Compline in Lent

​For the six Wednesdays in Lent, Compline was offered as a way to close the day in calming rest and reflection. A choir of six people led the services in sung prayers, psalms, anthems, motets and Taizé hymns each week. Highlights included John Stainer’s setting of Phos hilaron (Hail Gladdening Light) as an introit every week, and motets including Farrant’s Lord for Thy Tender Mercy’s Sake, Rick Sowash’s Be Still, Thomas Morley’s three part setting of Agnus Dei, and John Stainer’s God So Loved the World.
 
This was all offered with a sense of space, reverence and beauty. Although the attending congregations were small, their experience of this evening worship was expansive. Singers and congregants alike were part of something vaguely indescribable but infinitely important. One never truly knows what impact any offering, musical or otherwise, in a service of worship might have, but it might just land in the ear of someone who desperately needs that message. And that a small volunteer choir can offer that message is a marvellous thing. St Augustine said that when one sings, one prays twice. This small choir of Rileigh Lewis, Emma Martin, Emily Markwart, MaryEllen Finlay, Barry Morrison and Cameron Finlay offered some very lovely prayerful leadership over these six weeks.

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