Almighty and Everlasting God, Who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we. worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
As we enter in to the holy season of Lent, this hymn by Isaac Watts, based on Psalm 39, is a great guide for our meditation on our mortality and the hope we have in God. It has been sung to various tunes historically, but one of the most common is St. Columba, the familiar tune we know from “The King of Love My Shepherd Is.”
Teach me the measure of my days,
Thou Maker of my frame!
I would survey life's narrow space,
And learn how frail I am.
A span is all that we can boast:
A fleeting hour of time;
Man is but vanity and dust,
In all His flower and prime.
Vain race of mortals, see them move
Like shadows o'er the plain:
They rage and strive, desire and love,
But all the noise is vain.
Some walk in honor's gaudy show;
Some dig for golden ore;
They toil for whom they do not know,
And straight are seen no more.
What should I wish or wait for then,
From creatures, earth, and dust?
They make our expectations vain,
And disappoint our trust.
Now I resign my earthly hope,
My fond desires recall;
I give my mortal interest up,
And make my God my all.
We are not quite a full week into this Lenten season—a time of cutting away things that hold us back in our Christian lives and of taking up new habits that will draw us closer to God and conform us more closely to the image of Christ. Both the negative (cutting away) and positive (taking up) aspects of Lent require us to break old habits and form new ones.
We find ourselves again this year in the (seemingly) awkward season of pre-Lent: the three weeks whose Sundays on the church calendar have very strange sounding names (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima) and which are not familiar to many growing up in a post Vatican II world. For those of us who follow the historic, ancient church calendar, these Sundays form a turning point and time of preparation for the austerity of Lent.
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