“Awake, Awake and Greet the New Morn”

In your mind’s ear, recall the first two notes of “Amazing Grace”—just the first two. Then repeat them.

Those two-notes-twice are how the tune of this wonderful hymn begins. Now hear, in your mind’s ear, those two-notes-twice with some of the words that begin the hymn’s stanzas:

Awake, awake To us, to all Rejoice, rejoice

Music is always echoing other music, as scripture is always echoing other scripture. In the Advent 3 scriptures, echoes sound between past, present, and future. Mary seems to be recalling what God has already done, and Isaiah is re-calling the future of what God will do. There is some reminder in these that the Christ birth we anticipate is a mighty act sounding with the memory and expectation of God’s other acts.

Love be our song.

There is a cheerful, irresistible surge to the music of this hymn, and one of the joyous images is Jesus’s own song:

Emmanuel comes a-singing … the thunder of his anthems rolls to shatter all hatred and violence.

John’s gospel tells us, “among you stands one whom you do not know.” C.S. Lewis wrote that our holy yearning is “the echo of a song we have never heard.” When questions are asked in churches about the balance of Advent songs and Christmas songs, they are almost invariably asked in terms of singing. If you have asked those questions, you probably didn’t ask, “When will we hear Christmas songs?” but instead “When will we sing Christmas songs?” We remember past song and yearn for present and future song. We remember what God has done and yearn for what God is doing and will do. In this quarantined December, we yearn to sing—more than ever, we need the recall, the echo of songs we know and do not yet know. May today’s hymn and all our singing be that echo; or, in the hymn’s closing words,

May God fill every day we share and bring us at last into glory.

– Mr. Eric Wall, Assistant Professor of Sacred Music & Dean of the Chapel