Mount Calvary Church
Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter
Anglican Use
Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor
Lent III
March 4, 2018
8:00 AM Said Mass
10:00 AM Sung Mass
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The Great Litany in Procession
Hymns
Lord Jesus, think on me (SOUTHWELL)
Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN)
Anthems
Call to remembrance, Richard Farrant
Hide not Thy face, Richard Farrant
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The Great Litany
The Great Litany was the first service written in English. It was composed by Thomas Cranmer in 1544 from older litanies: the Sarum rite litany, a Latin litany composed by Martin Luther, and the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The word litany comes from the Latin litania, from the Greek litê, meaning “prayer” or “supplication.”
“That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up
those who fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet…”
This assumes that there is present to our imagination, what is often in our days not there at all—the sense that we are engaged in a great conflict, which is being carried on also in the invisible world, with the forces of evil, the devil and his angels. ‘Our wrestling is not [i.e. not only] against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ So writes S. Paul (Eph. 612). ‘Wherefore take up the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.’ The world into which our Lord came was a world profoundly impressed and depressed by the haunting sense of evil spirits, to escape from whose terrible influence men and women were eagerly seeking all the baser forms of religion—‘mysteries,’ charms, amulets, and magical formulas. Our Lord had no need to teach the reality of spirits good and bad. What He had to teach men was that there lay in Himself, and in faith in Him, a power well able to defeat the spirits of evil and render them helpless.
The same dread of evil spirits is still in many parts of the world a prominent, even the most prominent, motive in religion. There is always a great deal of superstition and mere fraud attached to this sort of lower religion, and our intellectual world has agreed to treat it with contempt. So did our Lord treat it with contempt, in one sense but not in another. He despised the diabolic world and trod it under-foot. But He certainly assumed the real existence of spirits good and bad, and would have His disciples believe it. (Charles Gore)
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Hymns
Lord Jesus, think on me (SOUTHWELL)
Lord Jesus, think on me is a translation by the Anglican clergyman Allen William Chatfield (1808-1896) of the Greek hymn, Μνώεο Χριστέ by Synesius of Cyrene (375-430). Synesius was the Bishop of Ptolomais, one of the ancient capitals of Cyrenaica that is today part of modern day Libya.
1. Lord Jesus, think on me
And purge away my sin;
From earth-born passions set me free
And make me pure within.2. Lord Jesus, think on me
With many a care opprest;
Let me Thy loving servant be
And taste Thy promised rest.3. Lord Jesus, think on me
Amid the battle’s strife;
In all my pain and misery
Be Thou my Health and Life.4. Lord Jesus, think on me
Nor let me go astray;
Through darkness and perplexity
Point Thou the heavenly way.5. Lord Jesus, think on me
When floods the tempest high;
When on doth rush the enemy,
O Savior, be Thou nigh!6. Lord Jesus, think on me
That, when the flood is past,
I may the eternal brightness see
And share Thy joy at last.7. Lord Jesus, think on me
That I may sing above
To Father, Spirit, and to Thee
The strains of praise and love.
Here is Lord Jesus, think on me with Magdala and at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Here it is as used in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde.
Synesius was descended from a wealthy and illustrious family which, according to the historian Edward Gibbons, could trace its descent back seventeen centuries to Spartan Kings. In his youth, he went to Alexandria and was educated under the celebrated woman Neo-Platonist, Hypatia. As an adult, he became wealthy and was known as a sportsman, a brilliant philosopher, a statesman, an eloquent orator, and a man of noble character.
Also, Synesius was a friend of Augustine of Hippo. When invasions by the Goths were threatening his country, he sought to persuade Emperor Arcadius about the imminent danger, but without success. After marrying a Christian in 403, he was converted to Christianity and a few years later was made bishop of Ptolemais by popular demand in 410. In spite of his dissent from some of the tenets of the church, his outstanding character alone made him acceptable. Around 410, Synesius published a series of ten hymns in which he set forth Christian doctrine. They show the evidences of Semitic influence on classic Greek poetry. “Lord Jesus, Think On Me” is the last of the ten. After having outlived his beloved wife and lost all his sons to a plague, he died around A. D. 430 in Ptolemais, although some authorities give the date as early as 414.
The tune SOUTHWELL was composed by Herbert Stephen Irons (1834 -1905). He became a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under T. E. Jones. After studying music under Stephen Elvey at Oxford, he was appointed organist at St. Columba’s College, a large public school at Rathfarnham, near Dublin, Ireland. He stayed there only a few months before being offered the position of organist at Southwell Minister. From Southwell, he went to Chester as assistant organist to Frederic Gunton. Three years later, he accepted an appointment at St. Andrew’s Church, Nottingham, where he remained until his death.
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Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN)
Claudia Frances Ibotson Hernaman wrote Lord, who throughout these forty days. Forty is a symbolic number in Scripture. It rained for forty days and nights when the earth was overtaken by floodwaters, and Noah waited another forty days before opening the window of the Ark. Israel wandered in the desert for forty years. Jesus was seen on earth following the resurrection for forty days. In this case, Christ’s forty days in the wilderness provides the primary paradigm for the forty days of Lent.
Claudia Hernaman (1838-1898) was born in Surrey, England, and died in Brussels, Belgium. She was the daughter of an Anglican minister, and she married a minister who also served as a school inspector. Like so many other women hymn writers of the nineteenth century, she was devoted to the religious education of children. Toward this end, she wrote 150 hymns in several collections, some original and some translated from Latin.
“Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days” appeared first in her Child’s Book of Praise; A Manual for Devotion in Simple Verse (1873). It was not included in hymnals, however, until the mid-twentieth century, when it appeared in the Irish Church Hymnal (1960) and Hymns for Church and School (1964). By the 1970s, “Lord, who throughout these forty days” was a standard hymn in most hymnals in the United States. It is based on the account of the temptation of Jesus found in three Gospels — Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13.
As is the case with many hymns, Christ’s life becomes a model for how his followers should confront temptation. The first two lines of the stanzas focus on a response of Christ when he faced temptation; the last two lines encourage Christians to model their behavior on Christ’s example. This is a familiar pattern for children’s hymns from the days of Isaac Watts. It obviously strikes a chord with adult believers as well.
The classic themes of the Lenten season are presented in the stanzas of this hymn:
Fasting and prayer (stanza one);
Struggle with Satan and sin (stanza two);
Dying to self, meditation on scripture (stanza three);
Penitence (stanza four);
Looking toward the joy of Easter (stanza five).
Lord, who throughout these forty days,
For us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with thee to mourn our sins,
And close by thee to stay.As thou with Satan didst contend,
And didst the victory win,
O give us strength in thee to fight,
In thee to conquer sin.As thou didst hunger bear and thirst,
So teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self, and chiefly live
By thy most holy word.And through these days of penitence,
And through thy Passion-tide,
Yea, evermore, in life and death,
Jesus! with us abide.Abide with us, that so, this life
Of suffering overpast,
An Easter of unending joy
We may attain at last!
Claudia Frances Ibotson Hernaman (1838-1898) was the daughter of the Rev. William Haywood Ibotson, was perpetual curate of Addlestone. She married the Rev. J.W.M. Hernaman, a school inspector. She was the author of The Child’s Book of Praise: A Manual of Devotion in Simple Verse (1873), and co-editor (with Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell and Walter Plimpton) of the Anglo-Catholic Altar Hymnal: A Book of Song for Use at the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist (words-only edition 1884, with music 1885). She also published The Crown of Life: Verses for Holy Seasons (1886) and wrote The Conversion and Martyrdom of St Alban: a Sacred Drama (1891). She edited an anthology, Lyra Consolationis. From the poets of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1890).
This seems to be the best version availability on You Tube. Here is another attempt
ST. FLAVIAN first appears in John Day’s Psalter from 1562. It was adapted and re-harmonized for an 1853 book of organ pieces by the well-known organist Richard Redhead. Oddly enough, St. Flavian is nowhere commemorated in the Anglican calendars.
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Anthems
Call to remembrance, Richard Farrant
Call to remembrance, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindness, which hath been ever of old. O remember not the sins and offences of my youth, but according to thy mercy, think thou on me, O Lord, for thy goodness.
Here is the Hart House choir.
Hide not Thy face, Richard Farrant
Hide not thou thy face from us, O Lord, and cast not off thy servants in thy displeasure; for we confess our sins unto thee, and hde not our unrighteousness. For thy mercy’s sake, deliver us from all our sins.
Here is Westminster Abbey.
Richard Farrant (1525-1580).
In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2), Rosencrantz says to Hamlet: ‘There is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapp’d for’t. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose quills and dare scarce come thither.’ The ‘little eyases’ to which Shakespeare (1564–1616) alludes are in all probability the choirboys of St Paul’s, the Chapel Royal and St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Richard Farrant (?1525–1580) leased a building in 1564 of ‘six upper chambers, loftes, lodgynges or Romes lyinge together within the precinct of the late dissolved house or priory of the Black ffryers’. Here he ‘rehearsed’ the boys in public, effectively staging musical and theatrical events. Farrant became a wealthy man through this venture and the boys were much in demand at the court of Elizabeth I. He was one of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal in the 1550s and sang there during the reign of Mary Tudor, taking up the post of Master of the Choristers at St George’s Chapel in 1564. In 1569 he became Master of the Choristers of the Chapel Royal. Each winter from 1567 he presented them to the Queen and produced a play.
Farrant exercised an important influence on church music. His association with the stage (using his choristers) must have led him to compose anthems in a new idiom—now known as the ‘verse’ style. He may well have been the first to introduce soloists to sing the verses. Few of his compositions survive, and the anthem Call to remembrance—although written in quite the opposite of the verse style—shows considerable sensitivity in the setting of the words. This, too, betrays his association with the stage. Consider, for example, the restrained trumpet calls of the opening of this anthem, and the changes of style at ‘thy tender mercies’, ‘which hath been ever of old’, ‘O remember not the sins’ and ‘but according to thy mercy’. These all reveal the hand of a skilful composer and musician.
The fine short anthems Call to remembrance and Hide not thou thy face help to give Farrant a place in the musical history of the period out of proportion to his small output. Lord, for thy tender mercies’sake, sometimes ascribed to Farrant is more likely by Tye, or the elder John Hilton (d. 1608).