The mysterious 16th-century hymn “Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming” derives from Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah coming from the line of Jesse. The rose, in the version most familiar to us, is a symbol of Christ himself. However, in an earlier manuscript of the poem from St. Alban’s Carthusian monastery in Trier, the rose symbolizes Mary, who, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, “bloomed” out of season.
Either way, the haunting plainchant hymn is a striking evocation of how God’s grace works in salvation history and in our own lives, bringing unfading light and sweetness “amid the cold of winter.”
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
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 flow’ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half spent 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 spent was the night.
This Flow’r, 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.
