The Brotherhood Prayer Book: Hymn for the Nativity of our Lord

CHRISTMASTIDE

 

Audio: Hear A Solis Ortus Cardine chanted by Pr. Sean Daenzer

 

From east to west, from shore to shore,
Let every heart awake and sing
The holy child whom Mary bore,
The Christ, the everlasting King.

Behold, the world’s Creator wears
The form and fashion of a slave;
Our very flesh our Maker shares,
His fallen creature, man, to save.

For this how wondrously He wrought!
A maiden, in her lowly place,
Became, in ways beyond all thought,
The chosen vessel of His grace.

She bowed her to the angel’s word
Declaring what the Father willed,
And suddenly the promised Lord
That pure and hallowed temple filled.

He shrank not from the oxen’s stall,
He lay within the manger-bed,
And He, whose bounty feedeth all,
At Mary’s breast Himself was fed.

And while the angels in the sky
Sang praise above the silent field,
To shepherds poor the Lord Most High,
The one great Shepherd, was revealed.

All glory for this blessed morn
To God the Father ever be;
All praise to Thee, O Virgin-born,
All praise, O Holy Ghost, to Thee. Amen.

___________________

A Solis Ortus Cardine, Coelius Sedulius, c. 450, trans. by John Ellerton
From The Brotherhood Prayer Book

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