Now This Day Gives Way To Darkness - published by WLP
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    Yes, you read the title correctly. I just received an update pack of new music from WLP. This is the title of one of the hymns! And they replaced the text to the tune of Picardy (which usually sports the text "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence")

    First two lines:

    Now this day gives way to darkness; Dim and fading is our sight,
    As the turning earth, our planet, Carries us into the night.

    They are also putting things in hymnal such as "Christ Has No Body Now But Yours", and few other heretical texts. Buyers beware.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Wait, what's wrong with this text?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,508
    I agree (!) with Gavin, that there isn't anything theologically problematic with the quoted text. A lot of office hymns for evening begin the same way.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    I just looked over the text, #206 in We Celebrate. I didn't see anything immediately offensive, although the text is rather lacking in "red meat", so to speak. It would probably make me feel depressed to sing it, but it won't "rock my Christianity".
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    Hmmm. Maybe its just me. Which office hymns have text that is similar? Are they new or old texts?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,508
    Old. It's nighttime, the light is fading, the darkness is coming: Lord, we need you. This is very common.

    IAM sol recedit igneus: (St. Ambrose)

    NOX atra rerum contegit
    terrae colores omnium: (St. Gregory the Great)
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    I think the term "our planet" stands out in the text and makes it seem a product of the modern "scientific" age. Of course the word "planet" is ancient enough, but did its meaning include the earth? Or is it a modern-era usage to speak of the earth as also a "planet"?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,508
    I agree that the diction is not elevated. Also, the ancient hymns tend to dwell much, much more on the light of Christ than on the descending darkness. But these are degrees of emphasis. Saying that the earth is dark at night--this is very well attested in the ancient hymns.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    In my judgment it's just a very inferior version of "The Day Thou Gavest". I don't think the charge of heresy is at all warranted in this case. Although poor text composition may as well be a heresy...
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    I suppose that that secularism has crept into the hymnals again. I agree that there are references to the day ending in evening prayer. But, this one takes the cake. Talk about dumbing down music.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    Kathy:

    The emphasis here is on giving in to the darkness without light having much of a glimmer. Emphasis within content can be beautiful or disastrous!
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,508
    Francis,

    I should be clear: I haven't seen the entire text. There doesn't seem to me to be anything wrong with the part you quoted. But, I don't know where the text is going.

    Sorry if I've just confused matters...
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    Kathy:

    No problem. You really do have see the entire text to appreciate the darkness. It, by the way, is not the heretical one. It is the deceptive one. The heretical one is "Christ Has No Body Now But Yours."

    I know I am super sensitive to questionable texts, so do read them and judge for yourself!
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    I was recently looking for a traditional Catholic hymn for an interfaith prayer service that did not specifically refer to Jesus, the Trinity, Mary, etc....

    “Te lucis ante terminum” is what I ended up using....of course, my search for a good metrical English translation led to....you guessed it....the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal. :)
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    > Or is it a modern-era usage to speak of the earth as also a "planet"?

    Yes, in ancient times this was applied to bodies moving around the sky, and when you stare at the sky, you can't of course see the earth moving... Read about that (guess where) in Wikipedia's article.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,508
    dvalerio, I would have thought this to be the case as well, so I was startled to find the earth called as "orb" in medieval hymnody. For example, the earth is an orb according to the first verse of the tenth c. hymn Nunc Tempus Acceptabile.

    Or is the orb "the world" in the larger sense I.e. "the cosmos?"

    Francis, in principle I'm with you all the way. If a hymn trips my faith-o-meter in any way, I just say no. There are many other options that are 100% good.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    > dvalerio, I would have thought this to be the case as well, so I was startled to find the earth called as "orb" in medieval hymnody. For example, the earth is an orb according to the first verse of the tenth c. hymn Nunc Tempus Acceptabile.

    I apologise if I am wrong, but: calling the earth an orb just means that it was known back then that the earth is round, and indeed this has been know for a long time, since classical Greece, and was known by educated people all along the Middle Ages. But this does not mean that the earth was considered a «planet» in the sense that it moves across the sky (it cannot, since we're standing on it). Only in Modern times did the word «planet» get the sense of «body orbiting around the Sun».
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    Whether its an orb or a planet, 'it' does not choose to carry me into the night. God does.
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