Advent 19 – 19 December 2021
Good morning,
on this, the fourth Sunday of Advent. A fourth candle will be lit on advent wreaths, and church services will see nativity plays, with youthful sheep and shepherds, kings and angels, Marys and Josephs, if restrictions allow.
Here is an image of the nativity scene from the Byre Theatre from last year. Although it was closed (as it is once more), they built and lit a scene of the old Byre Theatre, which had indeed been a byre. As Christ was laid in a manger, a feeding-trough for animals, tradition has believed he was born in a cave for animals, a stable or cattle-shed, a byre for beasts.
Our St Andrews poet today is George Buchanan. Born in 1506 near Killearn, Stirlingshire, Buchanan attended Paris University before and after studying in St Andrews, graduating BA in 1525. He worked as a tutor to Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI, and as well as poetry mainly in Latin wrote history and political theory. In 1566 he was appointed Principal of St Leonard’s College. The Buchanan Building, home to the School of Modern Languages, is named after him.
Buchanan’s Hymnus Matutinus ad Christum is a profound meditation on the incarnation as giving light and knowledge, dispelling the darkness of ignorance. Here it is in the translation by Robert Crawford from Apollos of the North:
Morning Hymn to Christ
Undisputed Son of God,
Peer of your peerless Parent’s might,
Heavenly Father’s only Son,
True light begotten of true light!
Instead of darkness now here comes
Daybreak ushering in day
To let the great rays of the sun
Blaze on what darkness held at bay.
Still, though, the haar of ignorance
Casts a shadow on the brain
And under its misleading fog
The urge to give in grows again.
So, rise, you purest sun of all
And give this world your light of day,
Shining across our human night
And chasing error on its way.
Rid us of the freezing cold
And give our souls soul-food to eat
So all that’s poisoning our minds
Gets burned away by your lamp’s heat.
May the brain be nourished now
By the blessed heavens’ dew
Until the rich mind’s heavenly crops
Are reaped a hundredfold for you.
And here is the chapel of St Leonard’s College, where Buchanan was Principal, on a day of freezing cold. Perhaps we can see Buchanan’s faith, in the incarnation as the gift of intellectual light, exemplified in the research undertaken by postgraduates who belong to St Leonard’s College today. Whether or not we share Buchanan’s faith in Christ as light from God’s light, we surely all long for all that is fed by ignorance, all the falsehood that poisons the minds of people across the world, to be burned away by the light and warmth of truth.
Yours,
Donald.