Illuminations
Festal Joy
by Anthony Esolen
I have seen enough of secular life in the academy to make the following claim, which I have made in various forms over the last ten years: Man is united only from above, never from below. Only when he and his fellows turn their eyes toward the transcendent will they ever forget their reasons for hatred or suspicion or mere separation from one another, and be brothers again. Irene Dunne, one of the Roman Catholic conservatives in Hollywood in the days when that sink of iniquity was still half-sane and half-decent, used to say that we will never know the brotherhood of man without the fatherhood of God.
The only thing quick about the secular academy in my time is its sand, the wet and heavy sand of enforced uniformity, that satanic parody of unity, while beneath it and within its dark heart seethe all the old hatreds of man. Any actual communion of minds and souls gasps out its consumptive life in inverse relation to the prominence of patter about "community," just as any diversity of fully realized human souls may only be discovered in a few forgotten corners of the campus, which the idolaters of diversity have not sprayed with their herbicides.
Brief, Bright Hour
All of which may seem to be an odd way to introduce a hymn about the Eucharist. But I beg the reader's patience. The old hymnodist Horatio Bonar felt that double separation, of man from God and of man from man, and made it the subject of a wistful and yet deeply hopeful poem about Holy Communion, "This Is the Hour of Banquet and of Song." In the first stanza he rejoices in the sacrament, as his joy is mingled with an implied sadness that the time of his reception must pass:
This is the hour of banquet and of song;
This is the heavenly table spread for me;
Here let me feast, and feasting, still prolong
The brief, bright hour of fellowship with Thee.
That is a fine stanza, with its initial anaphora, the effective repetition of the verb, well-chosen rhymes, and the striking alliteration in the final line. In the hands of a skillful poet, alliteration, which is front-end rhyme, can do what back-end rhyme does, which is to bind words and their meanings together, so that you see them in a new or unusual relation. Here the rhyming word prolong concentrates in itself the two temporal concerns of the stanza. We worship the everlasting God, and we receive the sacrament in a service that lasts an hour or so, and our actual reception takes only a few moments. Yet Bonar sings, in the feast, a song that helps to make those moments last longer. He is not eager to hustle out of the building and get in his carriage to beat the rest of the traffic. Hence he lingers on the word feast, and he places next to one another the alliterating adjectives brief and bright:for the hour of the worship of God is sweet and bright, yet so brief. It is an hour of fellowship, clinched by the rhyming pronouns me and Thee.
God has set the table, and we partake of the feast, but it cannot be sufficient, in our lives here and now. The insufficiency is brought home to Bonar by what he knows will happen after the service is over:
Too soon we rise; we go our several ways;
The feast, though not the love, is past and gone,
The bread and wine consumed; yet all our days
Thou still art here with us, our shield and sun.
Alas, in the secular world the stanza might read thus, as after a meeting of some English department:
At last we rise; we go our several ways;
The business, not the hate, is past and gone,
The wine and cheese consumed; yet all our days
Starve on the littered battlefield, alone.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on music from the online archives
33.3—May/June 2020
Bach's Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbesteZeit (God's time is the very best time) by Ken Myers
more from the online archives
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
