Alcuin’s Advent prayer

Among the many early medieval monks, both from Celtic and Benedictine traditions, who did so much to preserve ancient learning while at the same time laying the foundation for medieval Christian culture was the Anglo-Saxon  Alcuin of York, who lived from 735-804. He was a great scholar,  poet and abbot, and spent his later life in the Frankish kingdom as a close religious and educational advisor to Charlemagne.

The debt later Christian and indeed western culture owes to monastic scholars and teachers like Alcuin, and their role in preserving and building medieval Latin Christian civilization, cannot be overestimated. But for all of their literary, cultural and indeed political importance, they were first and foremost men of prayer. The following prayer of Alcuin seems to me to be quite evocative and beautiful, and particularly hopeful in the short, dark yet expectant days of Advent:

Eternal light, shine into our hearts,
Eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil,
Eternal Power, be our support,
Eternal Wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance,
Eternal Pity, have mercy upon us;
that with all our heart and mind and soul and strength
we may seek your face
and be brought by your infinite mercy to your holy presence;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Charlemagne’s cathedral in Aachen.