The St. Michael’s Singers offered a musical prayer for Ukraine as their Lenten devotion last Friday. Check them out singing the now well-known Ukrainian hymn “Bozhe Velykyi,” an anthem for protection and prosperity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBe79RSg18

The choral anthem on Sunday is a classic from the Anglican choral repertoire: Herbert Howells’ “Like as the hart.” A psalm paraphrase for choir and organ, the Lenten anthem compares our longing to be close to God to that of a deer searching for refreshing water. Sunday’s prelude by another classic English composer, C.H.H. Parry, similarly ruminates on the same text (“As pants the hart”) through the hymn melody Martyrdom (#658 in the Hymnal 1982).

The postlude, meanwhile, is an arrangement by the American composer Kristina Langlois of the English hymn “O love, how deep, how broad, how high.” You might notice that the melody she chose for that most familiar of hymn texts is the “alternate” tune from our Hymnal 1982: #449 instead of #448. Langlois teaches organ at Concordia University, St. Paul, and is the Director of Music and Worship at Westwood Lutheran Church in Minnesota.