Patrick Comerford
Today is Advent Sunday and the countdown to Christmas truly begins today.
At noon each day in Advent this year, I am offering one image as part of my ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and one Advent or Christmas carol or hymn.
We lit the first of the candles on the Advent Wreath in in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford this morning and sand ‘Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending’ as we sang as the recessional hymn, is a popular English hymn about Christ’s Second Coming. The text of the hymn, first published in 1760, is a conflation made by Martin Madan of two related texts by Charles Wesley and John Cennick. Madan was the first to print the tune, which is of unknown, probably secular English origin.
The hymn is now generally sung at Advent and remains one of the most sweeping and powerful hymns of its kind. It appeared on John Rutter’s 1993 album Christmas Day in the Morning. It quickly became a Christmas favourite, and is also a favourite during Advent.
The version here is sung by the Choral Scholars of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields at their first ‘Comfort and Joy’ national online service marking the First Sunday of Advent 2020:
Lo! he comes with clouds descending,
Once for favoured sinners slain!
Thousand, thousand saints attending,
Swell the triumph of his train.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
God appears on Earth to reign.
Ev’ry eye shall now behold him,
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at naught and sold him,
Pierced and nailed him to a tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.
The dear tokens of his passion
Still his dazzling body bears,
Cause of endless exultation
To his ransomed worshipers;
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars.
Yea! Amen! let all adore thee
High on thine eternal throne!
Saviour, take the pow’r and glory,
Claim the kingdom for thine own.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Everlasting God come down.
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