Lux Aeterna

As I sit watching the last traces of a sunset over the Pacific Ocean, I’ve just been listening to a performance, by Voces8, of Sir Edward Elgar’s Lux Aeterna.  (A friend with an extensive background in choral music as both a director and a performer, including graduate study, called it to my attention.)

I posted earlier today about reports of “Music during Near-Death Experiences.”  If, as some say, the music of heaven is far better than even our best terrestrial music, then we can anticipate real delights.  Because Elgar’s Lux Aeterna — which is thematically relevant to the joys of the blest in heaven — is awfully, awesomely beautiful:

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, 
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Let perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord, 
with your saints for ever, 
for you are merciful. 

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, 
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Consider these three passages, culled from among hundreds of a similar tenor:

The whole thing . . . oh, there was the light, and there seemed to be soft, soft, soft . . . you couldn’t really hear it, you more felt this music.  It . . . it was soft, and immaculately beautiful.  There was, I guess there’s no way to really describe it.  There was a feeling of peace, beauty, love, and . . . it just felt like this is what I want.  This is the ultimate.[1]

Suddenly, I became aware of a light.  It was all around me, it enveloped me, it completely surrounded me.  It was an unearthly kind of light.  It had color that is unmatched here on earth.  It was not a beam of sunlight; it was not the glow from a 100-watt bulb; it was not a roaring fire; it was not a host of candles; it was not a celestial explosion in the midnight sky.

It was warm; it was radiant; it was peaceful; it was accepting; it was forgiving; it was completely nonjudgmental; and it gave me a sense of total security the likes of which I had never known.  I loved it.  It was perfection; it was total, unconditional love.  It was anything and everything you would wish for on earth.  It was all there, in the Light.[2]

At the Resurrection the righteous are light, for their clothing is splendour, their garments brightness; they become their own light, providing it themselves.[3]

[1] $From the account of “Lois Clark,” as given in Arvin S. Gibson, Glimpses of Eternity: New Near-Death Experiences Examined (Bountiful: Horizon Publishers, 1992), 49.

[2]$From the account of “Nel,” as given in $Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience (Portsmouth, NH: Moment Point Press, 2000), 189.

[3] Text 7, Stanza 11, from Sebastian P. Brock and George A. Kiraz, trans. and eds., Select Poems of St. Ephrem (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2007).

Posted from Newport Beach, California