There are so many ideas packed into the texts of Lux Aeterna that it’s hard to know what to include. But since the main juxtaposition is that of light vs. darkness, I thought it would be interesting for my second essay on this masterpiece to look at other pairs of opposites before I regretfully move on to other pieces in our concert. (Next week: the deep inner meanings of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”)
Even with this deliberately scaled-down focus I’m not going to have space to go into detail on all the pairs of opposites. (In theory, I suppose, I can write as much as I want, but there are limits both to my time and your endurance!)
Section II opposites:
“Blunt” vs “sting”–an explanation of the work of Christ, echoing I Corinthians 15:55: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (KJV)
“Trust” vs. “confounded” (which here means shaken, upset, or confused)
Section III opposites:
Christ’s being “clothed in flesh” (referring to the coming of Christ to earth which we celebrate at Christmas) vs. “your [that is, Christ’s] holy body”–I’m sure you can hear that line from “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see/Hail th’incarnate deity.”
Section IV opposites:
This section focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit, especially in the work of being a comforter. I’m not going to go through the list of opposites one by one here, but I would encourage you to take a look, if you haven’t already, at the pages in our sheet music that give the translation. There are two sets of these opposites: in the second stanza, the speaker is asking the Spirit to help with various needs: rest, tempering (moderating or relieving) and consolation. In the fourth stanza the focus shifts to faults that the speaker wants to be rectified. Given that the Holy Spirit is always seen as at work in men’s hearts, these requests must be personal and spiritual in nature. So, to give just one example, “moisten what is arid” wouldn’t be a request for rain; it would be a request for one’s heart to be softened toward God. Devotional writers down through the centuries have used the image of dryness as a metaphor for spiritual hardness. The phrase “spiritual desert” is very common, and indeed there’s a famous devotional book called Streams in the Desert. Israel’s wanderings in the desert after leaving Egypt are often used in a similar metaphorical way.
Did you notice as you were looking at the translation of this section the phrase “Grant to thy faithful . . . Thy sacred seven-fold gifts”? I was curious about what those gifts are and looked them up. They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Not a bad list to strive for!
One more thing before I reluctantly leave this piece, another “did you notice” question: The copyright statement at the end of the translation pages says that it is held by “earthsongs.” I would refer you to my essay on the owner of this company in relation to a piece of his we sang several years ago at a Christmas concert. He’s quite a character in his own right.
