This somber hymn is a unique collaboration across confessional lines from the Thirty Years’ War era. The first stanza was penned by the Jesuit priest Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld (1628), with the remaining stanzas added by the Lutheran poet Johann Rist. Its earliest superscription notes it was sung on Good Friday when the reserved Sacrament was carried to a symbolic "holy grave" in a side chapel. The hymn’s bold declaration "Our God is dead" confesses the unbreakable union of Christ’s two natures: God Himself truly died when the man Jesus died on the cross. The hymn closes by shifting from Christ’s tomb to our own, comforting the dying sinner who trusts in the "Virgin’s Son."
Sung at Our Saviour
2026