“Holy Spirit, Come Upon Us”
This month we continue our Hymn of the Month series in which one or more hymns drawn from collections published by Leupold Editions will be posted on the opening page of the website for consideration by pastors and musicians who may wish to introduce the hymn to their congregations the following month. The Hymn of the Month will often be thematically appropriate for a particular season of the church year or it may be related to a more general theme about the church’s mission in contemporary society. Thus, pastors and/or musicians may wish to have the choir introduce the hymn on the first Sunday of the month or season and then invite the congregation to join with the choir in singing the hymn on each of the remaining Sundays. Additional hymns will occasionally be suggested for a particular Sunday in the church year or for annual commemorations, such as the liturgies of Holy Week; such hymns may only be appropriate on the designated day, or they might be used as a Hymn of the Month in anticipation of or in response to the particular day observed on the church calendar.
Edith Sinclair Downing’s (1922-2016) text, Holy Spirit, Come upon Us, is a prayer of invocation of the Holy Spirit focused on the Letivican concept of Jubilee appropriate not only for the Day of Pentecost, but for late May/early June as a Hymn of the Month, if introduced on the Day of Pentecost, which, in 2024, is the third Sunday in May. The text was composed especially for the tune by Hazel Hudson (1932-2018).
Downing was a remarkable woman, holding degrees in cello performance, religious education, and theological studies with a concentration on worship. She began writing hymns in her late sixties and ultimately completed four collections of hymn texts, three of which were published by Leupold Editions, two in 2009, namely, Through Joy and Sorrow and Sing Praise for Faithful Women, followed by For Us, God’s People Now in 2011. Hazel Hudson was a music teacher and academic educated at Durham and Liverpool Universities in the United Kingdom. She held a teaching post for many years at Liverpool Hope University.
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