The Most Beautiful Devotional: Rorate Caeli | Gregorian Chant

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This is one of my all time favorite chants... perhaps even my #1. This is the devotional chant "Rorate Caeli," different and separate from the Introit chant of the same title, but obviously related.

According to a Wikipedia article, "In the seventeenth century, [the] Rorate Caeli was arranged into a hymn combining the traditional text with other scriptural passages used in the liturgy for Advent. The earliest known version is in the Oratorian Officia Propria (1673); it also appears in French diocesan rites, such as the Rouen Processional of 1729 and 1763. ...Under the heading, "Prayer of the Churches of France during Advent", Dom Guéranger [,the great restorer of the Abbey of Solesmes, in his multi-volume work "The Liturgical Year"] gives it as an antiphon to each of a series of prayers ("Ne irascaris ", "Peccavimus", "Vide Domine", "Consolamini") expressive of penitence, expectation, comfort, and furnishes the Latin text and an English rendering of the Prayer."

The text is a collection of excerpts taken from the book of Isaiah (though sometimes given a poetic rendering). When the text speaks of Sion and Jerusalem being desolate and destroyed, we can see this as representative of our own souls, ruined by sin, but restored by penance and God's grace. The harmony in this song is by my good friends @HarpaDeiMusic.

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