DECK THYSELF, MY SOUL, WITH GLADNESS
“Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness” (1) is one of the best communion hymns the church hascome up with yet. Beginning life as Johann Franck’s “Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele” in 1649, this German-language hymn has provided nearly three centuries’ worth of meditation on the mystery of being invited to God’s Table. And it has a melody to match: unlike many hymns whose tune and text develop separately, “Deck thyself”’s tune, still used and joyfully interpolated by J.S. Bach and others, was composed by Johann Crüger specifically for Franck’s text. (2) “Deck thyself” comes to us as a whole, text and music bolstering each other deliberately in one cohesive work of hymnic art.
Anglophones have “Deck thyself” thanks to Catherine Winkworth, an English lay woman who, while living in Germany, decided the German hymns were so good that they should be brought into English immediately. She single-handedly translated “Deck thyself” and numerous other German hymns we still sing today, and her work did more than any other writer’s to revive the English use of German hymns. (3)
Winkworth made necessary adaptations when moving the text from German to English. Her masterful work then made it through the hands of hymnal editors. By the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1940, the canonical American version of “Deck thyself” was pared down from Franck’s original nine stanzas to a tight three. (4)
Every editorial decision in “Deck thyself”’s history has been lovingly made to convey the main arc of the hymn: a person draws nearer to Jesus, finally to unite with him by receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. Let’s look at how this works.
Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness,
Come into the daylight's splendor,
There with joy thy praises render
Unto him whose grace unbounded
Hath this wondrous banquet founded,
High o'er all the heav'ns he reigneth,
Yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.
The first stanza opens with the narrator addressing herself indirectly, speaking to her own languishing soul. This type of narration recalls the Psalmist: “Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me?” (Ps 43), and here suggests some disintegration within the narrator. She must urge her own soul to come “into the daylight’s splendor” and adorn itself “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2), just as the Psalmist resolves to go “unto the altar of God, even unto the God of my joy and gladness” (Psalm 43) in the face of sadness and frustration.
In the third couplet, as soon as the narrator thinks on God, the music ascends, with “unto him” being the high point of the melody. We are taken upward with her—”Lift up your hearts,” as the liturgies instruct—to the first mention of the Eucharistic feast. The fourth couplet’s two lines have a parallel structure that underscores the mysterious contrast of God’s condescension to us in that “wondrous banquet,” helped by alliteration also present in the German: “High o’er all the heav’ns he reigneth, / Yet to dwell with thee he deigneth” (“Der den Himmel kann verwalten, / Will jetzt Herberg' in dir halten”). (5)
Musically, the harmonic tension of the last couplet’s first line helps us feel the numinous nature of that ruler of the heavens, before whom we are small and not in alignment. As the melody moves back down and the harmony resolves, we have a musical picture of the extraordinary, unexpected joy eof divine descent. Textually, the network of imagery activated by the last line is rich, from John’s stupendous assertion that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), to Jesus’ declaration to Zacchaeus that “today I must abide at thy house” (Luke 19:5), to a kneeling congregation praying “that we may ever dwell in him, and he in us” before the reception of the sacrament in the Prayer of Humble Access. (6)
Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
Light, who dost my soul enlighten,
Joy, the sweetest any knoweth,
Fount, whence all my being floweth,
At thy feet I cry, my Maker,
Let me be a fit partaker
Of this blessed food from heaven,
For our good, thy glory, given.
The second stanza also begins with an address, but there has been movement: the narrator addresses not herself, but God, and with effusive praise. The imagery of any darkness or sadness has been left behind; here abound pictures of light, warmth, and joy. God, however, remains unnamed, as the narrator describes him through four different beautiful yet impersonal metaphors. One imagines each as an attempt to see and praise him from a new angle, as did the Evangelists, or as successive attempts to approach him. A first taste of Holy Communion as taste appears here, with God-as-Joy being called “sweet”. It whets the appetite; it brings forth more desire. “Thou gavest them bread from heaven,” proclaim the priests in places which practice Eucharistic adoration, after the Wisdom of Solomon (16:20); “containing within itself all sweetness,” sings back the congregation.
The music rises again at the third couplet, this time with a pleading tone as the narrator begs to be made a worthy communicant. She begs “at [the] feet” of God (hence the rising music, as her cry must issue upward). This interesting image suggests that she has succeeded in approaching God, and indeed the God who has feet, Jesus Christ; both Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear and obey his teaching (Luke 10:39) and the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and whose sins were forgiven (Luke 7:38) come to mind. But the narrator goes beyond these two in overtly identifying him as her “Maker.” This is poetic license rather than confounding Jesus with the Father, Maker of heaven and earth, and we should be ready to confess with her that Jesus is the one through whom all things are made.
The harmonic tension-and-release trick works a second time at the last couplet. The “blessed food from heaven” is something of which “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs,” (7) and the less-comfortable harmony reflects this; but the harmonic resolution in the last line again reconciles us to the reality that God comes to us anyway. An extra sense of gently repetitive stability is created by the alliteration (again) of the statement that the sacrament is “for our good, thy glory, given.” This statement is interesting too. The sacrament is given for our good, and for God’s glory, and these are not at odds; our good is at least part of God’s glory.
Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
Let me gladly here obey thee,
Never to my hurt invited,
Be thy love with love requited;
From this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
Through the gifts thou here dost give me
As thy guest in heaven receive me.
Finally, the Word-made-Flesh has come into full view of the narrator as she calls him “Jesus” for the first time in the hymn. She confesses him as “Bread of Life” and “Lord,” and speaks to him directly here more than any other place. She is entirely concerned with conforming herself to Jesus and is ready to unite herself with him in the Holy Communion.
The ambiguous syntax of “never to my hurt invited” has puzzled some. What hurt? Who is (not) being invited? A look at the German can help us: “Hilf, daß ich doch nicht vergebens, / oder mir vielleicht zum Schaden, / sei zu deinem Tisch geladen!” (8), “Help that I not be in vain, or to my own detriment, invited to your Table!” The English is at once a plea for Jesus not to allow the narrator to come to the Table unworthily (like the German), and an acknowledgement that Jesus never calls us to himself for the purpose of hurting us. While there is a note of warning here that, as the Prayer Book exhortation reminds us, “the danger [is] great, if we receive [the Holy Communion] improperly” (9), the English introduces a comfortable word about the invitation to Communion: that God “desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live” (10).
The rest of the hymn sees the narrator give herself over in gratitude for God’s gifts in the Holy Communion. The editorial history of this hymn has left much excellent German text on the cutting room floor—from explicitly marital overtones (“Come, my love, let me kiss thee”) to stunning sacramentological declarations (“This bread will never be spent, though it feeds thousands”) (11)—but our English-language tradition preserves the simple, grateful core of a right response to God’s invitation: “be thy love with love requited.”
Each time “Deck thyself” is programmed for communion, I find myself approaching the altar feeling especially knit into the small tapestry of saints who produced it. Surely the Holy Ghost himself is the Great Redactor who orchestrates the compilation of such artistic works, working through many individuals and over lots of time! As a linguist and after serving in an English-French bilingual corner of the church, I’ve grown fond of Catherine Winkworth especially, whose singular translational inspiration in the multigenerational editing of this hymn has caused its treasures to reverberate into cultures (including mine!) that otherwise would never experience their formative value. “Deck thyself” should make us grateful for Holy Communion and for the blessings of God in his saints. Remember them next time you are at the banquet they praised so profusely!
The Hymnal 1982 (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1985). Referenced lyrics and harmony are taken from this version.
John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, second edition (London: John Murray, 1915), 1014.
Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, 1287.
The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1940), #210.
Johann Crüger, Praxis pietatis melica (1703), 670.
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979), 337.
The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 337.
Crüger, Praxis pietatis melica, 671.
The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 316.
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1945), 7.
Crüger, Praxis pietatis melica, 671.
