. The relic was treasured up in a silver casket in the newly consecrated Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (AD 335), and brought out for display and veneration every year on this date. See St Helen Finds the True Cross in The Copy Book.

The prayer below is the Collect for this day according to the Sarum Use, the liturgy of the English Church prior to the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Collect

O GOD, Who wast pleased to redeem mankind with the precious Blood of Thy Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, mercifully grant that they who draw nigh to adore the life-giving Cross may be set free from the bonds of their sins. Amen.

Let Us Extol the Cross’s Praise

By Adam of St Victor

Today marks the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14/27, called Holy Cross Day in England. The feast commemorates the consecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in AD 335, in which the true Cross of Christ was kept as a precious relic. The nun Egeria, who visited Jerusalem in about 381–384, described seeing the relic taken from its silver casket on this day and ‘exalted’, that is, lifted up for public display and veneraton. See St Helen Finds the True Cross in The Copy Book.

The accompanying hymn is by Adam of St Victor (?-1146), and makes several Biblical allusions including the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath near Tyre: see 1 Kings 17:8-24. This translation is by Charles Buchan Pearson (1807-1881), Prebendary of Sarum and Rector of Knebworth, who uses the Anglo-Saxon word Rood for the Cross.

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