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Lee Evans
  • 5/3/2025
MUSIC
Transcript
00:00The old songs are normally the best songs and one of the oldest songs in the
00:05Christian world has been sung for over one and a half thousand years. It is a
00:09beautiful song. It is the song of gladsome light.
00:19Every Saturday during the service of Vespers in the Orthodox Church we sing
00:24a hymn known as the hymn of gladsome light. It is a song that fills our hearts
00:30with warmth and it is incredibly ancient. It is so ancient in fact that its
00:35origins are unclear. In the 4th century Saint Basil refers to this song as
00:40already being an old hymn. So the hymn of gladsome light is being referred to as
00:45old at a time when the church hasn't even got a canonized Bible yet. That is how
00:50old this hymn is. It is one of the oldest non-biblical hymns still in use in
00:56Christianity today. Early stories regarding this hymn suggest that it was
01:00composed by a martyr named Saint Athenogenes and that he sang this hymn as
01:06his last words before his martyrdom and that this hymn was preserved by his
01:10followers and kept in the church. It is possible that it predates him and he was
01:15quoting an earlier teacher and writer. This hymn would then go on to be revised and
01:20possibly changed a little bit musically three centuries later by another saint in
01:24Jerusalem. This saint was named Sophronios and he was the patriarch of the
01:28city. He was a member of the sixth ecumenical council and he was in charge of the
01:32city of Jerusalem when it fell to the Muslim invaders in the year 637. The loss of
01:37the city of Jerusalem preceded as it had been by years of wars and fighting was
01:43said to have broken his heart. While the saints looked into the face of the
01:46darkness, what we hear in the song is a profound light. This song is often known
01:52as the lamp lighting hymn and it is accompanied with the bringing of lights
01:55in the evening services. In the ancient understanding of the day, the day doesn't
01:59begin with the dawn, it begins with sunset and thus the song of gladsome light is
02:04really one of the first songs of the day and it appears during our Vespers
02:09service and there is a mirroring of it in a song that we hear during our Divine
02:14Liturgy on Sunday morning. In the Divine Liturgy on Sunday we hear the words, we
02:18have seen the true light. Both hymns are referring not to a time of day, not to a
02:22dawn or a sunset, they are both referring to the light of Christ and a life in
02:27Christ. While you will hear slightly different translations and variations of
02:31this hymn in Orthodox churches, it goes something like this.
02:35O gladsome light of the holy glory, of the immortal Father, heavenly, holy, blessed, O
02:40Jesus Christ, now that we have come to the setting of the sun and behold the light
02:45of evening, we hymn and praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, how right it is at all
02:51times to bless and worship you, O Son of God, the giver of life, the whole world
02:56magnifies you.

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