December 24, 2007

• A Carol and a Poem

  
  

  Adeste Fideles (O
  Come All Ye Faithful) is a favorite carol.  It was the first carol we
  learned in Latin.  A few years later I discovered Athanasius, who
  fought valiantly for the deity of Christ.  Every time we sing
  “Ver—–ry God, Begotten, not created” I get choked up and say a
  prayer of thanks for Athanasius, God’s gift to the early church. 

   

  In addition to Athanasius, I will think of translations when we sing that verse. 

  This, from Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill:

  This early exaltation of Mother and Child already demonstrates the innovative Christian sense of grace, no longer something reserved for the fortunate few — the emperors and their retinues — but broadcast everywhere, bestowed on everyone, “heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing,” even on one as lowly and negligible as a nursing mother. In the words of a famous Latin hymn,
  
  “God…is born from the guts of a girl.”

  The hymn is “Adeste Fideles,” composed in the eighteenth centry (in a very medieval spirit) by John F. Wade. The full text of the cited quotation is

  “Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine
  Gestant puellae viscera”

  The second line was unfortunately translated in the nineteenth century by Frederick Oakley as “Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.”

  ~     ~     ~    ~     ~

  A Christmas poem by C.S. Lewis from A Widening Light

  Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
  I see a glory in the stable grow
  Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
     Give me an ox’s strength.

  Among the assess (stubborn I as they)
  I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
  So may my beastlike folly learn at least
     The patience of a beast.

  Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
  I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
  Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
     Some wooly innocence!

  • 12:16 pm
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