Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God

Image from FreeBackground

This tenor recitative and air are the first vocal sounds in Handel's Messiah. The lyrics are from Isaiah 40:1-4 (KJV) which we'll hear in the first scripture at Mass on this weekend of the Second Sunday of Advent. (Click on the image above for a larger version of the "mountains and hills made low, the valleys filled in and the rough places made plain!")



Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned...
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain.


Let us pray...

Speak your comfort in my soul, Lord,
and in my heart, my mind and my limbs...

Speak comfortably in my dreams,
in my fears and worries,
in my memories and in my hopes...

Speak your comfort in my family, Lord,
among my friends and neighbors
and among the peoples of the world...

Speak comfortably to the young and the old,
in the lives of the lonely and brokenhearted,
in the brokenness of hearts undone...

And teach me to speak comfort
to your people, Lord:
let my voice and my words
make low the mountains of anxiety,
make straight the confusion of the lost
and make smooth the rough places
where we all stumble and fall...

Speak your comfort in our souls, Lord,
and in our hearts, our minds and our limbs...

Amen.



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