Our Liturgical Boy

Our Gabriel David loves liturgy. He is most definitely our boy!

Last evening he suddenly burst into song (as he is often wont to do), singing what sounded like, HO-ee HO-ee HO-ee oh ah ah oh
And then of course he concluded with his very predictable, Meh, which means Amen.

Steven and I looked at each other across the room, both thinking the same thing. “That just sounded like holy holy holy!”
I couldn’t imagine why he would know the song Holy, Holy, Holy since I don’t sing it to him that often.
But Steven said, “I think that was the Sanctus!”

So we asked Gabriel to sing it again. And he did the same exact thing again.

Then he pointed to Steven and said, “Daddy,” indicating that it was Daddy’s turn to sing it.
So Steven did.
He sang the Sanctus from the Dorian Service by Tallis.
And Gabriel was intensely delighted!
He couldn’t have been more thrilled that we knew what he was singing!

It was totally the Sanctus that Gabriel was singing.
Makes sense, really, considering we sing it after confession and absolution every week at worship, in addition to most nights throughout the week.

I think we ended up singing the Sanctus about a dozen times last evening (in family worship as well as just randomly) because we were all just so thrilled!
After we put Gabriel to bed, we could still hear him through the monitor singing HO-ee Ho-ee Ho-ee to his animals in his crib. It was so precious, I almost cried.
If I could figure out how to post videos, I would let you take a listen yourself. He only sings the first line recognizably (unless you’re his parent), but he conducts the entire thing while we sing it (have I mentioned his fanatic love of conducting?), breathes in all the right places, copies our mouth shape & vowel sounds, and tries his best to belt out the ending Hosannas.

We already knew he was a fantastic little boy, with his big faith in God and love of liturgy.
But last night just lit us up.
God is mighty at work.
God is, indeed, Gabriel’s strength.
And I am excited to see what God continues to do with this child of His: my son, my brother ~ Gabriel.