The Pentecost sequence "Veni Sancte Spiritus" ("Come, Holy Spirit") is not in Lutheran Service Book as a hymn of its own; The Lutheran Hymnal printed it in Ray Palmer's 1858 translation as "Come, Holy Ghost, in Love" (TLH 227). Known as the "Golden Sequence," it dates from about 1200 and is credited to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1228), or to Pope Innocent III. A sequence is a hymn sung after the Alleluia, just before the Gospel, and this one belongs to the Mass of Pentecost. When the Council of Trent pruned the hundreds of medieval sequences from the Roman Missal, it kept only four, and this was one of them. Lutherans kept singing it too. Johann Bugenhagen's church order for Braunschweig (1528) directed that on Pentecost a stanza of Luther's "To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray" (LSB 768) be sung between each pair of verses of the Latin sequence, the choir and the congregation answering one another. The LSB companion notes that much of its language lives on in LSB 768 and in "Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord" (LSB 497). It should not be confused with the older antiphon that begins with the same words and lies behind LSB 497. Dufay, Josquin and Palestrina all set it to music.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026