Hymn of the Week: October 16, 2023
Where Charity and Love Prevail
Glory to God: 316
Text: Latin, 8, century
Translated by: Omer Westendorf, 1960
Music: Lucius Chapin 1812
Where charity and love prevail,
There God is ever found;
Brought here together by Christ’s love,
By love we thus are bound.
Let us recall that in our midst
Dwells Christ, God’s holy Son.
As members of each body joined,
In him we are made one.
Let strife among us be unknown;
Let all contentions cease.
Be God’s the Glory that we seek;
Be his our only peace.
Let us forgive each other’s faults
As we our own confess,
That we may love each other well
In Christian gentleness.
Love can exclude no race or creed
If honored be God’s name;
Our common life embraces
All whose Maker is the same.
Today’s Devotion:
Today’s Hymn of the Week, outside of Maundy Thursday and Ash Wednesday services, has wonderful text; in that it can be sung when singing about the Unity with Christ.
Omer Westendorf,
one of the earliest lyricists for Roman Catholic liturgical music in English, died on October 22, 1997, at the age of eighty-one.
Born on February 24, 1916, Omer got his start in music publishing after World War II, when he brought home for his parish choir in Cincinnati some of the Mass settings he had discovered in Holland. He was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He took the position as Music Director of St. Bonaventure Catholic church in Cincinnati and recorded and composed with this choir for many years.
Interest in the new music being published in Europe led to his creation of the World Library of Sacred Music, initially a music-importing firm that brought much of this new European repertoire to U.S. parishes. Operating out of a garage in those early years, Omer often joked about the surprised expressions of visitors who stopped by and found a wide range of sheet music in various states of “storage” (read disarray). Later, as World Library Publications, the company began publishing some of its own music, including new works with English texts by some of those same Dutch composers, for example, Jan Vermulst. In 1955 World Library published the first edition of The Peoples Hymnal, which would become the People's Mass Book in 1964, one of the first hymnals to reflect the liturgical reforms proposed by Vatican II. Omer also introduced the music of Lucien Deiss to Catholic parishes through the two volumes of Biblical Hymns and Psalms.
Using his own name and several pen names, Omer composed numerous compositions for liturgical use, though his best-known works may be the texts for the hymns “Where Charity and Love Prevail,” “Sent Forth by God’s Blessing,” and especially “Gift of Finest Wheat.” As he lay dying, his family and friends gathered around his bed to sing his text “Shepherd of Souls, in Love, Come, Feed Us.” NPM honored Omer as its Pastoral Musician of the Year in 1985.
“Where Charity and Love Prevail” (1961) provides an English hymn version of a 9th-century Latin hymn, “Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est” (Where there is charity and love, God is there) based on 1 John 4:16. Traditionally, this is the final hymn on Maundy Thursday, called in the Latin tradition Mandatum novum (New Commandment), referring to the act of washing of the disciples’ feet initiated by Jesus.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
--liturgicalleaders.blogspot.com/2008
