Welcome to our hymn sing!

1 John 4:19 – “We love because He first loved us.“

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For “littles” and “young at heart”

Morning Prayer:

(Feel free to say each line and have your child repeat
what you say or say it as you pray together.)

God in heaven, hear my prayer
Keep me in your loving care.
Be my guide in all I do,
And bless all those who love me too.  
Amen.

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Do to a recording issue, we are sorry that we do not not have a Children’s song this week.

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O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
c. 1200s

Hymn Background:

This is a Christian Passion hymn based on a Latin text written during the Middle Ages. The hymn is based on a long medieval Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare,with stanzas addressing the various parts of Christ’s body (feet, knees, hands, pierced side, breast, heart, head) hanging on the. The poem is  attributed to the Medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold, an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire. His translation begins, “O Head so full of bruises.” In 1830 a new translation of the hymn was made by an American Presbyterian minister, James Waddel Alexander. He’s translation, beginning “O sacred head, now wounded,” became one of the most widely used in 19th and 20th century hymnals.

The music of this hymn was composed by Hans leo Hassler around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’mut ist mir verwirret” (My Mind’s Confused Within Me).

Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in four different settings in his St. Matthew Passion. The melody of “American Tune” by Paul Simon is based on the hymn. Peter, Paul and Mary and the Dave Brubeck Trio performed “Because All Men are Brothers” on their album “Summit Sessions”.

Shown below is a poem written by Brian Wren in 1973 featured in our Chalice Hymnal which can also be sung with this Hassler’s tune.

Here Hangs a Man Discarded
1. Here hangs a man discarded, a scarecrow hoisted high.
A nonsense pointing nowhere to all who hurry by.

2. Can such a clown of sorrows still bring a useful word,
Where faith and love seem phantoms and every hope absurd.

3. Yet here to help and comfort to lives by comfort bound,
When drums of dazzling progress give strangely hollow sound.

4. Life emptied of all meaning, drained out in bleak distress,
Can share in broken silence our deepest emptiness.

5. And love that freely entered the pit of life’s despair,
Can name our hidden darkness and suffer with us there.

6. Lord, if you now are risen, help all who long for light,
To hold the hand of promise till faith receives its sight.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
LYRICS:

1. O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down.
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, thine only crown.
How pale thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish which once was bright as morn!

2. What thou, O Christ, hast suffered was all for sinners’ gain.
Mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ‘Tis I deserve thy place;
Look on me with thy favor, and keep me in thy grace.

3. What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest Friend,
For this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever; and should I fainting be,
O, let me never, never outlive my love to thee.

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The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power