I Drink You the Love of St. John

As is usual for the feast of St. John, I have been unable to unearth any songs proper to his day (even though I know they exist), aside from the Propers of the Mass for St. John, and similar liturgical chants. Which are, of course, all fine and well-- indeed, I am particularly partial to chant-- but however fine and braw those are, they do not exactly strike the ear with the sort of gladness and jollity that carols and hymns do.. So, once again, this post is sans songs in honour of the Beloved Apostle.

There is, however an extremely fabulous old custom, which I would truly love to see brought back into common practice, which I shall highlight here instead-- the blessing of wine on St John's Day. I have never seen this done, nor do I know of any Catholic church within the greater area that does it.

St. John is long associated with wine, because of a legend in which he was offered a cup of poisoned win which he blessed before drinking. The poison rose up out of the wine in the shape of a serpent. The wine blessing on his day makes the wine-- in itself a fine and cheering thing-- into a sacramental (like Holy Water, Scapulars and the Miraculous Medal), which makes it also a holy thing. It is customary, when drinking of this sacramental wine to toast each other with the words, "I drink you the love of St. John." (You should read more here.)

Since, however, it seems dreadful to not post a song at all, I have been moderately inventive, and gone looking for something that could passably be used in lieu of a St. John hymn, song or carol, and I have found this: 

I cannot tell you too much about it. It is an ancient hymn in Syriac, which is the Language spoken by our Lord. It came up in a list of ancient Christmas songs, and I have come across one other reference to it as a Christmas hymn as well, so I am fairly sure it legitimately is associated with Christmastime. There are repeated requests in the comment section for the lyrics to be posted in Syriac and English, and some way down, one poster, Joe, does give this as the translation: "glory to the Word who took a body and became a sacrifice for us, we listened to him, we saw him we touched him and we eat him..". However, since I know almost nothing about this language (save that it has one of those deep throated guttural "kh" sounds, which you can hear, within the first 30 seconds of this song, and which I find intriguing) I cannot vouch for Joe's abilities as a translator. However,since published lyrics in any language appear to be non-existent, that is the best I can do for you. I think it is a very lovely melody.