O Salutaris Hostia

This Sunday, our Lay Clerks (that’s a fancy English title for ‘staff singers') will sing a setting of the medieval text, O salutaris hostia. These two verses are actually extracted from a much longer Latin hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Verbum supernum prodiens (“The word from above came forth”). St. Thomas wrote this hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi, a solemnity focusing on the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and a celebration of central importance within the late medieval Catholic Church.
 
This seems an appropriate hymn to sing at the moment, because it encapsulates a quality of supplication regarding the Eucharistic feast. In a time without Eucharist fellowship, when pandemic disease has severed our physical connection to the sacramental presence of Christ in bread and wine, the prayer serves as a kind of plea for help, and expresses a longing for the time when we can share in this meal together.
 
I would like to share a recording of my previous Notre Dame colleagues singing a setting of O salutaris hostia by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, a version that has become a favorite at Saint Philip’s.
 
O saving Victim! opening wide
The gate of heaven to man below,
Our foes press hard on every side,
Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.
 
All praise and thanks to thee ascend
For evermore, blest One in Three;
O grant us life that shall not end
In our true native land with thee.
(Translation by John Mason Neal, Edward Caswall and others)
 
Justin Appel
Director of Music