Our musical journey through Lent has brought us to the holiest days of the year - Holy Week and the Triduum.
As we enter into this week, I searched for a text that would help us pray with the emotions that might come during this week. There is such a range of feelings we might have: warmth and affection as Jesus gathers with his disciples to wash their feet and eat a meal with them, sorrow as we keep company with him in the Garden of Gethsemane in prayer that night, bewilderment and pain at his suffering on the cross on Good Friday, and grief as he is laid in the tomb.
The important thing, I think, is that we go along for the journey, as we have been all along...so I offer this song this week for our prayer together.
The text was written as a poem by Samuel Crossman, a Puritan minister who was exiled from the Church of England, in 1664. In 1918, composer John Ireland wrote the tune, called LOVE UNKNOWN. His friend, hymnal editor Geoffrey Shaw, requested he compose a tune for the text, which he apparently did in about 15 minutes over lunch on the back of a menu.
The text follows:
My song is love unknown,
my Saviour’s love to me;
love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
that for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh and die?
He came from his blest throne
salvation to bestow;
but men made strange, and none
the longed-for Christ would know.
But O, my Friend,
my Friend indeed,
who at my need
his life did spend!
Sometimes they strew His way,
and His sweet praises sing;
resounding all the day
hosannas to their King.
Then 'Crucify!'
is all their breath,
and for His death
they thirst and cry.
Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
yet they at these
themselves displease,
and 'gainst him rise.
They rise, and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet cheerful He
to suffering goes,
that He His foes
from thence might free.
In life no house, no home
my Lord on earth might have;
in death no friendly tomb
but what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was his home;
but mine the tomb
wherein he lay.
Here might I stay and sing:
no story so divine;
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like Thine!
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.
I hope you enjoy this beautiful text and tune as a way to pray with the familiar events of this Holy Week. Blessings as we continue the journey together as a community, following Jesus, our Friend and Lord.
"LOVE UNKNOWN" on hymnary.org https://hymnary.org/tune/love_unknown_ireland (Accessed 9 April 2022)