Our Morning Offering – 25 April – Feast of St Mark Evangelist
Behold the Messengers of Christ
By Fr Jean-Baptiste Santeul (1630-1697)
Priest, Monk, Hymnist, Poet, Writer
Behold the Messengers of Christ,
Who sow in every place,
The unveiled Mysteries of God,
The Gospel of His Grace.
The things through mists and shadows dim
By holy prophets seen,
In the full Light of Day, they saw
With not a cloud between.
What Christ, true Man, Divinely wrought,
What God in Manhood bore,
They wrote, as God inspired, in words
Which live forevermore.
Although in space and time apart,
One Spirit ruled them all
And in their Sacred pages still
We hear that Spirit’s Call.
To God, the blessèd Three in One,
Be glory, praise and might,
Who called us from the shades of death
To His Own glorious Light.
Amen.
Trans. Compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1861.
This Hymn was used for Vespers I & II and Nocturns on the Feasts of St Mark and St Luke in the Paris Breviary (1736). Cardinal Newman’s Hymni Ecclesiae has it listed for the same hours, as the Common of Evangelists in the Paris Breviary (presumably a later edition).
Tune: “Tiverton“ Rev J Grigg, c1791.
AnaStpaul 