I look from afar: and lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth.
Go ye out to meet him and say:
Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over thy people Israel?
One of the devotional treasures of the Advent season is the repertoire of Advent music arranged for the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. A gem from this treasury is “I Look from Afar,” a chant-and-polyphony setting of a traditional Matins responsory for the First Sunday of Advent.
At Cambridge, “I Look from Afar” is usually sung at the beginning of King’s College’s annual Advent Procession. Given the connection between this responsory and a university that welcomed Dominican students and professors almost from its beginning, I propose that the responsory can be fruitfully meditated upon for its insights into Dominican study. These insights pair well with the responsory’s verses.
High and low, rich and poor, one with another,
Go ye out to meet him and say:
Dominican study is an act of religious obedience. Likewise, the main action of “I Look from Afar” is a command or commission to inquire after the Lord. A biblical parallel for this is John the Baptist’s sending of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you he who is to come . . . ?” (Luke 7:19).
Like John’s disciples, Dominican student brothers do not inquire about God out of idle curiosity. We study God because we have been assigned to do so for the sake of the Church’s preaching mission. Student brothers are given a formal command to study at the House of Studies by our prior provincial. More fundamentally, study is an integral part of the form of religious life established by Saint Dominic, who sent early brethren to study at the universities of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford.
Hear, O thou shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep.
Tell us, art thou he that should come?
Dominican study is persistent. Student brothers resemble the inquirers in “I Look from Afar,” who ask some form of the question “Art thou he that should come?” not once but three times. This perseverance in inquiry is exemplified by a co-patroness of our Order, Mary Magdalene. Remaining at the empty tomb longer than Peter and John, and having already reported that the tomb was empty, she nonetheless looked into the tomb again, “for one look is not enough for one who loves” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, In Jo., 2494).
Like Mary Magdalene, the Dominican student does not prematurely shrug his shoulders at mysteries; he perseveres in investigating them, even after familiar images are left behind by abstraction. The Dominican’s desire to seek God (quaerere Deum) in the cell and the choir stall leads him to the quaestio disputata of the classroom. There, informed by each wise respondeo of St. Thomas, he learns distinctions, principles, and causal explanations that encourage his pursuit of God and ground it in reality.
Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come
to reign over thy people Israel.
Dominican study leads, like the questions in “I Look from Afar,” to urgent petition. Our studies help us to recognize our utter dependence on God for our being and perfection. Likewise, they teach us the importance of sacred doctrine for attaining our ultimate end and helping others to do the same. Yearning to see God as the goal of our studies and our lives, we appeal to him to help us know and love him better. This urgency drives us from our desks back to the chapel and the prayers of the priory’s liturgy.
Obediently, perseveringly, and urgently, the Dominican student thus alternates between the classroom and the choir, the Summa and the Psalms, the responsio and the responsory, seeking to integrate these in one single-minded pursuit of God “who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev 1:8).
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
This Advent, following the example of King’s College, many parishes and college chaplaincies will hold services of Advent Lessons and Carols. These services, which imitate the traditional alternation between readings and responsories in the office of Matins, are beautiful aids to devotion in this season of yearning and expectation. I suggest that “I Look from Afar” points to another fitting way to focus our hearts on the Lord this Advent, especially for those who are drawn to the Dominican way of life: sacred study.
I look from afar: and lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth.
Go ye out to meet him and say:
Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over thy people Israel?
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
