In Which Sam Is Inarticulate: My Favorite Hymns

I was talking to people a bit about hymns a couple months ago, and one of the things that I found so intriguing is that depending on the parish or church in which people grew up, they know completely different hymns. This is regardless of whether both people comparing hymns were at a Catholic church or not. In fact, I think on one occasion I had a hymn in common with a Lutheran that my Catholic friends hadn’t heard of! So, since I think this is fascinating, I decided to do a post on my favorite hymns, and then ask if you’ve heard of any of them and ask about your favorite hymns! So, please do tell me in the comments! I want to hear about your favorites, and if you’ve heard of the ones I’m going to mention!

Trimming this post down was tough. I think I originally had at least twice as many hymns in it as it has in it right now. But I think this is my top eleven hymns, more or less…in no particular order!

(Also, in writing this post, I have realized that I often have a hard time articulating why I love a certain hymn, other than “IT’S JUST BEAUTIFUL!”, so while I’m trying my best, I’m also going to embed YouTube versions, so that you can listen and hear the beauty yourself.) (But as an aside: do you know how hard it was to find good versions of these??? It was pretty hard. For the record, I'm not endorsing or recommending any of the artists who are singing the songs in the versions I've embedded--they're just the versions that sounded the best of all the ones I found.)

Be Thou My Vision

Thou my great Father, thine own may I be
...
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall
Be thou my vision, O Ruler of all. 

This one definitely belongs in the top five! I love the simple beauty of the melody, which still manages to be heart-stoppingly lovely even the thousandth time I hear it, and the simply but slightly archaic beauty of the words. The words and melody mesh so beautifully and seem to fit with each other so well. It lilts. 
Also, the words themselves have several portions (some of which I quoted above) which I end up bringing to prayer on a semi-regular basis. 

O God Beyond All Praising

O God beyond all praising, we worship you today
And sing the love amazing that songs cannot repay
…
For whether out tomorrows may be for good or ill
We’ll triumph through our sorrows, and rise to bless you, still.

I used to say that OGBAP was my favorite hymn of all time, and while I have slightly revised that opinion (mostly due to singing it far too often), it is still one of my very favorites. Just…the majesty of it, and the beautiful text, and the solemnity of giving praise to God in this way. I do think it should be kept only for special occasions (ordinations, weddings, baptisms, &c) kind of like the Te Deum used to be, but that’s just my opinion. (I also love just listening to the Holst "Jupiter" that it takes its tune from. 10/10 would recommend.)

Alleluia! Sing to Jesus

Alleluia! Sing to Jesus! His the scepter, His the throne;
Alleluia! His the triumph, His the victory alone.
Hark! the songs of peaceful Sion thunder like a mighty flood:
Jesus out of every nation hath redeemed us by His blood.

This hymn popped back into my life and my head at a time this past spring when singing Alleluia was the last thing I wanted to do. And yet, it followed me around. Reminding me that even though I was having a hard time, Jesus has triumphed, and I can trust Him, and sing Alleluia even in the saddest and hardest times, because He is still good. And for that, I love it. (Also, it’s just really fun to sing.)

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessings in His hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.
…
Rank on rank the host of Heaven spreads its vanguard on the way
As the Light of Lights descendeth from the realms of endless day
That the pow’rs of Hell may vanish as the darkness clears away.

I think this is Eomer’s favorite hymn of all time, and my entire family has a huge soft spot for it. (We’re minor key lovers, at heart.) Although there is an ongoing debate about whether it’s a Christmas song or an Easter song, I think it can be sung at any time of year. (Well, except Lent, because there are those alleluias…a fact that has tripped up more than one church choir. XD) It’s just SO HAUNTING. The melody that’s almost chantlike, the way it travels up and down the scale, almost always ascending…GAH. It’s gorgeous. And the words, too! The way that they poetically convey divine truths is nearly unparalleled. And the language of it!

The Summons

Will you leave yourself behind, if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare?
Should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you, and you in me?

I know this hymn seems like an anomaly in the middle of a post full of old-fashioned hymns and Latin chant. Which, to be fair, it is. But my dad grew up in the 70s and 80s, the time when hymns like this were being regularly sung at Mass, and he passed down to me his soft spot for it. I love the lilting melody, and the way that the words do really make one meditate on what one is willing to do for Jesus. It quite honestly gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it, especially the verse that I’ve quoted above, which I don’t think is true for any other song on this list.

Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Love Divine, all loves excelling, joy of Heaven to earth come down
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling, ever more Thy mercies crown.
Jesus, Thou art all compassion, pure unbounded Love Thou art
Visit us with Thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.

Hands down, I love singing the harmonies on this hymn more than any other hymn on this list. Have you ever seen the alto part? It is, as the kids say, TOTALLY FIRE. *ahem* But even the melody is absolutely beautiful, and the words are lovely. I, again, predictably, love the more old-fashioned lean of the way it’s written, but also the poetry of it.

All People That On Earth Do Dwell

Know that the Lord is God indeed;
Without our aid, He did us make;
We are His folk, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take.

This song makes me happy because it seems like the kind of sturdy hymn that would have been sung in an English church time out of mind. (This may be because it reminds me of The Secret Garden...) It's just also a lot of fun to sing lustily on a Sunday morning. Plus, it's based on Psalm 100, which is, to quote one of the people I've sung with, "a banger". XD 
And the old language in it makes me happy. To all the versions of it that render it “For His sheep he does us take” and so on…I bite my thumb at thee.

Adore Te Devote/Godhead Here In Hiding

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived
How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed.
What the Son of God has told me, take for truth I do
Truth Himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.

The first of St. Thomas Aquinas’s hymns to the Blessed Sacrament on this list, and it won’t be the last! This was the first chant that I learned to accompany on the piano, and still to this day, one of my favorites to play. The words, both in English and in Latin, are beautiful, and helpful for faith-bolstering (as I have found, in my life). When I was in youth group, in high school, we would all go to Adoration together for an hour, and then sing Compline in the Dominican way, and we would often, if not always, begin with this hymn, so thinking about it brings back really good memories of one of my good friends sitting next to me and singing it in her beautiful voice, as we sat in the dark church before the Blessed Sacrament.

Come Holy Ghost

Come with Thy grace and heav'nly aid
To fill the hearts which Thou has made
...
Thou heav’nly gift of God most high;
Thou font of life and fire of love,
And sweet anointing from above.

It was a very close squeeze between this hymn to the Holy Spirit and Come Down, O Love Divine. I like that one a lot, too, but I think I like this one more. I love the way the melody flows and swoops (fun to sing!), and I love the words, as well. It’s an invocation and a calling down of the Holy Spirit (or, in this case, Holy Ghost—the terms are interchangeable, at least in the Catholic tradition) but also a praising of His gifts, and I simply find it beautiful. (Also, the third verse that is a passive-aggressive reiteration of the Filioque clause of the Creed that caused the Great Schism is just hilarious. Like we haven’t shoved that in the Orthodox churches faces enough, and we have to say something along the lines of “and now let us all acknowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son” in the middle of a hymn to the Holy Spirit.) (That verse isn't in the recording I attached, but we sang it recently for a Confirmation at church, and it made me chuckle.)

Pange Lingua

Verbum caro, panem verum
Verbo carnem efficit:
Fitque Sanguis Christi merum,
Et si sensus deficit,
Ad firmandum cor sincerum
Sal fides sufficit. 

All of the verses of the Pange Lingua are beautiful, so choosing just one was very difficult. (They're not only beautiful in English--the Latin makes me SO happy just for the efficiency and beauty of the wording. Even though I'm not a good enough Latin scholar to grasp all the nuance just yet.)
We sing this one both in Latin and in English for the Holy Thursday procession of the Blessed Sacrament from the church to the altar of repose. That’s the one liturgy of the year that I almost invariably get choked up by (if I don’t cry altogether!), and this chant is a big part of that. Even thinking about it right now is making me get a little teary. Being part of the choir and singing it as we walk down the stairs from the choir loft to follow the Blessed Sacrament in solemn procession across the courtyard to the altar of repose is one of the most beautiful memories that I have from Newman.

In this video of a parish doing traditional Dominic Tenebrae, it's from 0:55 to 5:55

Sing, My Tongue, The Glorious Battle

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle
Sing the last, the dread affray
O’er the cross, the victor’s trophy
Sound the high triumphal lay.
…
Sweet the wood, and sweet the iron
And their load, most sweet is He.
…
Willing He meets His passion
This indeed is freely willed.

This hymn in the original is absurdly long. I’d just like to say that up front. It’s based on an ancient poem written by a king, if I’m remembering correctly? And there are many, many, many verses. (Although they’re not generally all sung.) But they’re all really beautiful as meditations on the Passion and God’s gift to us in that. It also has several different tunes that can be used, so I've attached a couple of different versions. We usually sing it as the opening hymn for Tenebrae on Holy Saturday, which means that we all enter the church in complete silence, and then the Hebdom (the person who leads Tenebrae) knocks on the wood of the choirstalls, and we stand and immediately launch into this hymn. It’s haunting, to say the least, and it’s one of my favorite hymns that we sing during Holy Week. (Although, as you may have observed, I have several of those.)

So, there you are! Some of my favorite hymns! Now, your turn: what are your favorite hymns? Are there any that I just listed off that you’ve never heard of? Do you have a secret soft spot for any hymns from the 80s?