Today’s song from Sing Praise is another in the series of Gospel chants, James Walsh’s “Strong is your love, mighty your word”. Like the others it takes the form of a congregational ‘alleluia’ before and after a solo chant. In this instance, rather than a single chant according to the season of the Church year, there are four chants all suitable for any time of year, and making it a bit more like a traditional hymn.
The four verses/chants address God first of all as the source of love and word (wisdom) who can ‘speak to us and open our hearts’ , then as Spirit and Message of Truth, then as ‘All-holy God, Father of light’, and lastly as the mighty one. I don’t find these words particularly inspiring, as they seem to be a series of phrases or names for the various person of God, rather mixed up.
I would hazard a guess that this hymn is intended to be used before the Gospel reading, and to have just one verse (unless there is a particularly long Gospel procession which needs a longer hymn to cover it), and the choice of which verse is used would depend on what sort of story/message was being conveyed (so v2 would be for Pentecost, v3 for Trinity for example). I guess the trouble with liturgical hymns like this is that they easily can become “musical wallpaper”.
I was a disappointed that the suggested descant was very static and didn’t actually finish the words of the verse, particularly as there is space to do so (caused by the repeat of the Alleluia at the end of the verse). A missed opportunity here.