Holy Eucharist Rite II at 10:30 a.m. sung by the St. John’s Adult Choir, sermon by the Rev’d Bill Eakins.
Worship at Home:
Click here: Service Bulletin – Sermon Text
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Service Music:
Voluntary Prelude on Picardy John Joubert (1927-2019)
Advent Responsory Michael McCarthy (b. 1966)
Text: Matin responsory for Advent I
I look from afar: and lo, I see the Power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go ye out to meet him and say: Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over thy people Israel? High and low, rich and poor, one with another, Go ye out to meet him and say: Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, tell us, art thou he that should come? Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come to reign over thy people Israel. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
Processional Hymn 640 Watchman, tell us of the night Aberystwyth
Kyrie Eleison from Litany of the Saints adapt. Richard Proulx (1937-2010)
Sequence Hymn 324 Let all mortal flesh keep silence Picardy
Offertory Anthem Tomorrow shall be my dancing day John Gardner (1917-2011)
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day: I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play, To call my true love to my dance:
Sing O my love; This have I done for my true love.
Then was I born of a virgin pure, Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man’s nature, To call my true love to my dance:
In a manger laid and wrapped I was, So very poor this was my chance,
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass, To call my true love to my dance:
Then afterwards baptized I was; The Holy Ghost on me did glance,
My Father’s voice heard from above, To call my true love to my dance:
Sanctus from Missa Emmanuel Richard Proulx
Fraction Anthem Agnus Dei from Missa Emmanuel Richard Proulx
Communion Anthem What sweeter music John Rutter (b. 1945)
Words: Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
That sees December turned to May.
Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.
We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. To welcome him.
The nobler part Of all the house here,
is the heart.
Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
In the world of choral music, we are mourning the loss of Sir Stephen Cleobury, who recently retired as Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, England – home of the Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols service after which ours and many others are modeled. Sir Stephen started the tradition at King’s of commissioning a new anthem for each year’s carol service, and this beautiful setting by John Rutter was one of the first of those. Choosing to set a poem from 1647, Rutter crafted a fittingly sweet, yet angular, melody accompanied in the uncommon key of G-flat major. The music is inclined to transmit its essence through more subdued dynamics, as in the phrase, “The darling of the world is come, And fit it is, we find a room to welcome him.” And that room, according to Herrick and amplified by Rutter, is warm, as if cold December has turned to fragrant May in an instant.
Hymn in Procession 72 Hark! the glad sound! Richmond
Voluntary Praeludium in C Major, BWV 545 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Assisting Organist: David Chrzanowski