Invocation
1. O magnum mysterium et
admirabile sacramentum.
O Joy!
O Wonder, and Delight!
O Sacred Mysterie!
My Soul a Spirit infinit!
An Image of the Deitie!
A pure Substantiall Light! (from My Spirit - Thomas Traherne)
Nowell!
Hodie Christus natus est:
Hodie Salvator apparuit:
Hodie in terra canunt Angeli,
laetantur Archangeli:
Moonless darkness stands
between.
Past, o Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem star may lead
me
To the sight of Him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art
holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert
lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Hodie exsultant justi, dicentes:
Gloria in excelsis Deo,
Alleluia!
2. But
not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars
has heard
How He administered this
terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord's
entrusted word.
Nor, in our
little day,
May His devices with the heavens
be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the
Milky Way,
Or His bestowals there be
manifest.
But, in the
eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare
together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what
guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre,
the Bear.
O be prepared, my Soul!
To read the inconceivable, to
scan
The million forms of God those
stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to
them a Man. (from Christ in the Universe - Alice Meynell)
O magnum mysterium.
3. All
things that turn to thee
have their kingdom, their power,
and their glory.
Like the kingdom of the
nightingale at twilight. (from
The Body of God - D H Lawrence)
For so
the whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about the
feet of God. (from Morte d'Arthur – Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
4. But
I, a golden woman like the corn goddess,
Watch
the dark fields, and know when spring begins
To the sound of the heart and
the planetary rhythm,
Fires in the heavens and in the
hearts of men,
Young people and young flowers
come out in the darkness. (from Invocation - Edith Sitwell)
Here is the
time gone by, and I have not stirred!
The key not turned in the lock,
The Guide at my elbow ignored,
The treasure before me disdained!
And tomorrow there will be one day less!
Quicken me,
quicken me, O God. (Anon.)
Be
ye lamps unto yourselves.
Hold to the truth within
yourselves
as to the only lamp. (The Buddha)
Be like a tree.
The tree gives shade even to him
who cuts off its boughs. (Sri Chaitanya)
I am the image of God. (Angelus Silesius)
Lord, make me an instrument of
Thy Peace. (St. Francis of Assisi)
5. Give
me the moon at my feet,
Put my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord!
O let my ankles be bathed in moonlight,
that I may go
sure and moon-shod, cool and bright-footed
towards my goal. (from The Body of God - D H Lawrence)
6. O
Love, return to the dying world, as the light
Of
morning, shining in all regions, latitudes
And households of high heaven
within the heart.
Now falls the night of the
world: - O Spirit moving upon the waters
Your
peace instil
In the animal heat and splendour
of the blood. (from Invocation - Edith Sitwell)
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace.
Dona nobis pacem
© Christopher
Brown 2000