St Francis – The Raynville Rambler

Lord, make us servants of your peace

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Lord, make us servants of your peace” by James Quinn. It’s a setting of a well known prayer by St Francis of Assisi. As a long metre text it could be set to any of many existing tunes, the suggested one being ‘O Waly Waly’. Quinn has kept, I think, to as close a translation as possible within the regular 8-syllable metre, rather than attempt to rhyme the words. So it reads more as blank verse than a song.

The essence of this prayer is, firstly, for the will to set aside our own needs and desires for the sake of other people. That much is a basic building block of civilisation. But it goes beyond that in actively seeking to bring love, peace, hope, reconciliation, understanding and other relational virtues, recognising that this will mean giving more than we receive and loving even where love is not returned.

That is the basis not only of Christianity but of other religions and spiritual movements: Francis of course was the head of a Catholic religious order, but most of these words are ones that people of all faiths can share, apart perhaps from the one specific appeal to Jesus, which could equally be addressed to God by whatever name he is known. The last verse is more specifically Christian in that it brings the hope of resurrection, and an awakening in heaven’s light where there is eternal peace.

The alternative sung version of this prayer, Make me a channel of your peace” by Sebastian Temple, has become well known across the Churches, but this one seems an equally singable one that could grow on me.

Loved with everlasting love

St Francis and the birds, Holy Cross Monastery, New York
(c) Randy OHC Creative Commons 2.0

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Loved with everlasting love” by George Wade Robinson. Unlike nearly all the other hymns in this book, it was not written in the 20^th or 21^st centuries but the 19th. The suggested tune, Calon Lan, is a Welsh one, and has the same rhythm as “Here is love, vast as the ocean” (17 March). Robinson, according to his Wikipedia entry, was an Irish Protestant minister (who later led English congregations).

The theme this time is belonging to Jesus; the last line of each verse is “I am his, and he is mine”. There are three verses here (a version I found online has a fourth verse, omitted here, perhaps because of the overly sentimental wording such as “Pillowed on the loving breast”). The first of them celebrates the peace of knowing ourselves loved by God, and the last is in similar vein: “with what joy and peace Christ can fill the loving heart!”

The second verse tries to explain in words one of those things that by definition are beyond words: the way the world seems different in God’s presence. I recognise what he is trying to express with lines such as “Heaven above is softer blue, earth around is richer green … songs of birds in sweetness grow, flowers with deeper beauties shine”. I have experienced that – not all the time, but at times when God’s presence has been real to me. It’s a reminder that often, the opposite can be true: the cares of the world and business of life cause us to neglect both a relationship with God, and the beauty of his creation.

There is, of course, always a danger in such sentiments of conflating God with nature, which has always been considered a heresy in Christian thought, since God by definition is much greater than anything s/he has created. But to ignore the natural world or to exploit it for our own purposes is perhaps the greater heresy of recent generations, and one of which the environmental movement persuades us, more forcefully than most Christian leaders, to repent. Where Christian faith and environmental concern meet is indeed where we experience the truth that “I am his, and he is mine”, being part of One who is greater than the created world, and that what God loves, we shall love too.

Earth, earth, awake!

St Francis window in St Leonard’s church, Wollaton, Nottingham.
Artist Christopher Whall. Image copyright Stephen Craven 2020.

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Earth, earth, awake!” by Herman G Stümpfler Jr. I’m grateful to John for suggesting the tune ‘Lasst uns erfreuen’ (better known set to St Francis’ Canticle of Creation) rather than the one in the book; I enjoyed singing the harmony to the alleluias in the YouTube video.

This is very much an Easter hymn of praise. As I observed yesterday, in the Easter season we are reminded that Christ’s resurrection revealed on Easter day was as like a new morning for the world.

The first verse invites the whole creation – earth, sun and stars – to awake and sing praise to the risen King. The second invites us to join all nature as it “sings of hope reborn [as] Christ lives to comfort those who mourn”. This weekend of course, our nation mourns its senior Prince, who has passed into Glory honourably and of natural causes at the ripe old age of 99, but there will be many people also who are mourning for those who have died young, in tragic circumstances or of Coronavirus or other diseases. Their grief may be deeper, and their acceptance of their loved one’s death longer, than when a death was expected and natural. But whatever the circumstances, may they know God’s comfort.

Verse three makes the common comparison between winter turning into spring, and the new life of the resurrection. Whilst the first Easter did happen around Passover time in April, there is a very long-standing tradition of making this link with the time of year when flowers and buds appear and animals give birth (at least in the northern hemisphere where Christianity started). The final verse is a song of praise to the Trinity (see yesterday’s comments).