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Lord, Thee I Love

Martin Schalling's great hymn "Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart," was one of the hymns to be sung during the distribution of Holy Communion yesterday at my church. And while ordinarily I favor only good eucharistic hymns being sung during Holy Communion, I make exception for certain hymns that do not strictly fall into that eucharistic category. "Lord, Thee I Love" is such a fine prayer to Jesus that, though it contain no explicit doctrine of the Holy Supper, it might as well be called a eucharistic hymn. Consider a line like this from the first stanza, "I pray Thee ne'er from me depart," which could almost be an alternate version of a line from the Anima Christi. Or consider the refrain with which the first and second stanzas culminate: "Lord, Jesus Christ, My God and Lord, my God and Lord." It is as though the communicant were standing with Saint Thomas before our Eucharistic Lord, risen from the dead and showing us the marks of His Passion. Indeed, that is exactly what we are doing when we kneel before the awesome Presence.
In the Sacrament of the Altar we do not see our Lord face to face, but through the sacramental veils He reveals Himself to us. In graciously hiding Himself under these veils (sub pane & vino) we are given salutary access to His presence, and thus heaven itself is brought to us for a moment. The grace of the most holy Sacrament, however, prompts the Christian to pray for the day when we will be ushered into the realm of endless day, where we will see, see and contemplate Him face to face. So with this hymn we pray, "And then from death awaken me, that these mine eyes with joy may see, O Son of God, Thy glorious face, my Savior and my fount of grace."
This world will break your heart. That can happen in any number of ways, potentially even at the hands of Lutheran institutions. A man's own flesh can break his heart, as it routinely betrays the man God wants him to be. While we live with that reality, a hymn of this sort can be an eloquent reminder that upholding us through all of it is the One Who comes to us with healing in His wings. "And should my heart for sorrow break, my trust in Thee can nothing shake. Thou art the portion I have sought, Thy precious Blood my soul has bought."
I think I would say that there are various levels or degrees of what it can mean to be a "eucharistic hymn," from the narrow and most explicit to the more broadly defined. And in fact, I would submit that the very life of the Christian is a hymn to the Eucharist, though he will surely not see it as such with his own eyes until he awakens in the next life. However a hymnal may classify "Lord, Thee I Love," I happily sang it yesterday to our Eucharistic Lord.
Schalling's loyalty to Melanchthon ultimately led him to reject the Formula of Concord in 1577. Yet the Confessional Lutheran of any generation relates to the pure faith of the author of this hymn. His sojourn in this world extended to about three quarters of a century, he and Philipp Nicolai both falling asleep in Christ in the same year, sparing them by a full decade the horrors of the Thirty Years War. So long as the world endures, Schalling's prayer will be prayed by the Church: "Lord Jesus Christ, my prayer attend, my prayer attend, and I will praise Thee without end."

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