Internet Archive St. Michael’s College Toronto
Courtesy Victorian Web.
Perhaps lately I’ve been dwelling a bit too much on tradition and its importance in our lives. This may well be one of the signs of creeping – or rather hobbling – old age mixed with the age of anxiety we live in today. However I find comfort and consolation in both the memories and the continuance of the familiar: the traditional.
For over 500 years at sunrise on the first day of May the students, choristers and fellows at Magdalen College join the townspeople of Oxford in celebrating the arrival of Spring. The choristers, stationed in the Great Tower of the College, sing the Hymnus Eucharisticus composed in 1685 by Benjamin Rogers, “Doctor of Musique of the University of Oxon”. It is followed by a series of prayers or collects from, to my mind at least, the second greatest piece of English religious literature, The Book of Common Prayer, and continues with Thomas Morely’s Now is the Month of Maying. It ends as the bells of Magdalen ring out over the colleges and town with a series of elaborate changes.
The tradition was continued today as once again the choristers sang Rogers’ invocation to the Eucharist, the Dean of Divinity read the Collects for the day, May was celebrated with Morely’s slightly bawdy Ode and the eight bell peal rang out to hymn the arrival of a season of renewal.
Whither the religious aspects of this small service appeal to you or not the music, the beauty of the language and the comfort in the words are the promise of hope. A promise I feel we are all in need of these days – no matter the form it takes.
Thanks to my dear friend Cathy for sending me this video to start the morning at a time when it was much needed.
The word for May 1st is:
Collect /ˈkälˌekt/ /ˈkɑlˌɛkt/: [noun]
In liturgical usage: a short prayer, especially one assigned to a particular day or season.
Late Middle English: from Old French collecter or medieval Latin collectare, from Latin collect- ‘gathered together’, from the verb colligere, from col- ‘together’ + legere ‘choose or collect’.
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