World without End

Last week an asteroid brushed precariously close to our planet on its way to the great unknown. It caused a flurry of speculation about the end of the world. 

On the same day, a coincidence of preposterous odds found a meteorite breaking up over a cold Russian city, sending hundreds to the hospital with wounds from exploding glass windows. 

World without end? We hope so ... but it’s looking a little dicey these days. 

Sunday evening my husband and I decided to do a doubleheade; a service at Christ Church, followed by a long-anticipated concert at Meymandi Concert Hall with the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra. We left at 4:30 p.m. for the evening service at Christ Church in downtown Raleigh. Choral Evensong for the First Sunday in Lent was the order for worship.

As the sounds of the opening organ Voluntary filled the space, I immediately began to breath deeper and slower. In the presence of God’s beauty, one either holds their breath or unconsciously begins to breathe with the Spirit in unhurried and soul-cleansing rhythm. 

  Oculi omnium in te spirant, Domine:

    et tu das escam illorum 

    in tempore opportune.

  Gloria tibi, Domine. Amen.

  The eyes of all wait upon Thee,

    O Lord:
  And Thou givest them their meat

    in due season.

  Glory to Thee, O Lord. Amen.

The Choral Introit caused me to fix my gaze upward. I felt the warmth of a satisfied stomach and the good hand of God in caring for me. The holy feeling that hearing a choral piece sung in Latin always gives me was a welcomed friend. Eyes, hands, and heart fixed on God. Isn’t that what the beginning parts in worship do?

The space filled with memories of saints and angels from times ancient and new with the first hymn, the Phos hilaron. The Phos hilaron is the oldest surviving Christian hymn. Set to the lovely canonical tune from Thomas Tallis, the text gathers images of Light, the Trinity, and holy praise into a flowing stream of devotion. The organist played a sturdy canonical introduction, which set the tone for fine singing from the congregation.

The service continued, the music drawing me into its pulses, its message of praise. I left with the elevating Gloria Patri resonating in my mind and heart. Sung in three different settings following the Introit, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis, one phrase haunts me in a pleasant way still this evening, two days later . . . “world without end.”

Many churches sing or say this week after week, year round. These three powerful words refer back to the beginning of the hymn …  “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.” It is this praise and glory directed to our Triune God that will never end. The middle section says, “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be” . . . and then the colossal ending, “World without end. Amen.”

Past, present, future. Meteors and asteroids, despots, nuclear warfare, pestilence and disease . . . all of it will not cause the praise of the Creator of the Universe to end. Upon leaving a service where that thought was so beautifully and powerfully affirmed, one cannot help but be at peace.

I plan to be there for the “ever shall be, world without end” part. God will either have to call me to heaven in a whirlwind, or resurrect my decayed body. Either way, He will find me and bring me into His eternal courts where praising His holy name will be my joy and delight, world without end. Amen. 

p.s.  A reflection on the concert we attended after Evensong is coming up in later this week.

Photos courtesy of NASA Public Domain images

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MUSIC LINKS

The Phos Hilaron set by Charles Wood - Hail Gladdening Light

Nunc Dimittis, Herbert Sumsion (1899-1995). Sung here by the Roden Boys & Men’s Choir. Christ Church Choir sang this at the service, and it is the closing Gloria Patri which echoed through the space and still echoes in my heart. 

A Hymn for St. Cecilia – Herbert Howells (also sung at the service at Christ Church)

Follow the text, which is given in the description on YouTube. The last few lines resonate with the theme of “world without end.” A martyr who sang to God while she was dying, Cecilia is remembered as the patron saint of musicians. 

Through the cold aftermath of centuries,

Cecilia’s music dances in the skies;

Lend us a fragment of the immortal air,

That with your choiring angels we may share

A word to light us thro’ time-fettered night,

Water of fife, or rose of paradise,

So from the earth another 

Song shall rise to meet

Your own in heaven’s long delight. 

                     text by Ursula Vaughan Williams

                     (poet and wife of Ralph Vaughan Williams)