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The Offertory anthem on Sunday is by Canadian composer Eleanor Daley. She chose words by David Adam (1936-2020), a British Anglican priest and leading figure in the Celtic spiritual tradition, the indigenous spirituality of the Irish. The words are direct and intimate:
Come Lord, come to us. Enter our darkness with your light
Fill our emptiness with your presence.
Come refresh, restore, renew us.
In our sadness come as joy, in our troubles come as peace,
In our fearfulness, come as hope, in our darkness come as light,
In our frailty come as strength, in our loneliness come as love.
Come refresh, restore, renew us.
Adams believed that in holy places, our prayers become mixed up with those of the saints who have gone before us and with Christ himself. Adam goes on to say that when we pray in “secular” spaces: hospital rooms, etc., those places become holy because of the prayers offered there.
In music, we understand the hymns and choral music as sacred, but what about the instrumental music? March 23 is the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. When he was 21 years old, Bach wrote his “Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.” The composition is replete with the number three (symbol of the Trinity) and seven (perfection/completion). The theme appears 21 times in seven sections of three units. The fugue subject appears 12 times, which is 21 backwards. Woven into the work are references to German chorales that would have been recognized, such as the Advent chorale “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” or “Savior of the Nations, Come.” The very architecture of the music, though wordless, extols God.
May all our actions – sung, played, spoken, and unspoken – be offered as prayer this Lent.
Lyn Loewi
Associate Organist
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