Tag: unity

One bread, one body, one Lord of all

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “One bread, one body, one Lord of all” by John Foley. Unsurprisingly it’s about Holy Communion, or should I say the Mass, since the composer is a Jesuit.

The chorus emphasises the unity of all Christians as the body of Christ: “And we, though many, throughout the earth, we re one body in this one Lord”.  The three short verses give some examples of the differences that can divide, but should unite us: Gentile or Jew (religious tradition), servant or free (class/status), woman or man (gender), different gifting. The last verse refers back to the bread itself as a metaphor for gathering: “Grain for the fields, scattered and grown, gathered to one, for all”.

I find this strand of Catholicism, stressing our unity in the Sacrament, to be positive and encouraging, though at odds with the Vatican’s continuing insistence that non-Catholics, even though baptised in the name of the Trinity, should not participate in the sharing of bread.

One is the body

The hymn I chose for 2 July from Sing Praise (but commenting a day late) was “One is the body and one is the head” by John Bell, with words based on Ephesians chapter 4.  Unlike the psalm setting I mentioned on 1 July with a difficult tune to pick up, this one in Bell’s usual Scottish folk style is very easy.

It’s a song of unity in mission: the unity between God the Father, Jesus Christ and the holy Spirit; unity between the earthly Jesus and the eternal Christ; unity between the members of the Church with our different gifts and callings, and unity between the Church as body of Christ, and the threefold God whom we serve and worship.

How good it is

Peace mural in Derry/Londonderry
© Joseph Mischyshyn licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Today’s hymn is “How good it is” by another composer new to me, Ruth Duck.  It continues our series on justice in the world, but is also a setting of a psalm (Ps.133). The words (set to a different tune from the one in Sing Praise) can be found here:

The opening line – “how good it is, what pleasure comes when people live as one” – sets the tone for the first two verses, about a desire for peace, justice and friendship. This is a vision shared by many people, whether religious or not, that there should be peace and harmony between all people. 

The second pair of verses begins “how good it is when walls of fear come tumbling to the ground”. They include the biblical vision of “swords being beaten into ploughshares” (in this version, “arms are changed to farming tools”) with the ultimate aim expressed in the last line, “that hate and war may cease”. 

This seems relevant today when the media’s focus is on the hundredth anniversary of the partition of Ireland into the independent Republic and the northern province that remained part of the United Kingdom.  That division, at the time largely driven by the mutual hostility between ‘protestant’ and ‘catholic’ Christians, has continued to be a cause for division with violence continuing intermittently to the present day, even though the different factions within the Church itself are now willing to co-operate in the search for peace and live with our differences. So today, this hymn can be seen as much a prayer for Ireland as anything else.