VOX CLARA ECCE INTONAT – 3
The third stanza, let us recall, goes as follows:
E sursum Agnus mittitur
Laxare gratis debitum:
Omnes pro indulgentia
Vocem demus cum lacrimis.
The translation goes as follows:
Lo! the Lamb, so long expected,
Comes with pardon down from heaven;
Let us haste, with tears of sorrow,
One and all to be forgiven.
A more literal translation will be helpful: ‘From above the Lamb is sent, to loose the debt out of kindness; let us all, for tender love’s sake, give voice with tears.’ It is
worth considering in what sense the hymn-writer considered that the Lamb was being sent from heaven. The present tense is used, ‘mittitur.’ The writer is not looking back in time to the coming of Christ at Bethlehem; nor indeed is he anticipating the second coming of Christ in glory, for he refers to that in the next stanza in a way which contrasts with this coming. So in what sense can it be said, in the present tense, that the Lamb ‘comes with pardon down from heaven.’
Saint Bernard explains the matter in his Sermon no 5 on Advent – a reading actually appointed for today in the Roman breviary, were it not displaced by that for St Andrew’s Day:
‘We have come to know a threefold coming of the Lord. The third coming takes place between the other two. They are clearly manifest but the third is not. In the first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men in the days when, as he himself bears witness, they saw him and hated him. In his last coming ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of our God’, and ‘they shall look on him whom they
have pierced.’ The other coming is hidden. In it, only the chosen see him within themselves and their souls are saved. In brief, his first coming was in the flesh and in weakness, this intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power, the last coming will be in glory and majesty.’
Pius Parsch, whose book ‘The Church’s Year of Grace’ I have obtained through the good offices of Stan Metheny, puts the matter thus: ‘But which coming are we celebrating? We know there are three comings – the first in the flesh as Man; the second in majesty and glory on the last day; and the third in grace.’ What the
stanza is saying, therefore, is that Christ is coming, in a very real way, today. Not in the way he came at Bethlehem, nor yet on the clouds of glory, but in grace, particularly, it is hinted, in the sacrament of the Mass. Of course, Christ comes in other ways too, but the use of the title Agnus, the Lamb, suggests the way he is acclaimed at the Mass: ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ The next stanza, as we shall see, suggests that if we do welcome Christ today, in his sacramental presence, it will stand us in good stead ‘when next he comes with glory.’
