Cantate Domino Canticum Novum
I have always found it highly significant that when Christians first show up in the pagan literature, they appear as singing. The year was approximately 112 A.D. Pliny the Younger, serving as the Roman governor in Pontus and Bithynia wrote to the Emperor for guidance about what to do with the Christians. When he describes their practice he says this: “they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.”
That fixed day, of course, was Sunday, the Lord’s Day. And they gathered early, for in the Roman world in those days, Sunday was not a rest day. That didn’t happen until Constantine decreed it in 321. But so devoted were those early Christians to observing the Day of the Resurrection, that they rose up before dawn and came together before the sun rose, in order that they might sing to Christ, whom they acknowledged as divine, before they had to head off to work.
And note that the singing was described as responsive. What exactly did that mean? Did it mean that they had common refrains or antiphons that all would join in on while the cantor(s) would lead the singing of the more complex or longer parts? Perhaps. Or it might well mean that they sang antiphonally, one part answering the other, as the very structure of so many of the Psalms suggests. Either way, what’s clear is that the coming together to sing with each other hymns to Christ, and so confess and praise Him as true God, was a chief reason they assembled in the first place.
We may get a sense of these hymns first of all by the snippets that are teasingly strewn throughout the New Testament (think of Colossians 1 or of Philippians 2 or 1 Timothy 3). It comes into clearer focus when we ponder the ancient hymns of the liturgy. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the hymn referenced in Pliny’s letter is actually what we call the Gloria in Excelsis, the Greater Glory. Granted, it is addressed to all three persons of the Trinity, but it clearly focuses its center section on Christ: “O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sin of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us. For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord.” Anciently, and to this day in the Eastern Church, this hymn was always a part of the early morning office. Think also of the Phos Hilaron, a hymn so ancient that St. Basil the Great in the 300’s confessed its origins were already long forgotten in his day: “Joyous light of glory, of the immortal Father! Heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ.” An evening hymn of praise, but a hymn Christians addressed to Christ when they assembled and so confessed Him as true God with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Gathering together to sing Christ’s praises to one another (back and forth, responsively) has continued to mark the journey of the Church through the centuries. I think it is absolutely beyond dispute that singing to Christ and singing of Christ has resulted in a virtual tidal wave of music that has swept across humanity, taken up and transformed (and been transformed by) the music of every people, and continues unabated to sweep across the face of human history. Surely some anthropologist somewhere must have given thought to this very odd explosion of praise and thanksgiving that has captured the hearts of countless men and women on every continent, and to which they applied their highest efforts and greatest skills.
From the ancient sublimities of the chanted Psalter and Canticles of the Old Testament, to the New Testament Canticles, to the hymns of the ancient church, the medieval church, during the Reformation, and in the Church in every century, the explosion of praise, the singing of the Lord’s “new song” has not ceased. And what marks it all as Christian is that they sang them all (especially the Psalms) to and with Him, to the Virgin-born, Crucified, Risen, Ascended, Glorified and Returning Lord. They sang not to some absentee Master, but to the Lord who was very present among them as they gathered on His day, and who still continued to come among them in His Sermon and His Eucharist and wherever two or three gathered in His name in order to to bless them, to fill them with His forgiveness and His endless life. He was among them and so they HAD to sing. They ran together for the privilege of lifting their voices to Him in praise. Thanking Him. Blessing Him. Glorifying Him. Confessing Him.
Nor will history’s end bring an end to this phenomenon. It quite literally rolls on into eternity. Fills eternity as one of its chief joys. Cantate Domino canticum novum! Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! It’s new because it celebrates the “making all things new” which is, of course, Christ’s unique work.
Look at your hymnal, people loved by God! It’s a treasure house of these hymns, and it’s a tiny fraction of the whole! The hymns of the people of Christ to their Master will never be confined in the pages of a single book. The praise is too rich, vast, and ALIVE for that. The song that brings the joys of eternity to us and us to its supreme joy in Christ is wild and living, life-giving. No wonder those early Christians bounded from bed in the dark and joyfully headed off to the assembly where together the song might begin to rise! No wonder no generation since has let the song cease and we know it never shall. In these Corona days it’s been one of the things I have missed most deeply about the assembly: coming together for the joy of praising Christ in song. May He swiftly bring it to an end that we may resume our ancient, present, and eternal occupation: singing to the Lord!
