Music for Sixth Sunday of Easter

Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted – Text: Didache (1st or 2nd century); tr. Francis Bland Tucker (1895-1984) / Music: Melody Genevan Psalter 1549; composed or adapted by Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510-61)

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The text of this Sunday’s communion hymn in church, Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted, is rooted in the early Christian church, all the way back to the Greek-language Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), a Christian manual from the Church of Antioch, Syria, which some scholars date as early as 110 C.E. To produce this text, Francis Bland Tucker (1895-1984) translated selected prayers from chapters 9 and 10 of the Didache. Some scholars are of the opinion that part of it, notably the prayers from which this hymn is derived, may be much older than the main work and come from the same source as the Gospel canticles.

Les Commandemens, the tune to which this hymn is most frequently sung, is one of the most widely known tunes adapted or composed by Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510-61). It derives its name from the fact that it was used in several hymnals and psalters as a musical setting for the Ten Commandments. After 1556 the tune came into the English and Scottish psalters with versions of the Commandments and Psalm 125. In the 19^th century the tune appeared in England, altered to notes of equal length. Vaughan Williams restored the original rhythm in The English Hymnal 1906. The tune appears in this restored form in both our Common Praise and New English Hymnal collections, with slight variations.

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted
Thy holy name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus thy Son to us imparts.

Thou, Lord, didst make all for thy pleasure,
didst give us food for all our days,
giving in Christ the bread eternal;
Thine is the pow’r, be Thine the praise.

Watch o’er Thy church, O Lord, in mercy,
save it from evil, guard it still.
Perfect it in Thy love, unite it,
cleansed and conformed unto Thy will.

As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
was in this broken bread made one,
so from all lands thy church be gathered
into thy kingdom by thy Son.

Gerald Harder