As a Gracious Shower Descend

For the Sundays after Pentecost (which will continue until Advent), a hymn of the Holy Spirit is never inappropriate.

Spirit, come, dispel our sadness;
Share your fire by day and night.
Come, O source of joy and gladness,
Breathe your life, and spread your light.
From the height which knows no measure,
As a gracious shower descend,
Bringing down the richest treasure
We can wish, or God can send.

Author of the new creation,
Come, anoint us with your power.
Make our hearts your habitation;
With your grace our spirits shower.
Hear, O hear our supplication,
Blessed Spirit, God of peace!
Rest upon this congregation
With the fullness of your grace.

Paul Gerhardt, 1648
tr. John C. Jacobi, c.1725; alt.
Tune: NEW SOUTH WALES (8.7.8.7.D)
Frank M. Davis, 1878

Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) is ranked second only to Martin Luther as a hymnwriter for the Lutheran church.  However, Gerhardt's firm belief in the primacy of God's love has ensured that his hymns have been widely sung across many other denominations as well.

Rather than choosing a German chorale tune or something equally predictable, I have instead matched this text with a tune by the gospel song writer Frank Marion Davis. Davis wrote both texts and tunes, sometimes together and sometimes not, but I think this lively tune works well with Gerhardt's text on the generous gifts of the Spirit.




Three Years Ago: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Eight Years Ago: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Paul Gerhardt

Lutheran pastor and hymnwriter Paul Gerhardt was born today in 1607 near Wittenburg in Germany. He enrolled in the university there in 1628, where one of his most influential instructors, Paul Röber, often used hymns as sermon texts and encouraged their instructional use.

At this time, the destructive Thirty Years War was raging in Germany (it's estimated that the population of Germany declined by thirty percent during those years) and due to its disruption Gerhardt was not ordained and assigned to a parish until 1651, when he settled in Mittenwalde, southeast of Berlin.

Gerhardt could not avoid the religious conflict between the Lutherans and the Reformed Church, which eventually led to his losing his position since the secular authorities supported the other side. Ironically, by that time his hymns were already sung and loved by both the Lutheran and the Reformed sides.

After his death, his hymns were published in a collected edition edited by his son, and a collection translated into English by John Kelly, Spiritual Songs of Paul Gerhardt, appeared in 1867, though many of his texts had previously been translated by various poets.

This text, O du allersüsste Freude, comes to us through a translation by John Christian Jacobi which was then adapted by Samuel Longfellow in the Unitarian Book of Hymns (1848).

Holy Spirit, source of gladness,

Come in all your radiance bright;

O’er our weariness and sadness

Breathe your life and shed your light!

Send us your illumination,

Banish all our fears at length;

Rest upon this congregation,

Spirit of unfailing strength.

Let that love which knows no measure,

Now in quickening showers descend,

Bringing us the richest treasures

We can wish or God can send.

Hear our earnest supplication,

Every struggling heart release;

Rest upon this congregation,

Spirit of untroubled peace!

Paul Gerhardt, 1648;

tr. John C. Jacobi, c.1725;

adapt. Samuel Longfellow, 1848; alt.

Tune: SHIPSTON (8.7.8.7.)

Traditional English melody,

arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906

The chaotic times that Gerhardt lived through, as well as the disruption of his professional life and the deaths of his wife and four of five children, led him to be described as a "theologian sifted in Satan's sieve," an inscription written on a full-length portrait painted after his death in the church at Lübben.

Three Years Ago: Gregory the Great

Two Years Ago: Paul Gerhardt

One Year Ago: Robert Lowry

Paul Gerhardt

Paul Gerhardt (March 12, 1607 - June 7, 1676) was the first significant Lutheran hymnwriter after Martin Luther. Born in Germany near Wittenburg, he studied theology at the university there for several years during the Thirty Years War.

He began writing verse a few years after leaving his studies. His first eight hymns were published by Johann Cruger in his hymnal Praxis Pietatis Melica (1647). In 1651 Gerhardt was ordained in the Lutheran church and served several congregations. In Berlin, religious tensions were so high that pastors were forbidden by law to refer to doctrinal differences in their sermons. Gerhardt refused to comply and was dismissed from his job there.

In succeeding editions of Cruger's hymnal, more and more of Gerhardt's hymns were published. His hymns were known for their personal testimony and connection to Lutheran theology, as opposed to Luther's more doctrinal texts. Eventually he wrote more than 130 and many of them are still known today (not only in Lutheran churches). He also translated Latin hymns into German, the most well known being O sacred head, sore wounded.

Give to the winds your fears,
Hope and be undismayed.
God hears your sighs and counts your tears,
God shall lift up your head.
Through waves and clouds and storms,
God gently clears the way;
Wait for God's time; at last shall come
The perfect, promised day.

Still heavy is your heart?
Still sinks your spirit down?
Cast off the weight, let fear depart
And every care begone.
God everywhere has sway
And all things serve the right;
God's every act pure blessing is,
God's path life-giving light.

Far, far above all thought,
God's counsel shall appear,
When fully God the work has wrought,
That caused your needless fear.
Leave to God's sovereign will
To choose and to command;
With wonder filled, you then shall own
How wise, how strong God's hand.

Paul Gerhardt, 1656;
tr. John Wesley, 1737; alt.
Tune: DIADEMATA (S.M.D.)
George J. Elvey, 1868

P.S. For more on John Wesley (and his brother Charles), go back to March 3 for a "new" entry that I started on that day but didn't finish due to illness. Spent a few days in bed last week with bronchitis but I did want to get back to the Wesleys again at some point. (and there's a very important hymn!)

One Year Ago: Gregory the Great

Bernard of Clairvaux

Both the Episcopal and Roman Catholic calendars mark August 20th as the commemoration of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153), a French Benedictine monk who later joined the stricter Cistercian order and helped it to flourish. Bernard was a noted theologian unfortunately associated with the Second Crusade (his treatises were considered directly responsible for recruiting thousands of soldiers to invade the Holy Land), but other writings, such as a series of sermons on the Song of Songs are more admired today.

He is also known for a number of hymns, originally written in Latin, that have been translated into many languages. This one, part of a longer poem, begins:

Salve caput cruentatum,
Totum spinis coronatum,
Conquassatum, vulneratum,
Arundine verboratum
Facie sputis illita.

This was translated into German by Paul Gerhardt, sometimes called "the sweet singer of Lutheranism," in the seventeenth century, beginning thus:

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn,
O Haupt, zum Spott gebunden
Mit einer Dornenkron’,
O Haupt, sonst schön gezieret
Mit höchster Ehr’ und Zier,
Jetzt aber höchst schimpfieret;
Gegrüßet sei’st du mir!

This work of Bernard and Gerhardt has been translated into English a number of times, producing one of the most universally used Lenten hymns. One of the most well known translations:

O sacred head, sore wounded,
Defiled and put to scorn;
O kingly head surrounded
With mocking crown of thorn:
What sorrow mars thy grandeur?
Can death thy bloom deflower?
O countenance whose splendor
The hosts of heaven adore!

Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
Hath vanished from our sight;
Thy power is all expirèd,
And quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
Hide not so far thy grace:
Show me, O Love most highest,
The brightness of thy face.

In thy most bitter passion
My heart to share doth cry,
With thee for my salvation
Upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved
To stand thy cross beneath,
To mourn thee, well-beloved,
Yet thank thee for thy death.

My days are few, O fail not,
With thine immortal power,
To hold me that I quail not
In death's most fearful hour;
That I may fight befriended,
And see in my last strife
To me thine arms extended
Upon the cross of life.

Bernard of Clairvaux, 1153; tr. Robert Bridges, 1899
Tune: PASSION CHORALE (7.6.7.6.D.)
Hans Leo Hassler, 1601; harm. J.S. Bach, 1729

Earlier translations were done by Henry Williams Baker (first editor of the seminal English Hymns Ancient & Modern), James Waddell Alexander, and Samuel Macaulay Jackson. Alexander's version contains at least two verses that are sometimes combined with other translations.

O sacred head, now wounded,
With grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns, thine only crown;
How art thou pale with anguish,
With sore abuse and scorn!
How dost that visage languish
That once was bright as morn!

What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest Friend,
For this thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever,
And should I fainting be,
O let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee.

Jackson's translation is said to be closest to Gerhardt's German (though it doesn't fit the Hassler/Bach tune quite as well):

O Head, blood-stained and wounded,
Tortured by pain and scorn;
O Head, in jest surrounded
By a rude crown of thorn!
O Head, once rich-adornèd
With highest laud and lays,
But now so deeply scornèd,
To thee I lift my praise!

Thy face was once the fairest,
In beauty like the light;
Thou with the sun comparest;
Why art thou now so white?
Thy eye, whose rays outstreaming
The world enlightened had,
Why is it now scarce gleaming
Upon thy cross so sad?

PASSION CHORALE, originally by the German Hans Leo Hassler, was apparently a favorite of Bach, who used it in five times in his St. Matthew Passion, twice in the Christmas Oratorio, five more times in his cantatas, and also wrote an organ prelude based on it. He usually re-harmonized the tune each time he used it.

This eighteenth-century harmonization of a seventeenth century tune is now irrevocably associated with this hymn derived from the writings of a twelfth century French monk, and translated into English in the nineteenth century thanks to a seventeenth century German poet. Our heritage of hymns spans a very broad time (and space) frame.