Don’t you love singing Advent and Christmas hymns at this time of year? There are so many rich pieces of poetry and music that we only sing during this season, we typically need to make a spreadsheet (beginning in November) to make sure that we don’t miss any! We try to group the seasonal hymns around a central theme from week to week: for example, the past two Sundays have included hymns celebrating Jesus as a purifying priest and the coming King. This morning, the hymns will focus on the annunciation of Jesus’ birth by angels. The three verses of Charles Wesley’s magnificent Hark! The Herald Angels Sing form the backbone of the service, occurring several times throughout the morning. Martin Luther’s From Heaven On High is drawn directly from this morning’s sermon text from Luke 2, in which the angels bring the good news of Jesus’ birth to shepherds out in the fields surrounding Bethlehem. This story is echoed by Nathan George’s 2009 hymn For What Did Christ The Babe Appear, which mentions angelic choirs singing “glory unto God on high.” Even the Clovercroft Gloria, which we sing throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons here at Parish, is taken from this very same passage: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.” The service concludes with the beloved French carol Angels We Have Heard On High, in which we join the angels in an ecstatic melisma of “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”
—Henry C. Haffner
