Music and Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent

Sunday, December 3, 2017 | The First Sunday of Advent

"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

• Words are a twelfth-century Latin hymn, translated by John M. Neale (1851)
• Music is by Thomas Helmore (1854), based on plainsong phrases; hymn tune is VENI EMMANUEL
• Performed by Enya on the album And Winter Came (2008 Warner Music Group)

Text
O come, o come, Emmanuel, to free your captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice, O Israel, to you shall come Emmanuel

(Sung once in English and once in Latin)

The following stanza, attributed to Henry Sloane Coffin (1916), is not sung in this track but I provide if for your meditation here at the close of a tumultuous 2017:

O come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease, fill all the world heavenly peace
Rejoice! Rejoice, O Israel, to you shall come Emmanuel

Readings

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced from the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:16-21 (ESV)

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now and in the time of this mortal life in which your son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent