This hymn paraphrases the oldest known eucharistic prayer in the Christian Church, drawn from chapters 9 and 10 of the Didache, a Christian manual dating to about AD 100 that predates even the ancient liturgies of Addai and Mari or the Apostolic Tradition. Its opening words, "we thank," translate the Didache’s own recurring Greek refrain, eucharistoumen, "we give thanks." F. Bland Tucker (1895–1984) rendered the ancient prose into singable English meter for the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal, staying close to the Didache’s own phrases; later hymnals softened one line’s gendered language for humanity. The tune, RENDEZ A DIEU, began as a psalm setting in the sixteenth-century Genevan Psalter composed by Loys Bourgeois, and the specific arrangement sung today comes from Claude Goudimel’s 1564 Les cent cinquante Pseaumes de David. As the closing hymn of a Sunday spent learning that only God exalts the humble, it sends the congregation out giving thanks in the Church’s oldest words for the very feast at which the lowest seat is always set for us.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026