KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 8 December
Rejoice! Rejoice!
The three Advent Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols brought to an end the Chapel programme for Michaelmas, ending the term on a reflective and yet celebratory note, nicely captured in the stirring refrain of the great Advent Hymn, Veni Emmanuel. “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Despite the paradox of having the ‘Christmas Dinner and Dance’ before these services, they nonetheless helped in appreciating more deeply something of the “true meaning” of Christmas, as the lovely Bidding Prayer from the original service of 1918 puts it. That sense of its true meaning emphasizes the vision of the redemption of our humanity as opposed to a world of war and conflict, a vision signaled in different registers in the nine lessons from Scripture and which speaks to our world and day.
Framed by the sixteenth century Italian composer, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Matin Responsory and shaped by traditional verses of the 12th century Veni Emmanuel that punctuated the reading of the lessons, the service is a moving pageant of Word and Song. The Choir, in its various configurations under the direction of Stephanie Fillman, not only led the singing of the Advent Carol, Hark a Herald Voice is Sounding, the Huron Carol, Canada’s first Christmas Carol originally written in the Wendat language (Huron) by the Jesuit missionary Jean Brébeuf, Silent Night, and Shepherds in the Field Abiding, but different choir members sang as solos the verses of the Veni Emmanuel with everyone joining in on the refrain. Many thanks to Steven Roe, organist, for his professionalism and flexibility, and for providing such fine preludes and postludes appropriate to the occasion.
The Choir performed as well a lovely anthem Once upon a December Evening by Stephen Flaherty. This was complemented at the Grade 12 service on Sunday night and at the Grade 10 and 11 service on Tuesday by the vocal and instrumental duet of Ann MacQuarrie (guitar) and Sophie Ning (keyboard) in a beautiful rendition of Matt Anderson’s My Little Country Church at Christmas Time. All three services were greatly enhanced by the meditative classical guitar piece El Noi de la Mare, a traditional Catalonian composition, performed with great precision and care by Harvey Hadley. All quite remarkable and rather special.
My thanks to the teams of readers and servers and to the Chapel Prefects who assisted in the preparations for the services in lighting the window candles in the Chapel. The readers at the Junior Service on Friday, December 1st performed very well. They were Willoughby Larder (Gr. 8), Ollie Boyle (Gr. 6), Nathaelle Etou (Gr. 9), Max Proctor (Gr. 9), Chelsea James (Gr. 7), Kelsea Griffiths (Gr. 9), and Lillian Blois (Gr. 9). Mrs. Taya Shields, Head of the Junior School, read the eight lesson and the Chaplain sang the ninth lesson, the Prologue of John’s Gospel which is traditionally read at Christmas. The servers at the Junior Service were Rowan Francis, Sokha Ebert, Spencer Armstrong and Farrah Webber.
