Name:Lue-Yee Country:United States State:California Metro:Berkeley Birthday:12/2/1988 Gender:Male
Interests:YHWH, antiquity, arete, archaeology, calligraphy, certamen, conlanging, crypticness, curry, God, language, languages (esp. ones with lots of cool properties and structures), linguistics, Lord of the Rings, mythology, perfectionism, philosophy, poetry, precision, random trivia, reading, singing, sleeping, thinking, traveling, writing
O great King, holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, sweet beyond compare, abide with us forever. Day by day we lift up thine everlasting Name and hymn thy glorious death and resurrection. Bring us in perseverance to follow thee to the shadow of death with thy flesh and blood in us, that in the end we too may come to the fullness of thy Kingdom in earth as it is in heaven. Et lux aeterna luceat eis.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! One last week to thank God before we begin lamenting to God and longing for him to come save us in preparation for the joy of Christmas. This week is alleluia for God’s tender mercies; next week starts lots of Kyrie eleison.
Ahead of Christ’s nativity feast, I give you ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ (also known as the Great Doxology, with a longer Greek version):
The words in English:
Glory be to God on high
And on earth peace, goodwill towards men,
We praise thee, we bless thee,
we worship thee, we glorify thee,
we give thanks to thee, for thy great glory
O Lord God, heavenly King,
God the Father Almighty.
O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ;
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father,
have mercy upon us.
For thou only art holy;
thou only art the Lord;
thou only, O Christ,
art most high
in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.
In this last week of the Church year, as also every week, with these words we give thanks to God for his gracious favour toward us and trust in his past, present and future provision.
Ok, I had to share something I thought was funny today. So I registered for the Test de Connaissance du Français (a French placement test) today, and there was a ‘select your mother tongue’ dropdown. Here were some of the choices:
français
français ancien (842–ca. 1400)
français moyen (1400–1600)
anglais
anglais moyen (1100–1500)
anglo-saxon (ca. 1100–1100)
latin
Yessir, my mother tongue is Middle French, since I grew up as a Huguenot during the Reformation.
I conclude that I’m trusted only when people agree or when they think they have no idea about the matter. Perhaps it’s that I don’t merit faith when other people believe they do know something. This is exactly why I lack the ability to be a monarch rather than the monarch’s adviser who gives logical proofs of the things he says.
Why is it that some people are trusted and some not? Why am I unable to inspire confidence? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because the world is too big for me. I would set off to conquer it were it not so vast. Every stone, every wave on the shore, every wind blowing through the trees under the distant stars tells me I cannot master the world.
Yet the husbands are called to lead, to rule, to command respect by their presence, indeed to be like kings of their houses? What a mandate we got at creation. Pie Jesu Christe, my heart is weak. Thou must lead me.
The academic enterprise, it seems to me, is antithetical to the ruling enterprise. In the one, one gives up formal ruling power in order to advise; in the other, one takes up formal ruling power. The one, relying on logos to convince, uses persuasive power alone; the other rules by ethos and otherwise by might. And I, I find the world – I lay my eyes upon it – and find it stern, proud, intractable, and it will not follow. I cannot rely on superior knowledge, yet it is the height of hubris to say, ‘Trust me, for I am that I am.’
Rather than conquering by force of arms, Christ undermines powers. What then of ruling? Can I just ask of anyone that she follow? I’m so deficient; I have Christ. Yet daily I see nothing but ultimate brokenness behind the facades of history, and I cannot countenance the world. I am nowhere successful, or success is hollow. And the one who follows me then follows to the house of mourning.
I am death to those who touch me. To become life, I must know Christ: all else is a shallow gimmick. But such answers, how hard to find!
The key to this kind of ruling must be love. Perhaps there are people you so love that when you disagree you seriously hope to be proven wrong, for their sake. Perhaps this kind of love alone will ever prevail upon anyone to marry me.
For the first time, my eyes watered when I watched this video of the Introit and the Kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor (by the way, the melody of the Kyrie comes from Händel [Source]). Perhaps a bit of it was in reaction to seeing dry branches. O Lord, consume them not in a fire of destruction. Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance, for thou knowest their names.
Exaudi, exaudi, exaudi orationem meam. My God, turn thine ear unto thy servant even when I haven’t the emotions all there. Let the requiem be my prayer for words that I have not. Hear, O Israel, YHWH your God, YHWH is one, and the One Only-Begotten Son is thy Saviour.
Kyrie eleison in Greek means ‘Lord, have mercy’, if this isn’t the umpteenth time you’ve seen me use these words. The Psalmist says,
Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness:
thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress;
have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.
And again,
O YHWH, rebuke me not in thine anger,
neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Have mercy upon me, O YHWH; for I am weak:
O YHWH, heal me; for my bones are vexed.
My soul is also sore vexed:
but thou, O YHWH, how long?
Return, O YHWH, deliver my soul:
oh save me for thy mercies’ sake.
This is why we say these words as the Church: in this present evil age, our help is in the Name of YHWH, who made heaven and earth, who rules all by his Wisdom and providentially directs events by his Spirit, who will raise us up at the last day. The Church sings to the Lord from the depths of her heart and the midst of the world’s pain:
This will become especially important as Christmas gets closer and we long for Christ to come fix what’s been broken too long. Our cry for the Lord’s mercy is mixed with that of the martyrs. ‘So help us God.’
Nerd Notes (sort of):
On the one hand, these words should be the words of the people, never to be taken away from them. On the other hand, complex polyphonic settings of them are often good to hear in worship in order that the prayer of the people may be given a beautiful form. One way I can think of is for the people to chant the words as plainchant and for a small choir to sing the polyphonic setting. If there are three distinct polyphonic sections of a Kyrie, the people can chant each of their three parts twice before the choir expresses the prayer of the whole people.
True
