Glory to God in the highest
On most Sundays, as well as for more important saints' days, we sing the Glory to God in the highest.
We know these first words as the song of the angels on Christmas night and which was heard by the shepherds.
The rest of our hymn takes verses from other biblical hymns sung also by the angels, but also by the saints who worship God the Father and Our Lord risen from the dead: "we praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you" from the book of the Apocalypse and St John's vision of the liturgy in heaven. These parts of our hymn make it a resurrection chant, an Easter hymn.
We also quote St John the Baptist who called out about the Lord who would away the sins of the world on Good Friday: "you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us". The Lord, the Lamb of God, is risen from the dead after giving his life for our sins.
The final part of the hymn - you alone are the holy one, you alone are the lord, you alone are the Most High Jesus Christ - is an exuberant development of what has already been said about the Lord's sanctity, divinity, having risen from the dead after completing his messianic ("Christ") mission. The hymn concludes with a brief mention of the Holy Spirit so that all three divine persons are included in the hymn.
After the Kyrie, a shout inviting the Lord's return in glory, and since we are still waiting for his return, on more festive occasions celebrating the resurrection we sing to recall that we are already participating in heavenly worship after Our Lord's resurrection.
Many ancient churches on the continent have visual representations of these ideas over the altar or over the front door. Both the visual representation and the hymn help us recall and enter into the fact we already participate in the heavenly Easter liturgy along with the angels and those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.
