Come, O Jesus

This is not so much a spiritual song as a responsory (refrain with verses) sung as part of a traditional pre-Christmas Moleben in the Byzantine Catholic Church.

Current version

And here is a printable PDF.

Source

This responsory was printed in at least two moleben booklets: a typescript booklet labelled "Let Light Shine Out of Darkness" (undated) and a Pre-Christmas Moleben by Mr. John Vernoski (1997). The original author of the text is unknown.

Text

The text in the two versions is identical. After the refrain:

Come, O Jesus, our Savior, redeem and save us!

the following verses are sung by the priest or cantor. The refrain is repeated after each verse.

Let heavens above rejoice, and let the clouds sprinkle truth; * let the earth germinate and bring forth the Savior.

O Christ the Savior, incarnate Son of the Eternal God, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, marvelous Fruit of the Holy Spirit,* come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, most holy Fruit of the most pure Virgin, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, source of our salvation, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, the bright Sun of the world, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, burning Thirst of the patriarchs, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, glorious Vision of the prophets, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, resplendent Star of Bethlehem, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, bright apparition to the shepherds, * come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, abundant dew from heaven,* come to us and save us!

O Christ the Savior, who loves us with all your heart, * come to us and save us!

Commentary

The first verse is similar to Isaiah 45:8: "Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above, like gentle rain let the clouds drop it down. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth." The remaining verses all follow the same pattern, addressing Christ and asking him to come and save us.

The text is fairly well-known, so it may be best not to make any chances, even though the agricultural references ("germinate", "fruit") may be foreign to many listeners.

To make the last verse grammatically correct, it would be appropriate to change "loves" to "love", since it is addressed to the Lord: "[You], who love us with all your heart...."

Melody

In the (presumably) earlier typeswritten version of the moleben, the refrain is written out to the first of the pair of refrain melodies for the Moleben to the Mother of God (found on page 180 in the 1970 Papp Irmologion):

There is no music for the verses, which are divided in two with an asterisk.

In the 1997 moleben booklet from John Vernoski, the refrain melody from the Moleben to Our Sweetest Lord Jesus (on page 179 of the Papp Irmologion) was used instead:

while the verses were written out to this melody:

For the MCI version (see "Current version" above), we went with the second of the two refrain melodies along with the matching verse melody, since they are better-known, and more appropriate for a hymn directed to Christ.

Include in the hymnal?

Yes. We have relatively few hymns for this liturgical season.

To contribute to this discussion...

Please post your comments and suggestions here, and they will be incorporated into this article.