The Arc
Gregory Stephen Popp 2007
Oh, intercede, your favor much
Please be the one to take these prayers for us.
Show us your Son, we fly to thee
Eternal virgin mother, Mary
Clothed with the Sun, Crowned with the Stars
Hey Mary, Remember me.
Please tell your only Son that I believe!
Hey Mary, I’m lost at sea
O Morning Star Shine through the dark
And come and rescue me
Hey Mary!
Hail full of grace, And of the Lord!
Oh arc that carried The Eternal Word.
Show us His face, the face of Truth
Please pray that we may someday be with you.
Five decades of Joy
Five decades of Sorrow
Five decades of Light
A Glorious tomorrow
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Greg's Story
For quite some time I had been feeling the need to write a song about our Blessed Mother. I could never find the right words, or the right feeling in the music. I continued to pray about it asking her guidance and knew that at the right time something would come.
One day, after a few false starts, I began to compose "The Arc". I struggled for a very long time with the lyric "Hey Mary". This was the first part of the song that came to me and I built all the rest of it around it. I was very much concerned that listeners would find the term "hey" to be disrespectful. My intention was to convey the closeness I think she wants us to feel to her. To be sure, all respect and honor is fully warranted and due her, but her tender love invites an intimate relationship such as that between a mother and her child. My children walk around saying "Hey mom!" asking for things all day long - just as I did when I was child. It certainly wasn't, and isn't, meant as disrespectful but as familiar and loving. Just as Jesus called God "abba" literally meaning "daddy" more than the formal "father", I felt that we can be familiar with our Blessed Mother as well.
The title too, I feel, needs a little explaining. The ancient Arc of the Covenant that the Israelites carried before them into battle and revered as sacred, carried within it The Word of God in the form of the tablets of the ten commandments. Just so, Mary was created to carry the Word of God incarnate - Jesus Christ himself. She is the new Arc of the new Covenant. And she intercedes for us as no one else can because of her close relationship to her loving Son.
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