The first stanza is medieval, a German Leise ending in the cry Kyrieleis, and it was already old and familiar when the Franciscan preacher Berthold of Regensburg quoted it in a sermon around the middle of the thirteenth century: “It is in truth a useful and dear hymn, and the more you sing it, the better. It was a happy find, and a wise man has written it.” Who the wise man was, nobody knows. The stanza calls the Christian life a journey ending in a faithful death, which carried a hard, literal weight for singers in the many German towns whose hospitals were dedicated to the Holy Spirit; the sick sang of the Spirit leading them home while lying in a house that bore His name. Luther would not change a word of it. He held it up in 1523 as the model for new poets, added three stanzas of his own in 1524, and in 1526 directed that it be sung before the Gospel. Our hymnal reorders Luther’s stanzas 1, 3, 4, 2, so that the hymn ends at our true home.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026