Bach’s cantata 132, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, (Prepare the way, prepare the road) was written in Weimar in 1715. The text is by Salomo Franck (1715, from his cantata libretti of Evangelisches Andachts-Opfer)), except the concluding sixth verse by Elisabeth Kreuziger (1524). The epistle is Philippians 4: 4-7, the gospel John 1: 19-28.
The fourth Sunday of Advent deals with the divine faithfulness in sending a Messiah to ensure human salvation, and for the translation of this salvation into a perpetual state upon the second coming of that Messiah. In devotional terms this, then, is concerned with longing for this perpetuity of salvation.
The cantata’s fourth movement, an alto aria, with a difficult part for solo violin, emphasizes the cleansing legacy of Christ’s baptism.
Salvation is the secular act of preservation or deliverance from destruction, difficulty, or evil; and brings about the consequent state of being saved. In theological interpretations, this takes the form of redemption through deliverance from sin; this deliverance incorporates the intervention of an agent or means to effect such deliverance; and this salvation enables the state of glory, the resplendence of praise.
Because salvation is grounded in faith it cannot be gainsaid by fact, and if one accedes to the former, one rejects the latter; and all those who do not accede. It is a long-standing danger that humankind has never overcome. Salvation is an empty construct that plays upon the insecurities of the human being, and has neither ethical nor natural basis, and the preservation and conservation of the self it offers displaces the attention to the preservation and conservation of the self within the world it cannot but find itself.
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This is an excerpt from On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach, Book Four: Advent, Christmas, New Year. All six volumes on all the Bach sacred cantatas can be found here, or at all other major international distributors, here.