A Hymn for St. Matthew (and other Evangelists), Together with a Brief Digression on Latin Office Hymns in the Church of the Augsburg Confession
The Church of the Augsburg Confession is, historically speaking, very much a bilingual church. Well, there are rather more than two languages involved, but Lutheran worship is broadly unique for its embrace — from the beginning — of both the received Latin plainsong and choral repertoire as well as vernacular hymnody, whether that vernacular is German, Swedish, Hungarian, Slovak, or English. If you would like to claim that the Latin language has no place in Lutheran worship, I would direct you to Article XXIV of the Augustana:
Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; for the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence. Nearly all the usual ceremonies are also preserved, save that the parts sung in Latin are interspersed here and there with German hymns, which have been added to teach the people.
If you would like to know more about what that looked like in practice, you can listen to this rapidly paced presentation on the subject.
As much of the readership will know, Latin masses and offices are at something of an ebb in the current year, though it was encouraging to see Luther Classical College begin its first academic year with “Deus in adjutorium meum intende,” &c. The decline of Latin worship in our midst is much to be lamented, as many of the Latin-texted hymns that were taken for granted by our forebears (see, for example, the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus cited in AC XX) have fallen almost entirely out of our collective memory. While a small number of office hymns were translated into the vernacular with adapted rhythmic melodies by Dr. Luther in the first generation of Lutheran hymnals (see, for example, LSB 332, TLH 104, LSB 489), they were only a very small part of the received tradition, and also only a very small part of what continued to be sung in Lutheran cathedrals and parish churches across northern Europe following the Reformation. Many of these texts were left untranslated, not because of some intrinsic defect, but because their continuation in the parallel Latin language liturgical tradition was simply assumed. You can look, for example, at this 1720 choir book for the divine office at the Lutheran cathedral in Naumburg, and see a thriving Latin office tradition nearly two centuries after the Augsburg Confession. It’s hardly an exception, of course — the bibliography for the Lutheran Missal has an abundance of such examples.
Recent hymnals, to their credit, have seen a general increase in the number of office and sequence hymns from the Latin liturgical tradition, whether in rhythmic forms (LSB 345, 401, 403, 633) or with their original plainsong melodies (LSB 351, 460, 499, 889), though much remains to be done — the basic ferial office hymns for Terce, Sext, and None throughout the year have yet to make an appearance in any American Lutheran hymnal, and the weekday hymns for Vespers by St. Gregory the Great, based on the days of creation, have been similarly neglected.
All of that is an unnecessarily lengthy introduction to the following hymn, a condensed version of the twelfth century sequence Plausu chorus lætabundo for feasts of Evangelists, drawn from The English Hymnal (1906). It is a beautiful example of traditional Christian exegesis, seeing the types of the four Evangelists in the four rings/feet upholding the ark of the covenant, the four rivers of paradise, and, of course, the four living creatures. It would be a very suitable addition to your celebration of St. Matthew the Evangelist this Sunday.
5. Foursquare on this foudnation
The Church of Christ remains,
A house to stand unshaken
By floods or winds or rains.
O glorious happy portion
In this safe home to be,
By God, true Man, united
With God eternally!