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Western Icon of St. Matthew
the Evangelist
Feast: Nov. 16 (in the
Western rite, Sept. 21)
From a fresco by Cimabue, Italian
Old English liturgical books
contain the following Sequence or pre-Gospel hymn, for the Liturgy on
the feast of St. Matthew:
O ye faithful people, be full
of joy,
Ye whose Father is in the heavens,
Recalling the solemn pronouncements
Of the prophet Ezechiel.
John is a witness thereof,
Teaching in the Apocalypse itself,
Truly I have seen, of the true I have written:
True testimonies.
‘Round the throne of majesty
With the blessed spirits
Stand the living creatures,
In four distinct figures.
The first is the form of the eagle,
The second that of the lion,
And the two others bear
The form of a man and of a calf.
These forms form a prefiguration
Of the types of the Evangelists,
By whom the showers of teaching
Hath rained down upon the Church.
These are Mark and Matthew,
Luke and him whom his father Zebedee
Sent forth unto Thee, O God,
When he had let down his nets.
To Matthew they assign the form of man,
For he wrote thus of God,
As He descended from the One
Who formed man in the beginning.
Luke is in the figure of the calf,
As it is he who showeth in the Scriptures
What is written of the sacrificial beasts
Touching on them under the veil of the Law’s power.
Mark is the lion roaring in the wilderness,
Crying out in an open manner,
That he might make a sure path for God
In the heart washed clean from evil deeds.
But John is in the form of the eagle,
Having the two wings of charity,
For he is borne aloft to things Divine
In the sunlight which is more pure.
And these four leave writing
Of the fourfold deeds of Christ:
And each of them, as ye have heard,
Bear the type of their figuration.
He is declared to have been born man,
As the calf He is sacrificed,
As the lion He taketh death for His prey,
And ascendeth as the eagle.
Behold, the form of the living creatures,
Which the prophetic Scripture telleth of,
But this interpretation
Is according to the nature of created things.
They run with wheels, they fly with wings,
The sight and meaning are to be distinguished:
By the wheel we see their even steps,
By the wings their contemplation.
Paradise was watered by these four,
It flourisheth, flowereth, and groweth beautiful,
With these four rivers it aboundeth
And in them it rejoiceth.
Christ the fountainhead, these its gushing streams,
The spring is up on high, and these rush down below,
That they may distribute to those with faith
A taste of the living fountain.
The teaching of these men draweth us
From the stagnant waters of sinful ways.
And thus lead us to the things of God,
From the depths to highest heaven.
Unto those inebriated with their river
The thirst for charity groweth stronger:
That we may more abundantly be filled
From the fountain of God’s Essence.
(Then the bells stop swinging and the Gospel is sung.)
From the complete Old Sarum
Rite Missal, (c) 1998 St. Hilarion Press
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