Stärk mich mit deinem Freudengeist,

heil mich mit deinen Wunden,

wasch mich mit deinem Todesschweiß

in meiner letzten Stunden,

und nimm mich einst, wann dirs gefällt

im wahren Glauben aus der Welt

zu deinen Auserwählten.

Your joyful Spirit give me strength,

Your bloody wounds repair me,

And let Your soothing sweat of death

In my last hour prepare me.

And take me, when it please you well,

In true faith from this tearful vale

To dwell among Your chosen.

I found this hymn in German in the Gebets-Schatz. It did not cite an author, but it turns out that it is the last verse of Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut (Lord Jesus Christ, O Highest Good) by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt. The hymn I’m most familiar with from Ringwaldt is “The Day is Surely Drawing Near” which is about the Last Judgment.

Above you have Ringwaldt’s words, with my translation. I have not found many other translations of Ringwaldt’s hymn. I found a couple on hymnary.org. Maybe there are some elsewhere.

Below are some older English translations of the last stanza. The first is from an early 20th c. United Brethren Hymnal; the second from “A Hymn and Prayer Book for the use of such Lutheran Churches as use the English Language,” published in New York state in 1795. Both of them can be found on www.hymnary.org. I’ve noticed that the German hymns tend to be much more graphic and visceral, asking to be connected to the physical ugliness and suffering of Christ’s passion.

For those who have suffered spiritually, the desire to be made whole by Christ’s bloody wounds and washed in His death’s sweat is not gruesome or morbid. If you have tasted death or hell, you are not comforted by attempts to avoid them by appealing to Jesus’ majesty. You know that there is no avoiding the attacks of hell and the terror of judgment. Then you are comforted not by pretending like they don’t exist or won’t come to you as long as you’re a good boy, but by the promise that Jesus’ wounds have enveloped ours, that His Spirit is our Spirit, that He sweat the sweat of death for us, and our death is caught up in His. The death of Jesus does not allow us to escape our own cross and death. But when we sweat the sweat of death we know that we will not awaken in the eternal fire, but among the chosen in heaven. That is promised by Jesus’ passion, which the Gospel proclaims is for us.

I don’t know whether it is just that English speakers have always been too polite to use the visceral German language exemplified by this hymn, or whether there are some older translations that mirror it in English. But you can see clearly here how the earlier English translations kind of “clean up” the hymn. Part of that can be attributed to the attempt to reference the English translation of Isaiah 53. But still it’s odd to me. It seems to me that the whole strength of this hymn is in the visceral and intimate connection of the Christian’s death to the death of Jesus. It’s the same thing that made “In Christi Wunden Schlaf ich ein” (I fall asleep in Jesus’ wounds) so powerful, moving, and comforting.

I suspect that it’s just that until recently such imagery was considered impolite or obscene in American/English society. It may be too that there was some anti-Catholicism involved; Rome has a devotion to the wounds and suffering of Christ that seems grotesque to American tastes. It may be that the same spirit that moved Lutherans to get rid of their crucifixes in the United States moved them to eliminate the blood and sweat and wounds from their hymns.

See for yourself:

Thy joyful Spirit give me pow’r

Thy stripes heal my diseases

Apply Thy blood in my last hour

To save me, dearest Jesus!

Then to Thy promis’d rest me bring

That with the ransom’d I may sing

Thy praise above forever.

Thy joyful Spirit strengthen me

Thy wounds heal my diseases

Thy blood in my last agony

Apply in that great crisis.

And take me to Thy promis’d rest

Where I may sing with all the blest

Thine everlasting praises.

And here’s mine again for comparison:

Your joyful Spirit give me strength,

Your bloody wounds repair me,

And let Your soothing sweat of death

In my last hour prepare me.

And take me, when it please you well,

In true faith from this tearful vale

To dwell among Your chosen.

http://www.hymnary.org/person/Ringwaldt_B?tab=texts Full Name: Ringwaldt, Bartholomaüs, 1532-1599 Birth Year: 1532 Death Year: 1599

Bartholomew Ringwaldt was born at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in 1530, and was a Lutheran pastor at Langfield, in Prussia, where he died, 1598. His hymns resemble Luther’s in their simplicity and power. Several of them were written to comfort himself and others in the sufferings they endured from famine, pestilence, fire and floods. In 1581, he published “Hymns for the Sundays and Festivals of the whole Year.” –Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A. 1872.

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Ringwaldt, Bartholomäus (Ringwalt, Ringwald), was born Nov. 28, 1532, at Frankfurt a. Oder. He was ordained in 1557, and was pastor of two parishes before he settled in 1566 as pastor of Langfeld (or Langenfeld), near Sonnenburg, Brandenburg. He was still there in 1597, but seems to have died there in 1599, or at least not later than 1600…

Ringwaldt exercised a considerable influence on his contemporaries as a poet of the people, as well as by his hymns properly so called. He was a true German patriot, a staunch Lutheran, and a man who was quite ready to face the consequences of his plain speaking. His style is as a rule clear and good, though his rhymes are often enough halting; and he possessed considerable powers of observation and description…

As a hymnwriter Ringwaldt was also of considerable importance. He was one of the most prolific hymn-writers of the 16th century….

Those of Ringwaldt’s hymns which have passed into English are:— i. Es ist gewisslich an derZeit. Second Advent. The anonymous original of this hymn is one of Zwey schöne Lieder, printed separately circa 1565, and thence in Wackernagel, iv. p. 344. W. von Maltzahn, in his Bücherschatz, 1875, No. 616, p. 93, cites it as in an undated Nürnberg broadsheet, circa 1556. Wackernagel also gives along with the original the revised form in Ringwaldt’s Handbüchlin, 1586. Both forms are also in the Unverfälschter Liedersegen, 1851, No. 746, in 7 stanzas of 7 lines. It is based on the “Dies Irae,” but can hardly be called a version of it. The original has a picturesqueness and force which are greatly lost in Ringwaldt’s revision. It was much used in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War, when in these distressful times men often thought the Last Day was at hand…

… iv. Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut, Du Brunnquell der Genaden. Lent. One of the finest of German penitential hymns. Wackernagel, iv. p. 1028, gives it, in 8 st. of 7 1., from Ringwaldt’s Christliche Warnung, 1588, where it is entitled “A fine hymn [of supplication] for the forgiveness of sins.”

–John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Related articles

https://deprofundisclamaviadtedomine.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/in-christi-wunden-schlaf-ich-ein-i-fall-asleep-in-jesus-wounds/

http://cyberbrethren.com/2009/11/14/singing-the-gospel-lutheran-hymns-and-the-success-of-the-reformation/