LIGHTEN OUR DARKNESS

For Choir SSAATTBB

I’ve always loved the second collect for Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, the Collect for Aid Against All Perils. There is something so profoundly vibrant about the imagery of the light of Christ made present even as darkness falls. I especially love how the text makes clear that the light is born from the love of the Father for the Son, and how that love is bestowed upon us, which darkness cannot overcome.

The Collect for Aid Against Perils is only one iteration in a long line of similar prayers stretching back to the beginning of the church. For the earliest Christians, the knowledge of the brokenness of the world was as present to them as breath. Facing fierce persecution up to the point of complete annihilation, there was no pretending that this world could provide any real security from sin, evil, and death. And yet, they were overcome with the assured inner belief that the darkness, no matter how intense or close at hand, was never an equal combatant in the fight between the light and the dark. For them, in and through the paschal mystery of Christ—His death and resurrection—a reality had begun to break into the world that could not be mitigated, a reality in which the eventual restoration of all things was already at work.

In our own time, we find ourselves amid encroaching shadows of all kinds. Prejudice, injustice, violence, social unrest and even the spectre of war all loom large. In our own hearts, perhaps we feel the weight of these and their temptation to despair. Our forebears knew this darkness; and like them, these prayers might help us also cling to the love of Christ from which nothing in heaven or earth can separate us, the love that shines brightly in our hearts and keeps vigil with us in the shadows. To know this love is not to escape the shadows around us, but to know that Christ has entered into them Himself, and accompanies us close at hand. It is He who walks through the darkness with us, assuring us that in time, the passing shadow of all things will fall away, and as Revelation says, He, the lamb, will be our everlasting light.

In this setting, I wanted to express a compositional tenebrism, setting moments of radiance and luminance against a dark background. The opening motif, which is repeated halfway through, begins with what is intended to be a simple, stripped back chant, opening up into bright, arresting harmonies that ultimately cadence into dark, rich chords. After the repeat of the primary motif, the harmony is transformed over the words ‘for the love of thy only Son’, affectively indicating the transfiguring power of divine love. On the closing phrase of the piece, the tenebrism is given its starkest contrast, with a high G for the soprano over a low G in the bass, gesturing toward the way in which the light of Christ overcomes even most profound darkness, reaching into the very depths of our life.

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Text:

‘Collect for Aid Against Perils,’

From

The Book of Common Prayer

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and

by thy great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers

of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our saviour,

Jesus Christ. Amen.