Thank God for hymns!

Before embarking on this hymn to hymns, I’ll admit that hymn-enthusiasts feel a slight sense of anticlimax on Easter Sunday, when the pleasingly austere hymns of Lent are replaced with the too-happy, exclamation-mark-ridden hymns of Easter. Within minutes of the start of the Easter Eucharist, our mouths will ache from repetitive singing of the over-vowelled word ‘Alleluia’.

I’ll also admit that I sometimes long for hymns to be over. I check to see how many more verses there still are: three down, three to go. I’m relieved if the vicar says ‘omitting verses five and six’ of a slow seven-verser. Anything to speed up our increasingly padded and long-winded Anglican services.

I’m not writing here about how I love hymns — although I do — but about how I need them, and how we all need them, particularly at the moment, and not only because we’ve just witnessed the unbearable sight of an 850-year-old Gothic cathedral burning down before our eyes on television.