The most famous C&E oratorio

Virtually all Anglicans know Handel’s most famous sacred work — which is probably the most famous long-form sacred work ever written in English. Most would know the three parts — first with OT prophesy of a Messiah and his birth in 1st century Judea, the second with Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the third focusing on the second coming.

In a Friday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal — in the weekly “Houses of Worship” feature — assistant WSJ editorial page writer (and Hillsdale alumna) Nicole Ault laments the scarcity of Eastertide performances of what instead has become a staple of the Christmas season. The work was originally performed April 13, 1742 during Eastertide, and its librettist thought it ideally suited for Holy Week.

She spotlights the enduring power of the text by English librettist Charles Jennens:

A devout Anglican, Jennens wrote “Messiah” in part to battle the deists of his age, who posited a distant God but not a Savior. As rationalists, they put no stock in things of faith like resurrection from the dead. “ ‘Messiah,’ with its insistence on God’s free . . . gift of his Son, on the historical fact of the Incarnation and the supernatural fact of Redemption, was an assertion of everything that the Deists sought to deny,” writes Richard Luckett in his 1992 book, Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration.

Ault closes her column with a tribute to the witness the final part that this libretto offers to the promise of the Resurrection:

But besides testifying to facts that require faith, “Messiah” also bears witness to a hope that results from that faith. The feeling is personal: “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” sings the soprano in one of the work’s sweetest solos, “yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

It is also unassailable. Easter seals the promise of eternal life, revealed at Christmas but unfulfilled except through death and resurrection. Thus, quoting the apostle Paul, “Messiah” can say what is ours to proclaim as well: “O death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?”