Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming

15th-century German, translated by Theodore Baker
Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.

Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind:
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God's love aright
She bore to men a Savior
When half-gone was the night.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load

This Advent and Christmas hymn expresses and acknowledges a particular tension we ought to be aware of during the Christmas season. Just as, in the prophecies from Isaiah, a “rose,” or stem, shoots up from the stump, so too do we celebrate Christ’s birth in the knowledge that He brings life out of death.

Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming may date back as far as the fifteenth century, though the earliest manuscript was found in St. Alban’s Carthusian monastery in Trier and was dated around 1580. It was first published with a whopping twenty-three stanzas in Alte Catholische Geistliche Kirchengesange in 1599.

Originally written in German and titled “Es ist ein Ros ensprungen,” the text combines the story of Christ’s birth with the prophecies in Isaiah about the “rose” from the “stem of Jesse.” The second verse originally interpreted “rose” to mean Mary, the mother of Jesus, but in 1609, Michael Praetorius changed the interpretation to point to Christ, thus fitting with the actual Biblical imagery. Praetoruis then published the hymn with only stanzas one and two and added a harmonization. The first two verses were translated into English by Theodore Baker around 1894.

Our celebrations of Christmas must always point us to Easter. We celebrate Christ’s life because His death brings us a new kind of life. So too, the season of Advent points us not only to Christmas, but to the second coming of Christ, when He will finally make all things new. This is a beautiful and peaceful hymn, but there is just a touch of melancholy in the tune. Even in the arrangement Praetorius was able to convey the tension amidst our celebration, the sorrow that must lie within our rejoicing. We know what is coming that week before Easter morning, and this should give us reason to pause. But we also know that the tiny babe whose birth we celebrate, our “Rose,” came to “dispel…the darkness everywhere.” Thus, even amid the tension of life out of death, we celebrate the ultimate life we are promised in Christ.

Blessings and Happy Advent
Dorene

Source: https://hymnary.org/text/lo_how_a_rose_eer_blooming