Advent Enthusiasms and Idiosyncrasies (6) Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence!

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six wingèd seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

My favourite Advent hymn! Along with Veni Emmanuel! And not forgetting It Came Upon the Midnight Clear - I'm not against all sentimental hopefulness! And Adeste Fidelis - especially the verse that plagiarises the Nicaean Creed!!

The sense of transcendent wonder in the first line cuts through all the theology, sentiment, self-indulgence and our anthropocentric worldviews and tells us plainly to shut up! This isn't the usual headlines at six, and is a universe away from our reality soaked celebrity culture. This is God whose Reality exposes the emptiness of all other virtual realities. This is God in the God-like poise of Eternal Light, Loving Creator, Kenotic Redeemer. This is God embracing mortal flesh, speaking into the mute silence of a fractured creation that same Word through whom all things were made and still exist. The wonder and worship of heaven intersect with the mundane self-absorption of a humanity lost in its own sense of self-sufficiency, its horizons limited by the myopic sense of its own importance. Into a world oblivious of the self-destructive urge to power comes the All-Powerful in the vulnerability of love. No wonder angels veil their faces, and gasp in the disbelief of wondering worship, before singing the praise of the One through whom the mystery of the ages is made known, as the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us - and we beheld his glory -full of grace and truth.

And sometime in the Christmas Eve service there should be some moments of silence, when all mortal flesh with fear and trembling stands, and ponders, and wonders, and worships. 

Comments

[abmaude]

Hi Jim,
I love Let All Mortal Flesh too - although for me it is O Come, O Come Immanuel that is truly the sound of Advent.

Have a good Christmas.

[ruthg]

Thank you for this. As one who struggles with Advent (wouldn't miss it for anything, but it always leaves me lost in the dark - but ah then, the light of Christmas...) I love this hymn; I can sing this with integrity, however lost I am. I think it is the objectiveness of it

[chris]

How strange. "Let all mortal flesh" is one of my absolute favourites, one I associate with my first experience of the Episcopal Church (in my early 20s) and the Cathedral of The Isles - but not with Advent, for we sing it before communion at any time through the year.

That said, I hope you have a blessed and joyous Christmas!

[Jim Gordon]

Agreed Tony - I need more than one hymn as I think Advent expresses different moods of longing, hopefulness and yearning for peace and life. Like you Ruth, I too need something that silences my needfulness and insists I shut up and let God be God. And Chris, I guess the words express a fuller theology than our Christmas can contain. Happy Christmas to each of you and thanks for your interest and occasional comments here. Veni Emmanuel.