Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping
that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.

— Antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis
 

During the Middle Ages, an elaborate system known as “The Liturgy of the Hours” developed to frame the prayer lives of the faithful at regular intervals each day:
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​These non-Communion offices (also known as “Daily Office,” “Divine Office,” or “Canonical Hours”) “flow down from that liturgical mountain peak [of the Lord’s Supper], like streams seeking the lower places, the daily routine and grind of life” (David Kind, Oremus: A Lutheran Breviary, p. vii). Reformation revisions, along with a pesky dynamic known as reality, have generally reduced the rhythm of daily prayer to Matins, Vespers, and Compline. Most recent hymnals, including Lutheran Service Book (LSB), also include the orders of Morning and Evening Prayer, providing at least three evening services to highlight the gifts of the Gospel at eventide: Vespers, Evening Prayer, and Compline. The profound theological themes for eventide have not been lost on the great composers of the church, including the hymn, anthem, and solo that are highlighted in this installment of “Lifted Voice.”

​Wedding season is in full swing, which brings to the local parish a unique set of blessings and curses. On the positive side, the rite of Christian marriage brings the blessing of the lifelong union of husband and wife. On the negative side, however, the wedding rite is often cursed with a theatrical soloist singing another sensual and seductive rendition of “The Wedding Song” (“It is good to be together at the calling of your hearts,” etc.), against which St. Ambrose and a host of other fathers warned. One prominent Lutheran church musician from New York, Dr. Jane Schatkin Hettrick, perhaps put it best when she said that most weddings are “an orgy of bad taste.” In an effort to recover the solemnity and dignity of the Christian wedding, I would like to recommend three choral settings of the sequence hymn, Ubi Caritas, “Where Charity and Love Are [Found], God is There.”
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