29 December 2014

Carols and Hymns for Christmas (5):
‘Jesus came, the heavens adoring’ (No 130)

Richard Burton as Saint Thomas à Becket in the movie ‘Becket’ ... Saint Thomas à Becket is named in the calendar of the Church of England today; but the hymn tune ‘Saint Thomas’ recalls Saint Thomas Aquinas

Patrick Comerford

As part of my spiritual reflections for this Christmas season, I am thinking about an appropriate carol or hymn each morning. Today (29 December 2014), the Calendar of the Church of England remembers Saint Thomas à Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury.

It is 50 years this year since the release of Becket, the 1964 film adaptation of the play Becket or the Honour of God by Jean Anouilh. It was directed by Peter Glenville and produced by Hal B. Wallis, with Richard Burton as Archbishop Thomas à Becket and Peter O’Toole as King Henry II. Becket won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and was nominated for eleven other awards.

This morning I have chosen ‘Jesus came, the heavens adoring’ (Irish Church Hymnal, No 130), by Canon Godfrey Thring (1823-1903), which is associated with the tune ‘Saint Thomas.’ However, the tune was named with the great Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas in mind, and not Saint Thomas à Becket. How did this come about?

Godfrey Thring was born at Alford, Somerset, on 25 March 1823, the son of the Rector of Alford, the Revd John Gale Dalton Thring, and Sarah (née Jenkyns) Thring. Two of his brothers, Edward and John Charles Thring, were teachers at Uppingham School, while another brother, Henry Thring (1818–1907), became Lord Thring, a noted jurist and Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury.

Godfrey Thring was educated at Shrewsbury School and graduated BA in 1845 from Balliol College, Oxford. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1848, and 10 years later, after his father united the benefices of Alford and Hornblotton, near Glastonbury, in Somerset by an Act of Parliament known as the “Thrings Estate Bill,” Godfrey succeeded his father as Rector of Alford-with-Hornblotton in 1858. He remained there for 35 years. He was appointed Prebendary of East Harptree in Wells Cathedral in 1876.

Godfrey Thring commissioned the architect Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1835-1924) to build new churches at Hornblotton and Lottisham, and became, in Jackson’s words, “one of my best and most valued friends.” Jackson’s church is rich in the Arts and Crafts style and strikingly decorated. His other works include the Bridge of Sighs over New College Lane in Oxford.

Thring died on 13 September 1903 and is buried in Shamley Green, Surrey.

Thring wrote and edited a number of hymn volumes, including: Hymns Congregational and Others (1866), Hymns and Verses (1866), Hymns and Poems for the Holy Days and the Festivals of the Church, Hymns and Sacred Lyrics (1874) and A Church of England Hymn-Book Adapted to the Daily Services of the Church Throughout the Year (1880).

This morning’s hymn links the Christmas story and the Incarnation of Christ with his death, resurrection, ascension and the promise of his coming again. The tune ‘Saint Thomas’ is often said to be an 18th century melody from Essay on the Church Plain Chant (London, 1782) by the English composer Samuel Webbe.

Webbe was born in 1740 on the island of Minorca in Spain. He studied under Barbaudt. In 1766, he was given a prize medal by the Catch Club for his O that I had wings. In all, he was awarded 27 medals for his songs and compositions, including ‘Discord, dire sister,’ ‘Glory be to the Father,’ ‘Swiftly from the mountain’s brow,’ and ‘To thee all angels.’ In 1776, he succeeded George Paxton as the organist in the chapel of the Sardinian Embassy, a position he continued to hold until 1795. At the same time, he was also the organist in the Portuguese Chapel in London.

His Collection of Motetts (1792) and A Collection of Masses for Small Choirs were used extensively at one time in Roman Catholic churches throughout England from 1795.

He died on 15 or 25 May 1816 in London and is buried in Saint Pancras Churchyard.

Webbe included the tune ‘Saint Thomas’ in his Essay on the Church Plain Chant in 1782, and again ten years later in his Collection of Motetts (1792). However, Webbe may have found the tune in Cantus diversi pro dominicis et festis per annum, a manuscript now in Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit public school in Lancashire. The document probably dates from ca 1750 and is written in the handwriting of John Francis Wade (1710-1786), an English Roman Catholic who lived in exile in Douai, France.

Wade linked this tune with the hymn Tantum ergo sacramentum by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the second part of his Benediction hymn, Pange lingua gloriosi. Wade may have composed the tune himself, or reworked an earlier tune by the German composer Heinrich Schutze in the early 17th century. But since Webbe published it the tune has been known as Saint Thomas (Webbe), or simply as Saint Thomas.

Another tune with the same name is used in the New English Hymnal for the Advent hymn ‘The advent of our God’ (NEH 14) by Charles Coffin (1676-1749), translated by Henry Thomas Putman (1861-1935). That tune is from Aaron Williams’s New Universal Psalmist (1770).

Jesus came, the heavens adoring, by Godfrey Thring

Jesus came, the heavens adoring,
came with peace from realms on high;
Jesus came for man’s redemption,
lowly came on earth to die:
Alleluia, alleluia!
came in deep humility.

Jesus comes again in mercy,
when our hearts are bowed with care:
Jesus comes again in answer
to our earnest heart-felt prayer;
Alleluia, alleluia!
comes to save us from despair.

Jesus comes to hearts rejoicing,
bringing news of sins forgiven:
Jesus comes in sounds of gladness,
leading souls redeemed to heaven;
Alleluia, alleluia!
now the gate of death is riven.

Jesus comes on clouds triumphant,
when the heavens shall pass away;
Jesus comes again in glory;
let us then our homage pay;
Alleluia, alleluia!
till the dawn of endless day.

Tomorrow:The Wexford Carol

‘Dust in sunlight and memory in corners’
… sharing memories of ‘Little Jerusalem’

‘Dust in sunlight and memory in corners’ … sunset at Clare Hall this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

The Sunday after Easter is sometimes called ‘Low Sunday’ for a variety of reasons –ranging from the spiritual anti-climax some feel after the great celebration of Easter, to the fact that the high attendances on Easter Day do not carry through to the following Sunday.

For some people, this Sunday after Christmas is another ‘low’ Sunday. But the attendance figures seemed to be good in Christ Church Cathedral for the Cathedral Eucharist this morning [28 December 2014]. I was the deacon, reading the Gospel and assisting with at the administration of the Holy Communion.

The Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne, presided, and the preacher was the Revd Cecilia Grace Kenny, who spoke about the prophecy of Simeon and Anna when the Christ Child was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem by the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph (see Luke 2: 22-40).

Next Sunday [4 January 2015] marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the poet TS Eliot on 4 January 1965, and I was reminded this morning of his poem ‘A Song for Simeon,’ which is based on this Gospel passage and the canticle Nunc Dimittis.

This is one of four poems by TS Eliot published between 1927 and 1930 and known as the Ariel Poems. In ‘Journey of The Magi’ and ‘A Song for Simeon,’ Eliot shows how he persisted on his spiritual pilgrimage. He was baptised and confirmed in the Church of England on 29 June 1927; ‘Journey of the Magi’ was published two months later, in August 1927, and a few months later Faber, for whom he worked, published ‘A Song for Simeon’ as part of a series of Christmas booklets. In all, Eliot wrote four poems for the series.

Both ‘Journey of The Magi’ and ‘A Song for Simeon’ draw on the stories of Biblical characters concerned with the arrival of the Christ Child. Both poems deal with the past, with a significant Epiphany event, with the future – as seen from the time of that event, and with a time beyond time – death.

‘A Song for Simeon,’ as with ‘Journey of The Magi,’ is also in the mouth of an old man, the Prophet Simeon in the Temple in Jerusalem. Here too, Eliot draws on a Christmas sermon by Lancelot Andrewes: “Verbum infans, the Word without a word, the eternal Word not able to speak a word.” In Eliot’s words, the old man sees a faith that he cannot inhabit in “the still unspeaking and unspoken Word.”

I hope to speak about Eliot again next Sunday when I preach in Zion Church, Rathgar, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.

After coffee in the Cathedral Crypt following this morning’s Eucharist, three of us went for lunch in La Dolce Vita in Cow Lane, in the Temple Bar area near the cathedral.

This was my first time to meet my cousin Stephen Comerford – his late father, also Stephen Comerford, was my second cousin. There were family stories to recall, reminiscences to share, and memories to exchange as we recalled Comerford families in Wexford and Dublin, the family links with Comberford, Lichfield and Bunclody, and competed to see who could remember the most Jewish shops in the Clanbrassil Street area.

It was like we had moved from Simeon and Anna in the Temple in Jerusalem to the Erlichs and Rubensteins in Little Jerusalem.

‘The winter sun creeps by the snow hills’ … the setting sun reflected on the glass walls of the shopping centre at Clare Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Later, two of us went on for a Christmas visit to other family members. On the way back, as we stopped briefly at Clare Hall, we could see in the east the snow-filled clouds that are hovering the Irish Sea but not moving into the coast.

To the west, the sun was setting and casting long rays onto the high glass walls of the shopping centre and the surrounding buildings. There was such a clear sky, and colours were so sharp it might have been possible to imagine that this was a summer evening in Greece. And I recalled those lines by TS Eliot in ‘A Song for Simeon’:

The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;

My life is light …
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners


Christ Church Cathedral before this morning’s Cathedral Eucharist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

A Song for Simeon (TS Eliot)

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season had made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.