When You took upon Yourself to deliver man,You humbled Yourself to be born of a virgin.
When You had overcome the sharpness of death,
You opened the Kingdom of heaven to all believers.
You sit at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.
We believe that You will come to be our judge.
We therefore pray You to help Your servants,
Whom You have redeemed with Your precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with Your saints
In glory everlasting!
I agree that this is The Heart of the Te Deum. However, why is it that post-TLH hymnals omit the concluding petitions?
ReplyDelete"O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine Heritage. Govern them and life them up forever.
"Day by day we magnify Thee. And we worship Thy name ever, world without end.
"Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin. O Lord, haver mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
"O Lord, let Thy mercy be upon us, as out trust is in Thee.
O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded."
Because they are not part of the original hymn but various verses from the Book of Psalms added to it, so now we have it restored to its original form, so much better than all that mediaeval piety in which we languished so long, along with the idea that it came to be spontaneously as St Ambrose baptised St Augustine.
ReplyDeleteSo let us then produce new service books freed of all that, thus more true to the Te Deum, St Ambrose and St Augustine and all the rest, than the uncritical miserable texts we have been saddled with up until we knew all this stuff.
So likewise even "Matins" itself, with which the hymn is associated, with the confusion of the Vigils, Matins, Lauds, a night office with a morning name, yet more mediaeval confusion and misplaced piety now all happily done away with and reformed, as simply the "Office of Readings".
Now isn't that better? A long overdue break with that miserable misplaced mediaeval piety? Hell, at this rate we can even come up with new orders for corporate worship, say "Morning Prayer", and include them too right along with our revised old one!
As the Te Deum prays "help Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed with thy precious Blood", so the evening (formerly compline) hymn Christe qui lux es et dies (LSB 882) sings "Behold, O God, our shield, and quell the crafts and subtleties of hell; Direct Thy servants in all good, whom Thou hast purchased with Thy Blood"
ReplyDeleteyes i'm working on my essays....
-Sean
Deacon,
ReplyDeleteMatins in LSB has the complete Te Deum including the final versicles.
Terry,
I think you are more than a little off-base in your criticism. Historically Lutherans fixed things right and left. If you could look at a copy of Lossius' Cantionale (among the most popular books for Lutheran music), you'd find numerous texts "correcta." They did this for Lauda Sion Salvatorum and many other sequences. Similarly, they conflated Matins/Lauds/Prime into a single morning office and same for Vespers/Compline into a nighttime office.
Note that the Western Rite Orthodox do the exact same thing! They've stripped the Canon of all mention of the merits of the saints and they've inserted an Eastern Epiclesis and the prayer of St. John Chrysostom before communion. Additionally, they use Cramner's version of the litany which was a revision of Luther's revision of the Litany of All Saints.
In that litany Luther not only removed the invocation of the saints, but added numerous petitions, taking an old form and bending it toward a new use as a powerful general intercession.
It was not my intent to comment on anything but why it is that post Vatican II service books do not include the final petitions.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason is simply that with higher-critical methods, off limits to Scripture supposedly but given free reign in liturgy, those petitions are now seen as not properly part of the Te Deum itself but later devotional accretions from Psalms. Which was part of the whole revision of the Office into the Liturgy of the Hours in which Matins is gone and a new Office of Readings takes its place. Or so it was taught to me by those who participated in doing it.
Everyone else has since followed suit. By which it was not my intention to say that there had never been any revisions to the liturgy previously, but rather to say, here, that this is the fons et origo of our modern service books which present, as distinct from the variations throughout the overall church in time and place, for the first time variations in particular churches in the same time and place, ordinary AND extraordinary forms, Matins AND Morning Prayer, this but also that, that but this too, etc, and to say elsewhere that this proceeds from an entirely different agenda (in the non liturgical sense) than earlier attempts at liturgical reform, and results in the same sort of confusion in one time and place from which earlier attempts at liturgical reform intended to deliver us.
Which confusion, as noted in an earlier post, only fuels those who seeing it see no reason not to include more.
Past Elder,
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, I would direct your attention to the texts of the Ambrosian Hymn in two Roman Office books: the 3 vol Latin-English Divine Office (1964, OSB, Collegeville, MN) and (the English only) A Short Breviary (1962,ODB as above). Neither of these breviaries saw fit to truncate the Te Deum to conform to your understanding of the "original form and source"
And, just to another twist to your knickers, I will state that I am also displeased by the amputation of the "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest...." from the Benedictus, except during Advent.
And, before you berate me for my use of the King's English, be advised that I have prayed these and other canticles in English, German and Latin for most of my life. I am also a believer in the idea of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Beside that, I am convinced that there is little to be gained by reconstructing how things were in antiquity.
During my college days, seminary days and following, I was convinced that those who desire to return things to their pristine state have little understanding of the history and development of the liturgical form which we have inherited.
It is not my intention to offend; but I find your observation "So let us then produce new service books freed of all that, thus more true to the Te Deum, St Ambrose and St Augustine and all the rest, than the uncritical miserable texts we have been saddled with up until we knew all this stuff." to be extremely offensive to those of us who appreciate, honor and revere the texts the we have received from those who have preceded us.
It has always been the charge to the bishops, priests and deacons to preserve the rite as it has been delivered to them. You may not agree with; but I fully intend to obey this charge.
Good deacon,
ReplyDeleteI think you miss Terry's irony. On these questions he's entirely on your side! Please note, though, that in LSB (do you have a copy???), there is NO amputation of the Benedictus either - it is given fully in the mostly Anglican chant Matins and in the more modern setting of Morning Prayer.
"I think you miss Terry's irony."
ReplyDeleteHe's certainly not for the ironically-challenged. I must admit to a growing appreciation if not admiration. One must always admire good craftsmanship.
Yes, Herr Diakon, the good pastors have it exactly re me.
ReplyDeleteIt was exactly my intent in that comment to state in concise form, as it was taught to me in classrooms out of whose windows one could have looked and seen, perhaps spit upon on a good day, that most miserable sacred grotto of modernist revisionism, The Liturgical Press, precisely something I find most offensive as one who appreciates, honours and reveres the texts we have received from those who came before us, and views it indeed the charge of bishops, priests and deacons, be they known by those names or others in their jurisdictions, to zealously guard and defend them, as opposed to, say, forming various committees and commissions on liturgy or worship to cut and paste from a past, which those faithful in it seemed to have regarded as bloody awful, new forms, settings and what-not ad nauseam.
(If there's a period in that one sentence paragraph, it ain't my fault.)
I'd say more, but I gotta get to the sporting goods store before they close for scuba gear for my new sport, then brush up on my English for Belize.
"I'd say more, but I gotta get to the sporting goods store before they close for scuba gear for my new sport, then brush up on my English for Belize."
ReplyDeleteWe'll be drift diving by Friday, but please, don't buy scuba gear at a sporting goods store! That's the diving equivalent of the Chicago Folk Mass.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWell you know what they say, one man's Chicago Folk Mass is another man's DSVI.
ReplyDeleteWould you look at the time. Way too early for the Office of Readings. Oy.
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteI do not consider myself to be ironically-challenged; but, craftsmanship aside, it is possible to apply irony too thickly when it comes to matters liturgical.
There is now a Post-It note on my screen saying "Here there might be Irony."
Would you look at the time. Way too early for the Office of Readings. Oy.
ReplyDeleteNay, nay, rejoice! The liturgical luminaries of Vatican II have made it possible for the Office of Readings to be prayed darn near any time and any place!
While the Office of Readings retains this character of nocturnal praise, it is permitted to pray it at other times during the day. And, as our reader points out, it is also possible to anticipate it on the evening before. It is also possible to join it with other offices, especially Morning Prayer.
And the Liturgical Press?? Can anything good come out of Collegeville :)
Christine
The only thing more snooty than wine connoisseurs are connoisseurs of liturgy. Both prefer old things, though the former tend to be more pleasant company.
ReplyDeleteThe Venite IS truncated though.... but we can't blame LSB for that. Even TLH has only half. I don't have much in the way of early American Lutheran hymnals, so perhaps they contained it.
ReplyDeleteThe remainder of the Venite (which like the Te Deum, was retained in full in those excellent "corrected" books of the 16th century) is as follows:
"...we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Today if ye will hear HIs voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known My ways: Unto whom I sware in My wrath that they should not enter into my rest. Glory be to the Father..."
It's a great part I think, everything we heard about this past 8th Sunday after Trinity. Everything which Israel has not, Christ has fulfilled on our behalf! Now He speaks to His pasture and sheep, softens hearts and makes us a people: the Israel of God! The sheep ear His voice, Amen!
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whence the apocopation of the Venite came about. I think it was that way when Common Liturgy was put forth - and it seems to have stuck across the board. It is odd to drop the end of the Psalm, I do admit.
I forgot that, Christinula. Not only have we happily shed the confusion of a night vigil in the morning, we shed morning itself. Matins is now at once unceremoniously dumped into the dustbin of history and gloriously said any time you want as the Office of Readings, the lex orandi of the lex credendi of believe what you want, as long as it's in community, the People of God.
ReplyDeleteThat was, btw, irony. It is my practice not to apply it at all to what is now called the "historic" liturgy, but in discussing the miserable revisionism of that by distinction from which the real liturgy is now called historic, let the good times roll!
PE,
ReplyDeleteWell, I can assure you, going back to a "night vigil" would indeed be confusing to me -- I don't function well at those hours!
Besides, sounds like a bit of monkery to me :)
On the other hand, I am grateful that we in our Beloved Synod have retained the more "traditional" text of the Te Deum.
I've had a hard time explaining to some ELCA Lutherans that the fact that the ELCA/RC texts of the Te Deum are the same is not necessarily a good thing.
Christine
The only thing more snooty than wine connoisseurs are connoisseurs of liturgy. Both prefer old things, though the former tend to be more pleasant company.
ReplyDeletePastor Cwirla, so . . . would it be better to become a snooty wine connoisseur BEFORE advancing to liturgical snootiness -- one could then at least be pleasantly liturgically snooty -- I think?
Christine
Well hell, since mass has become Jesus' wine and bread tasting party in some quarters, you can do both at once, simultaneously evun!
ReplyDelete(Note to the gofers for PTM at CPH who will grow up to become editors of The Complete Works of Past Elder, the last word is an intentional misspelling, a reference to the Hanna-Barbera rite.)