Advent Sunday Introit XI

The hymn ‘All my soul to God I raise’ by Timothy Dudley-Smith.

I wanted to include at least one decent option that might be found in current hymnals. Actually, I'm not sure whether any existing Catholic hymnals do include this, but some of Dudley-Smith's work has been widely adopted in Catholic worship, so this will do, at least for illustrative purposes.

The first verse runs as follows:

All my soul to God I raise
Be my guardian all my days
Confident in hope I rest
Daily prove your path is best
Ever work in me your will
Faithful to your promise still

I found the text on this blog.

For: The hymn form is familiar and easy for congregations to sing : a tune like 'Dix' would work with this metre. 'All my soul' would not frighten the horses.

Against: This is better described as a paraphrase than as a translation of Psalm 24. There is no refrain, so the antiphon-Psalm alternation of the traditional introit would be lost. Even a good hymn tune like 'Dix' is completely unrelated to the Gregorian chant which is part and parcel of the introit in the Graduale. (Just to state the obvious: Timothy Dudley-Smith was not trying to write an introit, so it's not surprising that what he produced lacks some of the characteristics of the introit form.) Also, it is just fortuitous that this piece begins with a paraphrase of Psalm 24.1; you could search long, hard and fruitlessly for good English hymns that happen to fit the introit texts for other Sundays.