Rejoice, the Lord is King! – A Hymn for the Feast of Christ the King (Original Hymn)

The days were passing, and while I was praying Compline, I saw on the kalendar that it was one day before the beginning of Advent—at least, that was what I thought. I was surprised by how fast the year had gone, and I rushed to write the hymn for Advent. The first one I wrote was on the morning of Nov. 21, but it didn’t fit any Advent hymn from the sources where I usually find them; instead, it fitted a Christmas hymn, Christians, awake, which at that moment had not yet been engraved. Then, in the evening of the same day, I wrote the tune for the hymn On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry. I recorded it and scheduled it to be published on Sunday the 23rd.

On the evening of Nov. 22, I began to feel sick, so I had to send a letter to the Music Director of my parish to let him know I would not be able to sing at Mass. And on Sunday, some hours after I had finished my Morning Prayer—following the antiphon and lectionary instructions for Advent I—I received notice that this Sunday was not Advent, but Christ the King. I even thought the Kalendar was confused, showing two dates for the same Sunday, but it was entirely my fault, for I had not paid proper attention to it. So again I hurried to unpublish the Advent hymn and, in the evening, wrote the tune for Christ the King, which is the one I am writing about in this essay. It was lamentable that I missed the Solemn Mass for Christ the King, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful feasts of the Church, where incense and white vestments are used—absolutely heavenly.

In any case, I managed to pray the Morning Prayer, even if alone, together in spirit with my parish and with the Communion of Saints. And I hope my adoration in the form of hymns may please Almighty God. This hymn-poem was written by Charles Wesley, a poet of indispensable introductions, for his Hymns for our LORD’s Resurrection, 1746 (1748 ed.*). According to The Hymnal 1940 Companion, it was based on Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the LORD always: and again I say, Rejoice.” In this tune, I had to omit the words “and again” to fit the melody. It was originally written in B♭, but since that key is too low for the choir to sing in parts, as with other hymns, I also added a setting in E♭, which contains the omitted stanzas from the first one. Alterations are otherwise slight. The text, as the Companion notes, has been present in the Hymnal—from which I took it—since 1892.