Hark! A Thrilling Voice Is Sounding (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 246)
1 Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding!
“Christ is near,” we hear it say.
“Cast away the works of darkness
all you children of the day!”
2 Wakened by the solemn warning,
from earth’s bondage let us rise;
Christ, our sun, all sloth dispelling,
shines upon the morning skies.
3 See the Lamb, so long expected,
comes with pardon down from heav’n.
Let us haste, with tears of sorrow,
one and all, to be forgiv’n;
4 So, when next he comes in glory
and the world is wrapped in fear,
he will shield us with his mercy
and with words of love draw near.
5 Honor, glory, might, and blessing
to the Father and the Son
with the everliving Spirit
while unending ages run!
Text: Latin hymn, 1632; Music: William H. Monk; Public Domain
Devotion
Eschatological expectation arises again in verse four of “Hark! A Thrilling Voice Is Sounding.” “When next he comes in glory and the world is wrapped in fear.” There’s hardly a more apt description of our world’s state at this moment: wrapped in fear. Wars and famines and disasters and political turmoil roil our planetary life.
This hymn is a Latin hymn, likely of the fifth century. But it was translated into English by Edward Caswall in 1849. Caswall’s England and Ireland were also experiencing war, famine, and a horrid cholera pandemic during the era of this hymn’s translation. “A thrilling voice” calling was likely hard to hear then, as it is now.
When you sing this hymn in the Advent season this year, know that you are joining your voices with a millennia-and-a-half of saints who, alongside you as a great cloud of witnesses, still sing our collective prayer to the one who “with words of love draw(s) near.”
Prayer
God of mercy and love, be with us now, even when we are wrapped with the world in fear. We long, with the saints from age to age, for your shield of mercy to surround us. Amen.