Advent 2011: "Lo! He comes with clouds descending..."

Advent 2011. The choir of Lichfield Cathedral sing the advent hymn "Lo ! He comes with clouds descending" . Words by Charles Wesley (brother of the sectarian Arminian John Wesley) and rewritten from the original text by John Cennick . The descant by the choristers during the last verse is stunning. The pictures are of Lichfield Cathedral, the Gothic Cathedral of 1195, although believers went back to the 600s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjn3fBTvBjY

Lo! He comes with clouds descending,
Once for favored sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending,
Swell the triumph of His train:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God appears on earth to reign.

Every eye shall now behold Him
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at naught and sold Him,
Pierced and nailed Him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.

Every island, sea, and mountain,
Heav'n and earth, shall flee away;
All who hate Him must, confounded,
Hear the trump proclaim the day:
Come to judgment! Come to judgment!
Come to judgment! Come away!

Now redemption, long expected,
See in solemn pomp appear;
All His saints, by man rejected,
Now shall meet Him in the air:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
See the day of God appear!

Answer Thine own bride and Spirit,
Hasten, Lord, the general doom!
The new Heav'n and earth t'inherit,
Take Thy pining exiles home:
All creation, all creation,
Travails! groans! and bids Thee come!

The dear tokens of His passion
Still His dazzling body bears;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshippers;
With what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!

Yea, Amen! let all adore Thee,
High on Thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the power and glory,
Claim the kingdom for Thine own;
O come quickly! O come quickly!
Everlasting God, come down!

Additional information about Lichfield Churchmen and Churchwomen at:  http://www.lichfield-cathedral.org/History/history.html

"Just seventeen miles north of Birmingham, Lichfield lies at the heart of England. 1300 years ago it stood at the centre of the Kingdom of Mercia. When Chad was made Bishop of Mercia in 669 he moved his See from Repton to Lichfield, which ma...y already have been a holy site since there is a legend that Christians were martyred there under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. When Chad died in 672 pilgrims began to come to his shrine, and in 700, Bishop Hedda built a new church to house his bones. Starting in 1085 and continuing through the twelfth century this Saxon church was replaced by a Norman Cathedral, then by the Gothic Cathedral begun in 1195.

"Pilgrimage to the shrine of Chad continued formany years.The Cathedral was expanded by the addition of a Lady Chapel, and by 1500 there were perhaps as many as twenty altars around the Cathedral. All this changed at the Reformation, and the Cathedral was severely damaged during the Civil War, being beseiged three times.

"Bishop Hacket restored the Cathedral in the 1660s, and William Wyatt made substantial changes to its ordering in the eighteenth century, but it was Sir George Gilbert Scott, Cathedral Architect from 1855-1878, who was responsible for its successful restoration to Medieval splendour.

"Today, Lichfield Cathedral still stands at the heart of Lichfield Diocese and is a focus for the regular worship of God, the life of a thriving community, the work of God in the wider world, and for pilgrimage. The great building shows all the signs of its long history as a Christian community, serving God and the world, and now moving confidently into the twenty-first century."