Choral Work

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace [listen] was written by Sebastian Temple (1928-1997) in 1967. Temple was born in South Africa, moved to London, then to the United States where he ultimately converted to Catholicism in a Franciscan Order. A man of diverse interests, he dedicated his later years to composing music for worship.

Temple’s Make Me a Channel of Your Peace employs a light melodious folk melody suitable for guitar accompaniment onto which a stylized version of the traditional Peace Prayer is applied (see comparison below). By contrast, another version of the Prayer in the ESUMC library is David Stanley York’s Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace, which applies the traditional text rigorously on undoubtedly beautiful but not necessarily melodious music.

Temple:

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord,
And where there’s doubt, true faith in you.

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, only light,
And where there’s sadness, ever joy.

Oh, Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand.
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
in giving of ourselves that we receive,
and in dying that we’re born to eternal life.

Traditional:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace is reportedly very popular in England, and was selected for use in the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 as shown on the sheet music. Martin Neary was the Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey from 1988 to 1998, and arranged a fuller accompaniment and descant for Temple’s work.

Temple died the same year as Princess Diana, but was able to see his work gain world attention.

Musicians, who see themselves as instruments in the first place, are drawn to the idea a contributing to the larger purpose. Consequently there are dozens of “Make Me an Instrument” compositions (Rutter! Clausen!) and even more song/artist combinations (Sinead O’Connor! Olivia Newton John!).

St. Francis (1181? – 1226) was born into wealth and lived lavishly as a young man prior to a number of life changes that led him to religious asceticism. The Peace Prayer is not in fact found among St. Francis’s writings, but came to be associated with him as his likeness appeared on the back of a popular printing. The prayer dates from the 20th century.

Sources:

with Filippa Duke

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth
John 14: 15-17a KJV

The English master composer Thomas Tallis (1505?-1585) was engaged in the royal courts as an organist and composer principally of choral music during Renaissance period. Tallis was among the earliest composers of choral works in English, rather than Latin, following the edict of King Edward VI [1], whose intention was to make the elements of the emerging Protestant religious service accessible to English speakers. If Ye Love Me [listen] is an early example of the English Anthem, mostly homophonic (one syllable to a note) and composed in ABB form, in which the second portion is repeated. If Ye Love Me, composed 1565, is a mainstay in the sacred choral music repertoire and on the very early portion of the spectrum.

While the synoptic gospels provide an accounting of events, John is focused on the nature of God in human form and on his love. Nowhere is this love more evident than in John 14. Here, during The Last Supper, Jesus is speaking intimately with his disciples. I don’t have any more to teach you, he says, and you are no longer my followers, but my friends. And I am leaving you.

Verse 16 provides the first mention in John of the Holy Spirit, God’s provision for an ongoing presence of God in our lives once Jesus (God in human form) has departed, thus making the verse one of the most pivotal passages in the Bible.

We, you and I, are armed with 2000 years of retrospect and probably several decades of Sunday School. We know what is going to happen at the Last Supper and beyond. Jesus has the power of omniscience. He knows that his earthly path is soon over, that the journey with his fellow travelers is soon to end, and that he is on the precipice of a very unpleasant ordeal. The disciples, by contrast, have not these advantages and are completely unequipped for the occasion, thinking that tomorrow will be another day with the Teacher, and now wondering, “If you are leaving me, how am I to go forward?”

If Ye Love Me speaks most clearly if we, like the disciples, can turn our attention to God in human form speaking to us with a great and heavy heart, trying once more to help us.

with Filippa Duke

Make Me A Channel of Your Peace – Temple/Neary

If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis