Paul Gerhardt wrote through the Thirty Years’ War and out of it. By 1668 he had lost his pastorate in Berlin for refusing to compromise his Lutheran confession, and had buried his wife and four of his five children. He wrote 133 hymns. This one appeared in 1653 in two collections at once, and the only two known copies of the first were destroyed in the Second World War. Sing it today and you sing the whole season in advance: Gerhardt’s original stanzas engage the Gospel of every Sunday in Advent. Stanza 2 is the triumphal entry we just heard. Stanza 3 recalls John the Baptist in prison, read on Gaudete. Stanza 5 is the Lamb who bears away sin, heard on Advent 4. Stanza 6 is the coming for judgment of Advent 2. The heart is stanza 4, where Gerhardt asks why Christ would become incarnate for sinners and answers with one word repeated five times in that stanza: love. Most of the English is Catherine Winkworth’s, but stanza 5 was stitched together in 1906 from four translators across two centuries.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025