Tu es Petrus

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (St. Matthew 16:18)

For all of my Christian life, the Church has been in decline. Or so it has seemed, to all the evidence of my senses. In the branch of which I am now part (the Episcopal Church), there were about 3.6 million baptized members in 1965. As of 2010, there were 2.1 million. In recent years, this decline has increasingly pinched the denomination's finances, staff, and programming at all levels, from parishes to the national church.

The music of the Episcopal Church has declined in quality. There are fewer choristers, fewer churches that even have a choir, fewer organs and organists, less support for such things from clergy and vestries. Many congregations no longer even use a printed Hymnal or Book of Common Prayer, with predictable results.

“Upon this rock I will build my church...”

I try not to worry about such things. There are places in the world where Christianity is strong. It may simply be that the forms in which I know Christianity may be dying, but not the thing itself. This will be hard, and may not be inevitable.

“... and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

When I despair of the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican tradition, the current Successor of Peter has repeatedly encouraged me through his writings and his steadfast witness to the faith. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the places where Christianity remains strong and is growing: membership in 2011 was around 1.2 billion, an increase of 11% from 2001, with much of the growth in Africa and Asia.

In honor of Benedict XVI and of this day's Feast of the Confession of St. Peter, here is a motet by Anton Bruckner:

Ecce sacerdos magnus (a performance from Montreal)

Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis placuit Deo...
(Behold, a great priest who in his days pleased God...)

Worthy is the Lamb

The Mozart “Inter natos” went well on Sunday. It was a delight for me to be in the midst of the musicians, for in our setup, the choir and organ were on my left, the string players on my right. I think that it gave choristers and instrumentalists more of a sense of mutuality to face one another than is the case in the more usual concert setup, with choir in back, instrumentalists in front.

As I mentioned last time, I have used the Mozart as material for practice in figured bass and score-reading. Today I moved to the next project: the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, when we are scheduled to sing the final parts of Handel's Messiah – Worthy is the Lamb, Blessing and Honor, and the Amen, with our youth choir and adult choir combined and a yet-to-be-determined complement of instrumentalists (trumpets and organ at least, and I hope for continuo players and perhaps oboes doubling the sopranos and altos, as Handel wrote in the score). That passage from the Revelation of St. John is the Epistle for Easter III, so the choice of music is natural, though I worry that it is too large in scale to fit comfortably in the Sunday Eucharist. Then again, that which St. John described is equally too large to fit – well, anywhere. Not in this universe, but only in that time when all is made new. As is clear in the context from Revelation, and as the Lectionary gets right by placing this Lesson shortly after the Feast of the Resurrection, this is all about the Lamb in the center of the throne, who has done what no one else could do (Rev. 5:1-7), and in so doing has answered every prayer, the prayers of all the saints of every generation (v. 8).

Several years ago, J.M. (who might still be reading these pages) presented the church with the gift of the score and orchestral parts to the Messiah in the fine Watkins Shaw edition published by Novello. This morning was almost the first time I have looked inside the conductor's score – a large-format volume of 283 pages, very handsome. I was almost afraid to do so. If anything in this world is Real Music, partaking of that eternal Song before the throne, this is it. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain...” How can I even sit down at the piano and play the first chord?

But I must, for more reasons than I can here describe.

Handel is less careful about noting the Figures (the numbers delineating the chords) than was Mozart in the little piece we did last Sunday. He was in a hurry (as can be seen in any account of the composition of this oratorio), and he was going to be playing the continuo, so he put down only the most essential figures. I must pencil in many more, obvious to the greatest continuo player of his age (except perhaps his contemporary over in Leipzig), but not so to a beginner such as I. But already I can see that, as it was with the Mozart, this manner of work is going to give me a much better sense of the score than the way I have previously approached it – for we did this part of Messiah once before, nine years ago when this set of lessons came around in the Lectionary.

We began work on this with the Youth Choir last Wednesday, just five minutes of speaking the text in rhythm for the first pages, up to where the “Blessing and honor and glory and power” fugue begins. There is much to be done. But this is why we are doing the piece, and doing it in this manner: I want to introduce our young choristers to this music. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be eight or nine years old and sing this music – indeed, encounter it in any form, for I doubt that many of them, coming from homes where classical music is unknown, have ever heard a recording of Messiah.

My hesitation in approaching the Holy as I opened this score is appropriate, and I should feel such a strong sense of it as I did this morning every time I sit down at the keyboard. We cannot do any of this without God's help. Most musicians know that Bach wrote “Soli Deo Gloria” at the end of all of his scores; fewer take note of the “J.J.” at the beginning – “Jesu, juva,” “Jesus, help!” So must we begin such a work as lies before me, before us.

Figured Bass

Following a tip from one of my Old Books, I have been using the figured bass as my primary method of learning the score for the Mozart piece we are singing this Sunday, “Inter natos mulierum” (K. 72 – see here for more about it).

[a Figured Bass was used in the Baroque era to sketch the harmony much in the manner of a jazz "lead sheet," where the melody is given with chord symbols. Figured Bass works from the bottom up instead of down from the melody; the bass line is given, with numbers to indicate what chords are built on it. Here is the Wikipedia article on the subject.]

Score reading and figured bass are skills I am supposed to possess as a Musician. I am not terribly good at either. It is dawning on me that the latter is one of the keys to the former, at least for music from the Baroque up through early Beethoven (he includes figured bass in the Mass in C [1807], but not in the Missa Solemnis [1823]), and score study must start here in any event – something like a Bruckner symphonic score is not going to make much sense if one cannot deal with a Bach aria – or something like “Inter natos mulierum.”

“Keyboard Harmony [which included figured bass] and Sight-Singing” was a one-credit-hour required course for Freshmen in Music at my undergraduate college. It was taught by an adjunct instructor, the young wife of a faculty member in another field. She was a good musician, but had never taught such a thing and had little idea how to do it. I (and most other Freshmen in Music) lacked the background in music theory to make much of the subject, although if properly approached, the figured bass could have itself taught the music theory that I needed. Both teacher and students gave it their best effort, but it was an unfortunate combination, and one hour a week for one semester (with some outside practice squeezed in around many other duties) was far from adequate.

Looking back, I would have profited from laying all else aside for a year and learning the rudiments of Music. No piano lessons (aside perhaps from a regimen of scales and technical drill to avoid losing all facility), no music history, no general studies coursework. I would then have done better at all the other work, and been a much better Musician. But I could not have tolerated such harsh medicine, and it would obviously not fit with the four-year undergraduate curriculum.

Later on, figured bass was one of the skills required for the Associate's Certificate in the organist's guild, the A.A.G.O., where the test was the accompaniment of a recitative at sight [such as the one from Dido and Aeneas given as an example in the Wikipedia article linked above], reading from figured bass with vocal line. I passed, but still did not have a lot of facility with the art. One of the benefits of the Guild's programme of examinations is their old-fashioned emphasis on what should be rudimentary musical skills – rudimentary, but often unknown to working professional organists, pianists, and choral conductors. Figured bass is one: reading the C clefs is another. Harmony, Counterpoint, Fugue, Transposition, Improvisation... the list is long. I am a Fellow of the Guild, and passed tests in these areas, but am hardly more than a beginner in many of them. I hope to do better, in the residue of days granted to me.

Redeem thy misspent time that's past
And live this day as if thy last;
Improve thy talent with due care,
For the great day thyself prepare. (Thomas Ken)

I (and others) would have done better as Freshmen in Music had we been presented as soon as possible with Real Music (for example, the score of “Inter natos mulierum”) and been cajoled into using the figured bass to gain a sense of the piece, harmonically and otherwise. I am finding that no other approach I have used on choral/instrumental scores has led to as thorough an understanding of the piece – and my figured bass skill itself has improved a lot, just from a month or so of work on this one piece. That is important too – rather than reading a lot of different things, stay with one or two representative pieces until they are thoroughly mastered, right up to performance-level.

The best book on the subject is one that I have mentioned repeatedly: “Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments” by C. P. E. Bach (1753). A more modern text, which (despite the virtues of Bach's Essay) is needed, is R. O. Morris, “Figured Harmony at the Keyboard” (Oxford Univ. Press, 1933).

Figured bass is also one of the keys to Improvisation, but that is for another essay.

The International Space Station

The commander of the ISS Mission 32, Sunita Williams, conducts a 25-minute tour of the ISS in November 2012.
LINK

Just seeing her and the other astronauts gliding through the passageways as if they were swimming is astonishing to an old science fiction fan such as I am. For all its faults, it is a Real Space Station. In orbit. Out there in Space.

Back in the old days, I was a Star Trek fan. I was a teenager when the original television series aired, with Captain Kirk, Scottie, Bones, Spock, and all the rest. My parents gave my sister and me special permission to stay up late this one night of the week to watch it with them on our black and white TV. Later on, I watched the Star Trek Next Generation series, and was a big fan of Deep Space Nine – for one thing, DS-9 included a character who took Religion seriously, something notably absent from the other incarnations of Star Trek, and from much of print science fiction.

For I devoured the books. I was a subscriber to the Science Fiction Book Club for decades, and likewise to the Analog science fiction magazine. Heinlein, Asimov, Poul Anderson, James White... later on Anne McCaffrey and the Pern novels (ah, Masterharper Robinton!!! And Menolly. And all the other harpers and musicians in those books... And the Dragons!!!). These days I read much less of the genre, indeed very little of it beyond the works of Carol Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold.

Among Bujold's early books was “Falling Free,” which I read in a four-part serialization in Analog with fabulous cover art based on the story by Michael Whelan (not, be it noted, the art from the later reprint that appears in the linked Wikipedia article, but rather this). Part of Bujold's point in this book was to explore what it would mean in a world of genetic engineering for one's engineering projects – living beings, in this case sentient beings – to become obsolete, a moral question that remains open. The characters who populate this story are the Quaddies – genetically engineered from Homo sapiens to be better suited for zero-gravity and life in space. Most easily noticed are their four arms (two of them in place of our legs). About the time that they are fully developed and there is a good-sized population ready to be sold and leased (for, being genetically-engineered corporate property, they are not “people” and thus have no rights), artificial gravity is invented, and the corporation is pulling the plug on the project, including killing all of the now-useless quaddies. It is a great story, and turns out well (the quaddies reappear in some of her later stories, including a character who is a four-handed keyboard musician, and most of all in the 2002 novel "Diplomatic Immunity," which takes place some two centuries later), but my point for today is that the ISS video puts me in mind of them. We humans are not well-suited for living in space. But oh, how splendid it is to go there!!!

At one point, Commander Williams takes us to the Cupola, where one can watch the Earth go by underneath. Words fail me.

The NASA program costs a lot of money (though an order of magnitude less than, say, bailing out the TBTF banks). No doubt the day will come when some penny-pinching Congress shuts it down. In 2009, NASA announced plans to end the ISS program in early 2016 (just three years from now!); the current President has said he would like to extend it to 2020. The Russians have plans to re-use their modules for a possible new station, but it may be that they will go it alone, without international cooperation. The European Space Agency, especially, has had a hard time coming up with funding for their part of the ISS, and the US is not in much better shape.

It will be hard to watch the dream die; a part of me will die with it.
---

Here is the website for further information about the International Space Station. There are a variety of other videos, and lots of pictures. There is even a live video/audio stream where you can follow the day-to-day activity.

God with us

At Christmas, we hear the incomparable account of the Nativity according to St. Luke, or (in the third set of Eucharistic lessons, and on the First Sunday after Christmas) the prologue to the Gospel according to St. John. But we do not hear St. Matthew's account. Yes, we get chapter two at the Feast of the Epiphany. But what about chapter one? We get it in the Daily Office for the Sunday after Christmas in Year One, and the Feast of the Holy Name in Year Two; if it appears anywhere in the Eucharistic Lectionary, I cannot recall it or find it at present [Edited later: it does appear in the Sunday Lectionary on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A]. It is not even the Gospel for the Feast of St. Joseph (Luke 2:41-52, the twelve-year old Jesus, who “must be about [his] Father's business.”).

What is St. Matthew's point with this important passage?

The first sentence of the Gospel according to St. Matthew is this: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” St. Matthew wants his readers to understand that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, and that in him are fulfilled all the promises made to Abraham (cf Genesis 22:15-18, “... and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”) and David (cf II Samuel 7, and the questioning of this promise in Psalm 89: “Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest unto David in thy truth?" [v.49]).

It echoes also the similar “books of the generations” in the First Book of Moses: the “book of the generations of Adam” (5:1); the “generations of the sons of Noah” (10:1); “the generations of Shem” (11:10); “the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son” (25:19) and lastly “the generations of Jacob” (37:2). It places Jesus in the context of the Patriarchs; it further implies that he is not only the culmination of this long genealogy, but the beginning of something new, like unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

There would be many ways to trace the descent of a Jewish person from Abraham; all of them were his descendents, as were many others (e.g, the descendants of Ishmael). There would doubtless be many lines leading even from David to Jesus – St. Luke gives one which differs entirely from that of St. Matthew. But Matthew tracks the line through the kings of Judah. This is to show that Jesus is the legitimate Heir of David, “he that is born King of the Jews” (St. Matthew 2:2). But there is more: St. Matthew is reminding us of the Story. All of these people, from Abraham to Jechonias and his brethren at the time of the Exile, are known to us from the Old Testament. St. Matthew is making it crystal clear that Jesus is part of this Story and the culmination of it. In Jesus, the “author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2) has himself entered the Story. Nothing can ever again be the same.

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (1:22-23)

One final thought: This passage is one of the few glimpses we get of St. Joseph, “a just man” (v. 19). The Church begins with Our Lady St. Mary, who believed the words that had been spoken to her (St. Luke 1:45) and was the God-bearer, the Theotokos. But she was not alone: there were Elisabeth and Zecharias – and there was, after his vision in a dream, Joseph. He was at her side on that holy Night in Bethlehem; Joseph was with her, and with Him, as long as he lived; their shared belief in what had been shown them, and what was before their eyes every day, strengthened them through what was often a difficult and uncertain path. So it is today: we believe, and in our shared belief we strengthen one another.

What shall we do, that we might work the work of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. (St. John 6:28-29)

... with giving of thanks

Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, rejoice.
Let your softness be known unto all men: the Lord is at hand.
Be careful for nothing: but in all prayer and supplication
let your petitions be manifest unto God with giving of thanks.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesu. (Philippians 4:4-7, my emphasis)

I think that the above translation is from the Great Bible. It is certainly from the fine sixteenth century anthem on this text, which we sang for the Eucharist on Sunday, wherein this was part of the Epistle.

After Sunday's service of Lessons and Carols described in the previous essay, I was worn out and a little discouraged about my musicianship. Since then, four people whom I respect, all of them musicians or clergy, have expressed their thanks to me and the choir for the service, telling me that it was meaningful for them. Two of them commented particularly on the little instrumental arrangement that I mentioned.

While Pride is always a danger when people speak well of your work, it remains helpful to say “Thank you.” Hearing and reading those words helped me today; these words can help almost anyone.

We are made in the image of God. One cannot take the converse very far without wandering far astray, but it is not too much of a stretch to think that God is likewise pleased when we say “thank you” (cf. St. Luke 17:11-19, the ten lepers). He does not need our encouragement – or does he? As the Body of Christ, I wonder whether we have some part in “fill[ing] up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). Might it be that our poor efforts and prayers – and giving of thanks, most of all in the Great Thanksgiving, the Holy Eucharist – have helped our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, through the dark places in his journey, in a manner not altogether foreign from the way in which we “bear one another's burdens” by encouraging each other in the dark places in our journeys?

That is probably indeed too much of a stretch; God is immutable, and the work of Christ is entire and complete without anything from us – indeed, we have nothing to offer. Still, it doesn't hurt to leaven our prayers and our lives “with giving of thanks,” both to God and to the people we encounter every day.

Lessons and Carols

Our annual Advent Service of Lessons and Carols was tonight. It is a Big Deal, at least for me, and I suspect for the choir. There are nine Lessons and a lot of music: this year there were eight congregational hymns and five choral pieces. It went well, some of it very well indeed.

One of the pieces was “Who is this?”, by John Ferguson. A performance by the composer and his choral ensemble, the St. Olaf Cantorei, is here. This was one of several moments during the service that I came unglued emotionally. We had a young undergraduate violist for the obbligato part, and I think she took it as seriously as I did.

Something that was more of a mixed result was the first movement of Cantata 140, “Wachet auf,” which we sang for Evensong a fortnight ago. Not having anything remotely approaching the funds needed to hire the orchestra for this, I tried an experiment, something I had wanted to do for years with an appropriate piece: we had the wind parts played on the organ, and I played the string parts on the piano. In our first piano-and-organ rehearsal, it became clear that we also needed the continuo line, so I engaged a cellist and bassist. The choir had sung this years ago under my predecessor, who taught them well; many of them still had it memorized.

At Evensong, I was pleased with how it turned out. But I received an e-mail indicating that two musicians in the congregation gave the opinion that the instruments were too loud, and the choral diction unintelligible. After bristling more than a little (I do not take criticism well, I wish I were better at it), I had the organist replace the Octave 4' with a softer Flute 4', I toned it down on the piano, and we worked on diction in rehearsal. In tonight's reading of the piece, most everything went well enough, but not my part of it; my playing was nowhere near an acceptable standard. Lesson: don't try this again. Or if we do, hire a pianist and limit my role to that of conductor. Second Lesson: if I am going to attempt ensemble playing, I had better work at it a lot more. I cannot say that my faulty playing was from sloth; I worked hard on this piece, harder than I have worked on anything that I have played this fall. But it was still crap. I was as much as one or two beats off from the ensemble at times, and there were several places where I completely missed some of my lines. Such an experience is unfortunately part of being a musician; when you play badly, you must simply let it go and move on to the next piece.

The school shooting in Connecticut on Friday put the Lesson from Isaiah 11 in a different light:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.... They shall not hurt nor destroy on all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

It seemed appropriate to add an instrumental coda to the hymn that followed the lesson, “Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming,” in order to try and add some additional weight to this lesson in the service. More than appropriate: “inescapable” might be more accurate. On the bus yesterday morning, it came to me what to do. I wrote it out after Matins, and finished extracting the parts shortly before this afternoon's rehearsal. It was not much, just a little twenty-two measure coda for the instruments at hand: Flute, Viola, Violoncello, Contrabass. But I was very pleased with how it turned out; this was another moment where I came unglued. Our clergy responded well to the challenge of ministering to this congregation today in light of the shooting, which was much on people's minds. This little instrumental coda was my equivalent, such response as I could offer for the community. May all those little children, and the adults who sought to protect them, rest in peace.

Because I spent so much time on this, I hardly prepared the hymns at all. Several of them I did not play through even once. But they turned out well enough, by God's grace.

Near the end of the service, there comes the Collect for Advent:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility, that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

We sang a fine choral setting of this by Craig Phillips for flute, organ, and choir – a setting commissioned by this parish. Last year I had the bad idea of laying the piece aside, for we had done it several years in a row. We all missed it, so the Phillips was back this year. It was a fine way to conclude the service, and was another moment when I came unglued.

May the music we have made this day be acceptable in the sight of the Lord, and beneficial for his people.

And he shall purify...

"And he shall purify," from Handel's Messiah

But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering of righteousness. (Malachi 3:2-3)

For other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. (I Corinthians 3:12-13)

We heard a fine sermon this morning from J., one of the handful of people who read these pages, based in part on the Old Testament lesson from Malachi, and the quotation from Isaiah incorporated into the day's Gospel account, St. Luke 3:1-6. She described how gold and silver are refined by fire, and how wool is “fulled” (and yes, I looked it up on Wikipedia as J. suggested: here is the link. In ancient times, it involved slaves walking on the woolen cloth ankle-deep in tubs of urine, which cleansed the raw wool from dirt, oils, and impurities.)

As J. said, none of this sounds easy if you are the silver ore being refined, or the wool being soaked in urine and beaten or trampled upon. But “he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap.” There is no getting around it; one way or another, all of us must be cleansed of everything that stands between us and God. It is not an easy process. All of this was in J.'s sermon.

I would add that when one starts with an ore that contains gold and silver, only a small fraction is precious metal, for example a quartz rock with a few tiny flakes of gold. That is how we are too – there is some “gold” in us, but there is a whole lot of other stuff.

St. Paul describes the work we do in apt terms: “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.” When it seems that we are working hard but making little or no progress, it is well to remember this passage. Most of what we do will not stand the fire – but by God's grace there may be a tiny bit of it that does. Rarely will we know which is which, except sometimes in hindsight. But God knows, he who is “like a refiner's fire.”

Music-making is one aspect of such work. We practice, we do our best, and it is never sufficient: most of it is “wood, hay, stubble.” But there is often “something” there, some element of true Music that shines like gold. If we persist, and if God persists with us, we improve; some of the dross is burned away, and we become better musicians. Someday (probably not in this life), he will have purified us completely, so that we “may offer unto the LORD an offering of righteousness.”

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Rosalynn and Jimmy

I received my annual Christmas Card from Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter the other day, and put it on my desk at home, right under the portrait of George Washington.

Yes, I know that the Carters send these Christmas cards out by the thousands, to all who donate to the Carter Center's work with tropical diseases and the monitoring of elections, and perhaps to Habitat supporters as well. But it is still a treat to hear from them every December. The card is always a print of one of Jimmy's oil paintings; this year, a dove on a blue background. He is not a great artist; this is just a hobby for him, and it gives their Christmas greeting a homespun touch.

The current president has embraced the social media: Facebook, Twitter. He doubtless has many thousands of "friends." Rosalynn and Jimmy are from another generation; they send Christmas cards. And thank-you notes: after my mother died, I sent a part of my inheritance to the Carter Center in her honor, a check that was for me a substantial sum, for my mother respected him every bit as much as I do. In due time, I received a short handwritten thank-you note from Jimmy Carter. I do not think that this was something a secretary did for him; I think that he took the time himself to write it.

He is a Good Man.

Some would say that he was not a good president; I would say that he was perhaps the last good president (as is morally good, not necessarily "good" in the sense of "successful") that we will have in this country. He was elected in the wave of revulsion over the moral bankruptcy of Richard Nixon, and times have changed; someone like Carter could never be elected now.

I send Rosalynn and Jimmy my heartfelt good wishes for a blessed Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. May God's blessings be with them.

I ain't got long to stay here

This day, the First Sunday of Advent, in all of its Lessons and Music, is what the song describes: “the trumpet sounds within my soul.”

Our time here is short; we had best make the most of it. And it is not just our individual span, our “threescore years and ten.” All things shall come to an end, and after that, the judgment. The Bridegroom has tarried long. But he is coming.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP p. 159)