Sunday, June 7, 2009

"Faith of Our Fathers” Marika Lee's Hymn & Scripture Study Sundays

With Father's Day coming up, I thought this would be a good choice. This week’s song is “Faith of Our Fathers”. Click here for music. If you want my SAT, or rather I should say, SA + Men (Soprano, Alto, Men) arrangement of this song, click here

Scriptures for this song:
1 Timothy 6:12 Verses 6-11 tell us why we should fight this good fight.
Jude 1:3
John 8:32

Various facts:
Text by Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863)
Music by Henri F. Hemy (1818-1888) & the refrain by James G. Walton (1821-1905)

The story with the song:
Frederick W. Faber became an Anglican priest but converted to Roman Catholicism a few years later. He decided to write Catholic hymns because he really wanted there to be a movement towards more congregational hymn singing in the Catholic churches. He was disappointed that there weren't any hymns in the Catholic church that would compare to those of other churches.

He also apparently wanted to see England return to God. The original third verse asks that "our country" be brought "back to thee". He alludes to the scripture in John 8:32 also in the original third verse saying, "And through the truth that comes from God, England shall then indeed be free."

The hymn has been changed over time. The second verse no longer refers to the fathers who were "chained in prison's dark". The current version still lends us much to think about as we allow our minds to linger on those who have gone before us.

I am doing a little research online to find these things out. I also have a book entitled "Our Latter-day Hymns The Stories and the Messages" by Karen Lynn Davidson from which I am finding information on these songs. If you want more info, the aforementioned book and the Internet search engines can get you much more than the little bit I shared.

Did you Journal for 5
today?

No comments: