We declare to you what was from the beginning,

what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes,

what we have looked at and touched with our hands,

concerning the word of life—

this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it,

and declare to you the eternal life

that was with the Father and was revealed to us—

we declare to you what we have seen and heard

so that you also may have fellowship with us;

and truly our fellowship is with the Father

and with his Son Jesus Christ.

We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

—1 John 1:1-4, NRSV

Good Christian friends, rejoice!

Today your Lord comes

in love and power,

in grace and truth,

offering hope and peace.

This promised one,

mighty, though small,

is our hope, our strength, and our life.

In hope, let us worship God. Alleluia! Amen.

Go through, go through the gates,

prepare the way for the people;

build up, build up the highway,

clear it of stones,

lift up an ensign over the peoples.

The Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth:

Say to daughter Zion, “See, your salvation comes;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.”

They shall be called, “The Holy People,

The Redeemed of the Lord”;

and you shall be called, “Sought Out,

A City Not Forsaken.”

People of God, in Jesus Christ you are a holy people,

the redeemed of the Lord.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

—based on Isaiah 62:10-12, NRSV

The Lord’s grace is sure.

God has looked with favor upon his people

and has redeemed them.

God has raised up a mighty savior

from the house of David.

God spoke through the prophets of old

so that we would be saved from our enemies

and from the hand of all who hate us.

God has shown mercy and has remembered his promises.

—based on Luke 1:68-72

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all,

training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions,

and in the present age to live lives

that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,

while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation

of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Live now in the power of Christ, to the praise of his name!

—based on Titus 2:11-13, NRSV

John M. Neale's life is a study in contrasts: born into an evangelical home, he had sympathies toward Rome; in perpetual ill health, he was incredibly productive; of scholarly tem­perament, he devoted much time to improving social conditions in his area; often ignored or despised by his contemporaries, he is lauded today for his contributions to the church and hymnody. Neale's gifts came to expression early–he won the Seatonian prize for religious poetry eleven times while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1842, but ill health and his strong support of the Oxford Movement kept him from ordinary parish ministry. So Neale spent the years between 1846 and 1866 as a warden of Sackville College in East Grinstead, a retirement home for poor men. There he served the men faithfully and expanded Sackville's ministry to indigent women and orphans. He also founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, which became one of the finest English training orders for nurses.

 

Laboring in relative obscurity, Neale turned out a prodigious number of books and artic1es on liturgy and church history, including A History of the So-Called Jansenist Church of Holland (1858); an account of the Roman Catholic Church of Utrecht and its break from Rome in the 1700s; and his scholarly Essays on Liturgiology and Church History 1863). Neale contributed to church music by writing original hymns, including two volumes of Hymns for Children (1842, 1846), but especially by translating Greek and Latin hymns into English. These translations appeared in Medieval Hymns and Sequences (1851, 1863, 1867), The Hymnal Noted (1852, 1854), Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), and Hymns Chiefly Medieval (1865). Because a number of Neale's translations were judged unsingable, editors usually amended his work, as evident already in the 1861 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modem; Neale claimed no rights to his texts and was pleased that his translations could contribute to hymnody as the "common property of Christendom."