This Communion hymn first appeared, unsigned, in 1871 in the fifth edition of the Confession and Communion Book of Wilhelm Löhe (1808-72), the Bavarian pastor at Neuendettelsau. Since Löhe's friends believed he wrote it, it has carried his name ever since. In 1958 the Neuendettelsau mission quarterly printed the hymn and asked its readers on five continents for proof; none came, and the LSB companion calls it "probably" his. The German begins "Weit offen steht des Himmels Perlentor," heaven's gate of pearl standing wide open. Herman Stuempfle translated it for LSB, which uses three of Löhe's four stanzas; the omitted stanza pictures the congregation praying while the bread and wine stand ready on the altar. The LSB service companion quotes it to describe the moment at the end of the Preface, when the little flock that confessed its sins now stands at the threshold of heaven: "This sacrament God gives us / Binds us in unity, / Joins earth with heav'n beyond us, / Time with eternity!" Löhe set it to the seventeenth-century tune JERUSALEM, DU HOCHGEBAUTE STADT, the melody of Meyfart's hymn on the heavenly Jerusalem.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026