An Evening Hymn

By Alex Grudem on May 13, 2022 in From Our Pastors

Monday, May 9, 2022, marked the Feast Day of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. St. Gregory was a Cappadocian priest, bishop, and thinker whose theology, alongside the other Cappadocian Fathers’, helped articulate the doctrine of Christ’s human and divine natures at the Council of Constantinople. In addition to his theological writings, St. Gregory was also a prolific hymnist. His hymnody includes the following, “An Evening Hymn.”

Christ, my Lord, I come to bless thee,
Now when day is veiled in night;
Thou who knows no beginning,
Light of the Eternal Light

Thou the darkness hast dissolved,
And the outward light created,
That all things in light might be;
Fixing the unfixed chaos,
Molding it to wondrous beauty,
Into the fair world we see.

Thou enlightenest man with reason,
Far beyond the creatures dumb,
That light in thy light beholding,
Wholly light he might become.

Thou hast set the radiant heavens
With thy many lamps of brightness,
Filling all the vaults above,
Day and night in turn subjecting
To a brotherhood of service
And a mutual law of love.

By the Light of the Eternal Light, may we be found a Church that subjects, night and day, to a brotherhood of service and a mutual law of love.

Christ’s Peace,
Bree Snow
Minister of Formation and Catechesis