March 14

Fifth Thursday after Epiphany

Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16.

WHATEVER is felt strongly is wont to find expression in melody and song; and if Christ dwells in the heart in all richness of wisdom, then such songs will partake of the same, like overflowing streams from the hidden fountains of God, refreshing, enlivening, fertilizing all around, and making to abound in charity and thanksgiving to the praise of God. For here S. Paul combines the two, brotherly edification and thanksgiving; for he first says, "admonishing one another," and then adds, "singing to the Lord with grace in the heart." It is to God's glory that we are thus to sing, yet we cannot do so without benefiting others with this glad, this angelic service. For thankful love is like the flower, which cannot open its breast to heaven but that at the same time it breathes incense around. Nor in this are we left to ourselves, for the Spirit has Himself supplied us, and laid up in His Church a sacred treasury of "psalms and spiritual songs" rich in all the wisdom of God, full of all mutual admonishing and grace, with which the heart may find utterance with God, on every occasion of thanksgiving, and may ever kindle its own flame anew from the altar. But this voice of melody is not merely such as to break forth in such strains of the tongue, but this clothing of thanksgiving is to cover all the life; this temper to colour all with hues from the heart.

O my dear Lord, guide Thou my course, And draw me on with Thy sweet force; Still make me walk, still make me tend By Thee my Way, to Thee my End.