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Apples and Advent: Doxology, Sin and Paradox by Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Last night in Lessons and Carols for Advent Sunday at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Honolulu I was struck by the paradoxical nature of doxology in pre-Enlightenment texts. It seems t hat our ancient Christian siblings could not color within the lines the Enlightenment set out for us, their posterity, and so we borrow from those whose doxology knew no constraint in rejoicing in God’s saving work. Two examples come to mind: the medieval “Adam lay ybounden,” (the full text at bottom) often sung in services of Advent Lessons and Carols, and the “felix culpa” (“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam”) text in the Easter Vigil’s ancient Exsultet. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_culpa for full text. Accessed November 30, 2009.) I will not explore here the scholarly apparatus and history of these examples, as that is amply done in other places. (Begin by searching wikipedia for both “felix culpa” and “Adam lay y...

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Passion/Palm Sunday and Children Children cry out at the most inopportune times. That is what parents and many adults think. But as a grandpa and a liturgical observer, I find they cry out at most appropriate times. Not always, of course, but sometimes at just the right moment and awaken the dead--all of us who are ho-humming through a Sunday morning. Today at the Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew in Honolulu, (confession time here--I did not have a pen to make notes of the precise spot in the order of service) there was a point when an infant cried out as if to give an exclamation point to the moment--perhaps at the conclusion of "Holy, Holy, Holy...Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." All I remember is that it the timing was right on! Another instance of this happend last All Saints Sunday at St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Centreville Virginia. The congregation dutifully sang "This is the feast of victory for our God, for the Lamb who...