One of the legacies my father left me was a love of Church hymnody. I grew up singing hymns unaccompanied, in four-part harmony. My dad had a beautiful voice and for many years led the singing and directed the choir in his church. But he didn’t sing only on Sundays. As I remember, he was almost always whistling or humming, or even singing hymns as he worked during the week. In fact, it was one of the things that annoyed me when I was a teenager. He was a carpenter and I grew up spending time with him on the jobsite. As soon as I was big enough, I began working with him. Every summer from junior high through high school, and on into college, the day after school was over, he would wake me up and put me to work.

That was bad enough; but usually from Monday through Friday, as he worked, he would be whistling, or humming, or singing, one of the hymns that had been sung in church on Sunday. And more often than not, it was a catchy tune, with words that seemed to me less than adequate theologically (yes, I became a critic quite early in life). I would get so annoyed by this, that by the middle of the week I would try to think of an alternative, more suitable hymn, and try to outsing him, or at least get him to make a change.

I thought of that today. On Sunday, as we were preparing the altar, Karen played variations on one of my favorite hymns, and then at the 11:00 service, we sang it as one of the communion hymns. It’s a text by William Bright and the title is “And now,O Father, mindful of the love.” The tune is beautiful, but on Sunday I had the opportunity to sing the words and to look closely at them during the service. I especially love the second verse:

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
and only look on us as found in him;
look not on our misusings of thy grace,
our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
for lo, between our sins and their reward
we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.

Bright’s words evoke the concluding collect of the Good Friday liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

I suspect that for my father singing hymns throughout the week wasn’t just about the music; it was a form of prayer. It is a real gift to my spiritual life and to my journey toward Holy Week, that since Sunday, the tune of that hymn has been going through my mind, becoming my prayer of preparation for this most holy of seasons.