MetaCatholic

Our parish has recently signed up to the extremely useful Song Select service. This provides, along with the CCLI copyright permissions agreement, access to a massive database of hymn and worship song lyrics for downloading, and either printing or projection. It’s well worth any church considering it, so don’t get the rest of this post wrong: I’m not dissing the service or the idea.

BUT

Bizarrely the songs are delivered without any normal punctuation. In my view this works against comprehension, and in some songs renders them little more than disconnected strings of phrases. I am unsure how easy it is to parse, for example, this (exactly as is):

One day every tongue
Will confess You are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains
For those who gladly choose You now

It’s somewhat disturbing that this syntactically challenged and logically unrelated string of phrases hits the number four spot in their current top hundred.

Another feature you may have noticed is the capitalisation in the above selection. Some of this is, of course, a mixture of a house style and personal taste. I would have thought, however, that the whole trend in English is, and has been for a long time, away from capitalisation of nouns and pronouns. Capitalising the initial letter of each line further confuses the sense already lost through lack of punctuation. Where do sentences start and finish? Using capitals for “God” words (beyond proper nouns and titular phrases) also has its problems, not the least of which is inconsistency. This inconsistency is inevitable, and affects the songs of this catalogue as much as any other. However, compared to the problems of sense, it is a minor matter of style.

One feature of the scheme I admire is that (although rooted in an evangelical initiative, and predominantly used by more evangelical and Protestant churches) it does not censor any of the words in its catalogue according to theological taste. That means that anyone who wishes to can see what others actually sing, provided the publisher is signed up to the licensing scheme.

I confess, in that light, to being deeply disappointed by what the most popular songs are. At number one we have Stuart Townend’s “In Christ alone.” Some of it is excellent, and the music is powerful, but it is, in my view, totally ruined by the lyrics:

Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied

That is exactly the distortion of penal substitution that Steve Chalke rightly called “cosmic child abuse“. (Is God really saying, “No, I need more pain, more pain. I’m still really angry. More pain!”?) No song with those words should ever be sung by anyone with a half a brain, or the remotest desire to be biblical. It is a travesty of atonement theory, yet it is currently the most popular song, at least in churches that have stopped using hymnbooks.

Nearly as bad is another of Townend’s songs (which has the same musical power): “How deep the Father’s love” which comes in at number three.

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished

No, I say, and a thousand times “no”! This is exactly why I think the doctrine of impassibility matters. My sin doesn’t have that kind of power. It is God’s free choice, Christ’s free will, the gift of love which takes him to the cross and holds him there. (Sin is not in any case a finite amount of a thing or power to be exhausted.) Claiming what this hymn does is simply wrong, and denies the freedom of God. It is a shame that such powerful music (and some quite good lyrics elsewhere – Townend has real talent let down by bad teaching) should be vitiated by such frightful rubbish.

Yet, clearly, for most people, it does not ruin the songs that they are invited to sing such appalling words. They are, and this needs repeating, the first and third most popular songs among churches using this service. That suggests that they are currently the most popular songs among UK evangelicals. Now perhaps evangelicals (and others) do embrace such a travesty of the atonement, as their opponents frequently say. I rather doubt it, although these songs will certainly lead them in that direction if they remain popular. But what I think is happening is that people are having a good sing to powerful and emotive music. Just as they happily sing random phrases strung together without punctuation or logical coherence, so they will sing heretical ones.

Paul said “I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.” (1 Corinthians 14:15). The second phrase of that sentence has now, it seems, been excised from many modern Bibles.

John Hobbins posts eirenically but clearly on the new Roman Catholic collect concerning the Jewish people for use on Good Friday. Slightly earlier in the week Ruth Gledhill reported it in the Times, and quite fairly given her past evidence of Zionist sympathies and friendships, though she did perhaps give undue weight to her friend Irene Lancaster who also blogged it, typically seeing it as yet more evidence of anti-Semitism.

It seems to me that this is and will remain a point where Christians and Jews must essentially disagree. It is a quite essential part of Christian belief to hope that all people of every race will acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, Saviour and Lord. From a strictly theological perspective, it would be anti-semitic to exclude the Jewish people from that universal hope. Practically and conceptually many of the ways Christians have sought to express that hope has indeed been anti-semitic, but it need not be so, and John points some of that out.

The Roman Catholic Church tends to be fairly clear, even where others wish it wasn’t. The Church of England’s collect should probably quoted for the sake of comparison. It still has the horizon of a universal hope for Jews as well as Gentiles, is deeply biblical, but somehow manages (in typical Anglican style) to make the whole thing sound far more open and ambiguous.

Let us pray for God’s ancient people, the Jews,
the first to hear his word –
for greater understanding between Christian and Jew
for the removal of our blindness and bitterness of heart
that God will grant us grace to be faithful to his covenant
and to grow in the love of his name.

Silence

Lord, hear us.
Lord, graciously hear us.

Lord God of Abraham,
bless the children of your covenant, both Jew and Christian;
take from us all blindness and bitterness of heart,
and hasten the coming of your kingdom,
when the Gentiles shall be gathered in,
all Israel shall be saved,
and we shall dwell together in mutual love and peace
under the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

From the Jordan to the desert,
from the crowd to barren place,
Spirit-driven, devil-tempted,
Lord, you sought the Father’s grace:
show us now your pow’r, in weakness,
presence in the empty space.

Out of Egypt with God’s people,
freedom brings its testing stress:
what is right and what is truthful,
how the name of God confess?
Jesus, be our journey’s leader,
guide us through the wilderness.

Lack of food for empty stomach,
offered only cold hard stone;
scripture used to tempt and strengthen;
easy route to grasp the throne:
Bread of life, and Word incarnate
help us worship God alone.

In the search for loving justice,
in the quest for truth and right,
Jesus walk beside, before us,
hold your Cross of love in sight;
keep us in your Father’s presence,
guide us to your risen light.

A few days ago Nick Norelli posted about the impossibility of overrating Jesus.

I don’t think it possible to rate Jesus high enough.  There is no devotion we can give him, no prayer that we can pray to him, no song that we can sing to him, and no life that we can live in obedience to him, that he does not deserve.

In all sorts of ways I agree with him, but I want to suggest there are at least two ways in which people can in a sense overrate Jesus, one academic, one popular.

The academic way has generally fallen out of fashion, but hints of it still creep in here and there. This is the desire to identify the uniqueness of one or other bit of Jesus’ teaching. It is both what lead to an over-simple and mistaken use of the criterion of double dissimilarity in Jesus research, and seems at times to be guided by a form of anti-Judaism, separating Jesus from his people and his roots, and a form of anti-Catholicism, separating Jesus from his Church. I can’t help feeling that this outdated approach still informs the scholars associated with the Jesus seminar, and the Jesus Project (as proposed and scorned here and elsewhere last year). The desire to diesembody Jesus from his context and history seems to me to be one of essentially overrating and misconceiving his uniqueness.

The popular way is to so focus on Jesus whether as good teacher, wise guide, even God-in-flesh, that he is abstracted both from the Trinity and the Church. The popular “Jesus, yes; Church no” type of movement is one form (and however understandable, is simply wrong). More likely to mislead, however, are those forms of devotion to Jesus, both secular (wise guide / good moral teacher) and devotional, that so exclusively focus on Jesus that they give no space to Father or Holy Spirit. I sometimes fear this is reflected in some contemporary choruses. There is nothing wrong with a focus on Jesus in particular devotions, let me hasten to say. I would happily introduce Nick to, say, the Litany of the Holy Name. But Jesus also directs our attention to the Father. To do Jesus without the Trinity is to overrate and misconceive him.

The popularity of a limited range of carols has, even in churches where traditional hymns are appreciated, pushed out some of the older hymnody. Some such forgotten hymns are often rather richer in theology than those that have displaced them. Here’s one I have always rather liked, and often use in personal prayer.

A great and mighty wonder,
a full and holy cure!
The virgin bears the infant
with virgin-honour pure:

   Repeat the hymn again!
   “To God on high be glory,
   and peace on earth shall reign.”

The word becomes incarnate,
and yet remains on high!
And cherubim sing anthems
to shepherds from the sky.

While thus they sing your monarch,
those bright angelic bands,
rejoice, you vales and mountains,
you oceans clap your hands.

Since all he comes to ransom,
by all be he adored,
the infant born in Bethl’em,
the Saviour and the Lord.

It’s by St Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 8th century. There is a final verse, not usually published in Anglican hymnals, which reflects disputes he was engaged in about the use of true images versus idols (and which led up to the iconoclast controversies).

And idol forms shall perish,
and error shall decay,
And Christ shall wield His sceptre,
our Lord and God for aye.

This hymn is usually sung to the tune “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.”

Michael Halcomb launches a puritanical attack on several Christmas carols. (A little premature in my view – it’s only the second day of Advent!) He promises more to come. I quote with several large omissions indicated by ellipses:

One thing that really irks me is when Christmas tradition replaces Scriptural truth and teachings … as believers, we “must” have our facts and our story straight. We must be honest and knowledgeable about our faith and its narrative … I see no point in teaching the story incorrectly through sermon or song!

His illustrative carols are We Three Kings, Silent Night, and The First Nowell. He is, of course absolutely right that the details of the story as portrayed in these carols does not concur with the (mainly Matthean) nativity story he has in mind. I say “mainly Matthean” because at one point, critiquing Silent Night he says:

Jesus’ parents can’t find a place to stay, angels are coming to Joseph in dreams, angels are singing aloud before shepherds

Noticeably this conflates Matthew (angels coming to Joseph in dreams) with Luke (the other details) and is, by harmonising incompatible accounts, equally incorrect in its construction of the story (stories). And at one level, I say “so what?” The traditions of Christmas as told in harmonising narratives, portrayed in the crib, and sung about in carols act as a kind of midrash on the text, and are part of the interpretative tradition by which we read them.

I’m quite happy to deliberately bring the relative restraint of the different texts into counterplay with the traditions, and equally happy to make points based on the traditions. In many respects, the contrast between one or other biblical narrative and any particular tradition can be a useful preaching point. But the varied stories and moods of the carols all help different responses of wonder and praise, and we would be the poorer without them.

Anyway, if midrashic stories were good enough for Matthew, and Luke was quite happy to replace Matthew’s story with his own scripturally and theologically thematic narrative, why shouldn’t carols also continue a tradition of interpretation begun in scripture?

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

I did wonder whether to simply pass over the twenty-fourth article, not only because it is so brief, but because the principle it enshrines is, at least in the Western Church, more-or-less universally accepted, that worship should be in one’s own language. As you will have gathered, I resisted this temptation not only in favour of thoroughness in this series, but because there are some things worth reflecting on in the article.

XXIV. Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth
It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

There is a certain irony that just as this Reformation principle was winning acceptance in the Roman Catholic Church following Vatican II, the charismatic movement in all the mainstream churches was beginning to promote the use of tongues not “understanded of the people” within the worshipping life of the Church.

First, of course, the scriptural interpretation of “tongues” in Paul as the non-rational phenomenon of glossolalia, and not as other languages, means that prayer in other languages is not quite so “plainly repugnant to the Word of God”. The Word of God, it seems, was talking about something else, even if it is a relatively straightforward hermeneutical move to get from the Scriptures to the Reformation position.

The encouragement of a means of prayer and praise which relies not on reasoned speech and understanding, but affective (and almost phatic) communication, was at the root of initial (and long-standing) evangelical opposition to the charismatic phenomenon. Much of it the emotional and a-rational praise and prayer conveyed by tongues could also be paralleled by the practice of prayer at Taizé, whose popularity was growing in the same period. The use of Latin, especially, but many other languages in repetitive chants (also not dissimilar from some uses of choruses) had a similar purpose in focusing the heart while calming the mind.

Nor can these phenomena be divorced entirely from the wider cultural shift in the West which moves away from a simple emphasis on reason and the life of the mind, to embrace attitudes that give greater attention to the body and the feelings, and no longer accords reason its dominance in either church or culture. Understanding is often underplayed, while affective participation is played up. It is, perhaps, ironic that it is amongst those who would most often stress their Reformation inheritance that the charismatic movement has become most influential. Nor can one neglect the popularity of certain á-la-carte selections from the earlier tradition, whether of incense of Gregorian chant, amongst the most contemporary forms of “alternative” worship.

I generally want to welcome this valuing of the affective and non-rational aspect of worship as an important recalling of the relational nature of our faith, and its treating us as whole persons, not disembodied minds. Though I note we are confused about it: a great many churches which use Taizé chants in Latin seem baffled by singing in tongues, and vice versa. Broad and Catholic Anglicans appear to have arthritic shoulders and can never left up holy hands in praise, while Evangelicals have arthritic legs, and can never bow the knee.

But this rather odd confusion should not make us ignore the danger of devaluing understanding. It is right and good to stress the bodily and the affective as part of the worship of the whole person, but the whole person must continue to include the mind, the reason, the understanding, that in the end lies behind this article. Despite the long hegemony of Latin (or Tudor English), we must not forget that the initial use of Latin (or Tudor English) was precisely so that people could worship and hear in their own language, with understanding.

One of the most distinctive points about the early Christian movement was their easy abandonment of the reading of Scripture in Hebrew (which appears to have been shared with other Diaspora Jews). There is no one holy language in the Church, (and this remains a significant difference between Christianity on the one hand, and Islam and Judaism on the other) but just as God is God of all peoples so he is God to be praised in all languages, and God who speaks to us in our own tongue.

While this point is not, in itself, simply about understanding, it certainly includes the love of God with the mind. We should not forget, even if we exegete the text differently, that there is  long Christian tradition of it being our reason which makes us to be in the image of God. Understanding, and the exercise of the rational faculty, properly belongs at the heart of our worship, reasonable human beings relating to the one whose reason became flesh for our sake.

I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also. (1 Corinthians 14:15 NRSV)

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

In the first of these two posts on Article 22 I considered the practice of praying for those who have died. In this second post on the article, I move on to the question of invoking the prayers of the saints. Both practices seem to stand condemned in the article, which I suggested is particularly reacting (I would say over-reacting) to an over-mechanized and over-systematized economy of prayer and the dead.

XXII. Of Purgatory
The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.

In the first post I sketched some possible biblical roots for the practice of praying for the dead. It is less straightforward to find any biblical root for the invocation of the saints. But it is worth considering in this context the portrayal of heaven in the visions of St John the Divine.

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (Revelation 4:9-11 NRSV)

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” (Revelation 6:9-10  NRSV)

In the first of these passages the most likely explanation of the “twenty-four elders” is the patriarchs of the twelve tribes combined with the apostles: together they symbolize the people of God, engaged in the worship all created things offer to their Creator. In the second passage, the martyrs are represented praying for the coming of God’s final judgement. Taken together, the people of God engage in praise and prayer in heaven. The question to be addressed is how the people of God on earth relate to these heavenly activities.

There are two particular Protestant objections (which are often treated as appropriate cautions by many thinking Catholics) to the invocation of the saints. The first concerns their implicit role as mediators, which they are not, nor have they officially ever been considered as such. This fault is due to an inadequate appreciation of the immanent loving presence of the transcendent God, uniquely revealed in Christ. In this case. it is not that a false understanding of the saints gave rise to a distorted view of God, but that a distorted view of God – particularly the popular image of Christ Pantokrator – created space for a wrong understanding of the saints.

The second objection is to the particular language of devotion that seems to put the saints – particularly the Blessed Virgin – in God’s place. All technical distinctions between latreia (worship) given to God alone, and doulia (veneration) given to saints, tend to vanish in the extravagant affection of devotional practice. A good example, at least to my ears, is the Salve Regina: vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra (our life, our sweetness and our hope) are phrases that properly belong to the persons of the Trinity, not to our Lady. Devotion to the saints is an example of the problems that can be created when the lex orandi (rule of prayer) is allowed to run free, and not corrected by the lex credendi.(rule of faith).

We need to be clear, then, that there were and are real problems associated with the practice of invocation of the saints. For some these are so dominant that the question remains firmly closed, but I am not among them. The Protestant chasm between the living and the dead seems to me to do violence to any conception of the Church as the Body of Christ and, indeed to evacuate the resurrection of some of its potential to reframe the present. How can you have fellowship with those with whom you can never talk? If the dead are made alive in Christ, then they need to be treated as living. While it is possible for our understanding of the saints to slip into derogation of the uniqueness of Christ that is the keystone of biblical faith, it is equally in order to give the biblical doctrines of the Church and the resurrection their due prominence that we must develop our understanding of the communion of saints.

As the quoted imagery of Revelation suggests, there is no real ecumenical problem in conceiving of the heavenly assembly as one engaged in praise and prayer. The issue is how the church on earth relates to it. One way some have suggested through the maze is the practice of comprecation. this may be as simple as an acknowledgement that we are bound together. It may also ask God to grant us a share in the prayers of the saints, as one of the collects for concluding the intercessions does in Common Worship:

Almighty God,
by your Holy Spirit you have made us one
with your saints in heaven and on earth:
grant that in our earthly pilgrimage
we may ever be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer,
and know ourselves surrounded by their witness
to your power and mercy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is presented  as a unitive text that acknowledges this fellowship as a living reality, while avoiding any direct address to them. It probably represents a position that is as far as the whole breadth (or maybe most of it) of Anglicanism can agree to go together. The Church of England combines those who splutter at a mention of Mary (seemingly not wanting to be included in the generations that will call her blessed) and those who will happily sing Ye who own the faith of Jesus (”Let us weave our supplications, / she with us and we with her” — which has intriguingly been in most mainstream Anglican hymnals published for over a century). Finding unitive ways of expressing this breadth in public liturgy is important, and perhaps some limited comprecation offers such a way forward.

However, there are those of us who are quite happy to go further, and see nothing wrong in asking the saints for their prayers, just as we ask our friends and fellow-worshippers for their prayers. In one sense it is quite unnecessary and superfluous, except that God seems to wish his children to pray for one another, for themselves and for all his creation, even if he doesn’t strictly need them so to do.. It’s just something that as Christians we do for and with one another. One of the opening penitential prayers of the Roman Mass captures this well:

I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,
all the angels and saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord, our God.

There is no distinction between the prayers of the Church in heaven and the Church on earth here, both are asked for as part of the same action, acknowledging our common fellowship, in one Body of Christ; those who still anticipate the fullness of the resurrection share with those who have entered into it. And, in the end, what we are now is already a participation in what we shall be.

Yet she on earth hath union
with God the three in one,
and mystic sweet communion
with those whose rest is won

Once or twice lately I’ve endured acts of worship where everything was projected on screen – often with bad typography and clashing visuals. But the main thing that made these experiences bad, in my view, was a complete sense of disempowerment. This was not “our” worship: it was simply us responding like Pavlov’s dogs to whatever the projector flashed up in front of us, with no sense of direction, structure or familiarity to enable ownership of the liturgy.

Something can and should be done about this, and a very simple way of giving people some sense of where they are and where things are going is this:

A line across the top of the slide (and every slide) setting out the main structure of the liturgy, with the current section highlighted, helps people locate themselves, and so participate not just in the moment but in the movement.

Having said that, this is still not my preference for something that follows a regular and pattern. People should, I think, be encouraged to learn and own common and frequently used texts, and inhabit the structure, so that worship flows freely, and can handle interruptions, or even common extemporarily offered prayer and praise. Visitors, and those learning their way around, can have simple cards or booklets, but these should be treated more as a pair of stabilizing wheels on a child’s bicycle, a learning device to enable participation. (In fact, everyone should have them, so visitors and learners don’t feel marked out, but people should not be encouraged to depend on them, but use them as learning aids / comfort blankets.)

The projector should be used primarily:

• For people’s texts, when the occasion is not a regular liturgy
• For people’s texts, when they are supplemental to the normal repertoire
• For musical texts, when one wants to encourage freedom of bodily expression
• For visuals, when wants to enhance what is going on
• For specific uses such as visual aids to prayer, or meditations in pictures

But, in my experience, and in my prejudice, constant use of the projector for everything is simply a technological return to an old-fashioned one-man band, where everyone does what the leader tells them. Am I just being grumpy?

One of the deficiencies of the Church of England’s Common Worship material (at least compared to some other denominations liturgical provision) is a lack of prefaces for Ordinary Time. The preface (as you might expect) is a variable introductory section of the prayer, between the Sursum Corda (Opening dialogue) and the Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy).

Its function is essentially thanksgiving and praise, which may be fairly general (especially in Ordinary Time) around themes of creation and redemption, or may focus more specifically on particular aspects of God’s work (especially on Festivals and Holy Days). Ideally, their different wording helps people think through the great truths of our faith as we celebrate the Eucharist.

I post here four such prefaces, which are a mix of original writing, and redactions of many other such pieces of work I have read or heard over the years. The nature of many of the stock phrases and biblical allusions, together with a continuous process of liturgical adaptation means that I cannot now recollect or trace where some of them originated. I hope I’m not infringing anyone else’s work, but In so far as it lies with me, I make these freely available.

Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks and praise
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Out of love for sinful humanity,
he humbled himself to be born of the Blessed Virgin.
Making his home for a short time among us,
he showed us the way of wisdom.
By his suffering upon the cross,
he set us free from the power of sin
and by rising to new life,
he opened for us the way to our eternal home.
And so, with the all the choirs of angels
we proclaim your glory,
and join in their unending hymn of praise:

It is indeed right, our duty and our joy,
at all times and in all places,
to give you thanks and praise,
our holy and everlasting God.
In loving tenderness you created
men and women in your likeness and image,
yet we marred your image and lost your likeness.
Still you cared for us,
taught us through the prophets,
and when the time was ripe,
sent your Son, born of a woman,
to restore in us the image of your glory.
His obedience in human flesh restored the friendship
that rebellious humankind had spurned.
Therefore we can join our voices
with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven,
to proclaim your great and glorious name,
for ever praising you and singing:

Father in heaven,
it is indeed right to give you thanks and praise,
for you alone are God, source of life and goodness.
In mercy and love you have created all things,
and in grace you have restored them
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and born of the Virgin Mary,
he became our brother in flesh,
and like us in all things but sin.
To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation,
to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.
He accomplished your work by giving himself up to death,
and being raised from the dead,
exalted humanity to the joy of your eternal kingdom.
And that we might live no longer for ourselves,
he poured out your Holy Spirit,
that all things might be made new by your grace.
And so we lift our voices to join with countless angels,
for ever praising you and singing:

It is indeed right, our duty and our joy,
to give you thanks and praise most gracious God,
creator of heaven and earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who on this first day of the week
trampled down death and opened the gate of the grave.
By his most blessed resurrection
he has restored to us the gift of everlasting life.
From the darkness of death,
he has made the radiance of your love to shine on all creation.
Though you dwell in inaccessible light, hidden from our eyes,
yet by the gift of the Spirit,
we may know you in love and call you “Father.”
Though now we see as in a mirror dimly,
we join our voices to that countless throng of angels
who behold your presence and offer you unceasing praise, singing: