Possibly written around the year 1200, and so about half-way between Jesus’s and our own time, half-way along the road to the present. So the author of the Sequence has a vantage-point from which to look back on a thousand years of Church history. And we have another thousand years to add to that, a thousand years that no one could have imagined when the Sequence was written.
The poet Dante, in roughly the same era, begins his great work, The Divine Comedy, with the words ‘Half way along the road of life, I found myself in a dark wood, and the way ahead was blocked’:
‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita’.
Where I have included personal reminiscences, it is mainly in the hope that others might add their own. Such comments as I have to make are what they are. This is only one take, for today. On another day it would be different. The Spirit is like that.
Holy Spirit, lord of light, from the clear celestial height, thy pure beaming radiance give.
So much that is in darkness. It is light that we ask for first. In all of this, we are describing God the Father and the Son, in terms of the permanent accompaniment of the one who stays through thick and thin.
Come, thou father of the poor, come with blessings which endure, come thou light of all that live.
So we are from the same stock, us and the Spirit. What lives wants to go on living, enduring. Anyone who lives shares this common basis.
Thou of all consolers best, thou the soul’s delightsome guest, dost refreshing peace bestow.
We are in sorrow, but we are able to make a space for the Spirit to join us. When I was a boy, there was an uncle whose visits never failed to lighten the atmosphere and lift the spirits. And similarly when we would go to visit him, which was quite a trek in those days, using several interconnecting buses. Now, whenever I hear Psalm 122, ‘I was glad when I heard them say...’, I always think of those journeys, because I knew we would have a good time when we got to our destination. It seems that the Spirit actually wants to spend time with us, wants what we can offer by way of welcome.
Thou alone art comfort sweet, pleasant coolness in the heat, solace in the midst of woe.
A few years ago, I organised an event for the Coventry Peace Festival using the poetry of the great Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, and the title – ‘Solace in the midst of woe’ - just jumped into my head from this verse.
The need for comfort, coolness and solace comes to us in all sorts of ways. To name but one, a small group of us has been working for seven years – seven years hard labour! – to persuade our local pension fund to divest from the arms trade. Every time we think we have come through into a sunny clearing we find ourselves back in the undergrowth again. Fortitude is the only remedy.
Light immortal, light divine, visit thou these hearts of thine, and our inmost being fill.
The light of the heart, to lighten the heart.
If thou take thy grace away nothing pure in us will stay; all our good is turned to ill.
We are capable of good things, and we need look no further than this poem. I think this is what the theologians mean by ‘grace perfecting nature’. God comes to work on something that is already on the way to being good.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew, on our dryness pour thy dew; wash the stains of guilt away.
I have found, these recent weeks, many things from a long time ago coming back to me. Names and faces, long lost, maybe now departed this life, where wrongs were left unmended, and now cannot be attended to. ‘Heal our wounds’ can be read as ‘cure the ills we have’, and also as ’heal the wounds we have caused’. It is these that come back, as we say, to haunt us.
Bend the stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill; guide the steps that go astray.
I have been watching a film about a man who lived his adult life entirely on a misunderstanding of what his children wanted from him. He only discovered the truth when they all deserted him in his old age.
Thou on us who evermore thee confess and thee adore, with thy sevenfold gifts descend.
Knowledge, understanding, wisdom, counsel, fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord. Too many to deal with all in one go. Apparently, they derive from the words of the prophet Isaiah (chapter 11). St Thomas Aquinas says the purpose of the Gifts is to enable us to notice and respond to those occasions when the Spirit is prompting us to act.
Give us comfort when we die, give us life with thee on high, give us joys that never end.
Although we recognise the Spirit as coming to us, from the ‘celestial height’, we can only use descriptions, images, metaphors from our human experience. We are assuming that there is some correspondence between us and the ‘on high’. And since we have no choice in the matter, I think this must be true. We will be held close. We will live. We will be happy.
One evening towards the end of 1969, while I was still a student, I heard a piano being played somewhere in the building where I was. At that time of day it was mostly empty, except for swotty types, so I wandered about for a few minutes trying to find where the sound was coming from, but it was not on the floor where I was working. A little later I bumped into a young woman I had recently met and asked her if she had heard the piano. She said ‘Actually, it was me playing.’ It was as if a great door swung open. My world had a new dimension. Until then, music for me was something that came out of the ‘wireless’ or the ‘gramophone’ (this was fifty years ago, remember), not something produced by the skill and love of real people. Of course, I knew well enough that there were such people as ‘musicians’, but I had never, until that moment, been face to face with someone who could magic these sounds into existence.
Paul McGowan
30/05/2020
The poet Dante, in roughly the same era, begins his great work, The Divine Comedy, with the words ‘Half way along the road of life, I found myself in a dark wood, and the way ahead was blocked’:
‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita’.
Where I have included personal reminiscences, it is mainly in the hope that others might add their own. Such comments as I have to make are what they are. This is only one take, for today. On another day it would be different. The Spirit is like that.
Holy Spirit, lord of light, from the clear celestial height, thy pure beaming radiance give.
So much that is in darkness. It is light that we ask for first. In all of this, we are describing God the Father and the Son, in terms of the permanent accompaniment of the one who stays through thick and thin.
Come, thou father of the poor, come with blessings which endure, come thou light of all that live.
So we are from the same stock, us and the Spirit. What lives wants to go on living, enduring. Anyone who lives shares this common basis.
Thou of all consolers best, thou the soul’s delightsome guest, dost refreshing peace bestow.
We are in sorrow, but we are able to make a space for the Spirit to join us. When I was a boy, there was an uncle whose visits never failed to lighten the atmosphere and lift the spirits. And similarly when we would go to visit him, which was quite a trek in those days, using several interconnecting buses. Now, whenever I hear Psalm 122, ‘I was glad when I heard them say...’, I always think of those journeys, because I knew we would have a good time when we got to our destination. It seems that the Spirit actually wants to spend time with us, wants what we can offer by way of welcome.
Thou alone art comfort sweet, pleasant coolness in the heat, solace in the midst of woe.
A few years ago, I organised an event for the Coventry Peace Festival using the poetry of the great Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, and the title – ‘Solace in the midst of woe’ - just jumped into my head from this verse.
The need for comfort, coolness and solace comes to us in all sorts of ways. To name but one, a small group of us has been working for seven years – seven years hard labour! – to persuade our local pension fund to divest from the arms trade. Every time we think we have come through into a sunny clearing we find ourselves back in the undergrowth again. Fortitude is the only remedy.
Light immortal, light divine, visit thou these hearts of thine, and our inmost being fill.
The light of the heart, to lighten the heart.
If thou take thy grace away nothing pure in us will stay; all our good is turned to ill.
We are capable of good things, and we need look no further than this poem. I think this is what the theologians mean by ‘grace perfecting nature’. God comes to work on something that is already on the way to being good.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew, on our dryness pour thy dew; wash the stains of guilt away.
I have found, these recent weeks, many things from a long time ago coming back to me. Names and faces, long lost, maybe now departed this life, where wrongs were left unmended, and now cannot be attended to. ‘Heal our wounds’ can be read as ‘cure the ills we have’, and also as ’heal the wounds we have caused’. It is these that come back, as we say, to haunt us.
Bend the stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill; guide the steps that go astray.
I have been watching a film about a man who lived his adult life entirely on a misunderstanding of what his children wanted from him. He only discovered the truth when they all deserted him in his old age.
Thou on us who evermore thee confess and thee adore, with thy sevenfold gifts descend.
Knowledge, understanding, wisdom, counsel, fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord. Too many to deal with all in one go. Apparently, they derive from the words of the prophet Isaiah (chapter 11). St Thomas Aquinas says the purpose of the Gifts is to enable us to notice and respond to those occasions when the Spirit is prompting us to act.
Give us comfort when we die, give us life with thee on high, give us joys that never end.
Although we recognise the Spirit as coming to us, from the ‘celestial height’, we can only use descriptions, images, metaphors from our human experience. We are assuming that there is some correspondence between us and the ‘on high’. And since we have no choice in the matter, I think this must be true. We will be held close. We will live. We will be happy.
One evening towards the end of 1969, while I was still a student, I heard a piano being played somewhere in the building where I was. At that time of day it was mostly empty, except for swotty types, so I wandered about for a few minutes trying to find where the sound was coming from, but it was not on the floor where I was working. A little later I bumped into a young woman I had recently met and asked her if she had heard the piano. She said ‘Actually, it was me playing.’ It was as if a great door swung open. My world had a new dimension. Until then, music for me was something that came out of the ‘wireless’ or the ‘gramophone’ (this was fifty years ago, remember), not something produced by the skill and love of real people. Of course, I knew well enough that there were such people as ‘musicians’, but I had never, until that moment, been face to face with someone who could magic these sounds into existence.
Paul McGowan
30/05/2020