December 3, 2017 Christmas Party
December 3, 2017 Christmas Party with the monks


PLEASE RSVP FOR LUNCH BEFORE THE PARTY

Click here to RSVP and all the party info. 
Get a Gift for a Monk? - Optional

Monks have written their Christmas-gift wish lists. If you want to get a gift for a monk, but did not receive the name of a monk in an email today, please reply to this email.

Please include the following text even if you include additional text or requests:

"Please email me the name of a monk for the Christmas party."

Also please include your name in your email requesting a monk's name.

Getting a gift for a monk is optional and voluntary. Come to the party!!
Bring a Dessert. Can you also help with supplies and setup/cleanup?  

Bring a dessert to share. Click here and let everyone know what dessert you are bringing. This helps others to know how many, for example, tarte Tatins are coming.

If you can help with the party supplies, setup, decorating the room, or cleanup, click here and signup.


O COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL -- Our Song

Our beloved monks continuously throughout the year sing such beautiful hymns, psalms, and prayers. We thought it fitting for us to sing for them "O Come, All Ye Faithful" during our Christmas Party. 


Rita Sarmiento will coordinate and get us organized for the singing at the party.

I truly believe they would enjoy and appreciate it whole heartedly.

What is needed to make this possible?

YOU -- each and everyone of YOU.

What if I can't sing?

If you have a voice you can sing. Some better then others, but we all have a voice.

For certain I know all of you will be singing from the heart and our monks will be listening with the ears of their hearts.

Let's not forget the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We will all sound like a choir of angels.

"O Come All Ye Faithful" Let us share together in "Joy" the birth of Lord in our hearts.

Here is a beautiful version to practice with. This is the version we will sing!! 
STORY OF THE HYMN "O Come, All Ye Faithful" 

"This favorite Christmas hymn appears to be the result of a collaboration of several people. What we sing is a 19th-century version of a hymn written in the 18th century.

"The Latin text comes from the Roman Catholic tradition, found in an 18th-century manuscript in the College at Douai. The college was located in northern France beginning around 1561 and continuing until it was suppressed in 1793. The college was exiled to England at the time of the French Revolution (1789-99)."

Most music scholars today accept that the text of the hymn was written by "John Francis Wade (c.1711-1786), an English musician at the college. Methodist hymnologist Fred Gealy notes: "Seven manuscripts containing the Latin hymn are known; they are dated 1743-61. All appear to have been written, signed, and dated by John Francis Wade, an Englishman who made his living by copying and selling plainchant and other music.

"Research by Dom John Stéphan, author of The Adeste Fidelis: A Study of Its Origin and Development (1947), has determined that the first and original manuscript was dated in 1743, indicating that Wade composed both the Latin words and the music between 1740 and 1743.

"The English language translation of stanzas one, two, three and six is the work of Frederick Oakeley (1802-1880), a translator of Latin hymns during the Oxford movement who worked closely with Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), a leader in the movement. Oakeley became a Roman Catholic and was known for his ministry to the poor at Westminster Abbey. Oakeley's stanzas, penned in 1841, first appeared in F.H. Murray's Hymnal for Use in the English Church (1852) under the title "Let us go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass." (Luke 2:15)

"The invitation to "come, all ye faithful, . . . to Bethlehem" places the singer both among the shepherds who rushed to see the Christ child, and in the long procession of the "faithful" that have journeyed to Bethlehem in their hearts for over 2,000 years.


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