Excerpts

 
 

PROLOGUE

TE (You) LAUDAMUS (We Praise)

You come first. You are the Creator of the universe. When You laid the foundation of the earth, the morning stars sang together, and Ya ll the sons of God shouted for joy. You are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who built altars and called upon the name of the Lord. You are I AM, who revealed Yourself to Moses in the Burning Bush and promised him, “When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” You led the children of Israel to Mount Sinai in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire at night. You designed the Tabernacle and condescended to dwell in it so that Your people would know where to find You and how to approach You to receive Your blessings. You descended upon the Ark of the Covenant and chose the Mercy Seat as Your throne where You were seated between the cherubim to receive Your people’s praises and to answer their prayers. May it please You to see how this is depicted on the cover of this hymnal, with the capitalized TE shouting from between the cherubim as You rest upon the Ark-shaped laudamus, eager to listen to our psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs.

You are the eternal Word, who created all things out of nothing. You are the Life and the Light that no darkness can overcome. You became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we have seen Your glory, the glory that filled the Tabernacle, overflowing with grace and truth. You earnestly desired to eat the Passover with Your apostles before You suffered. You sang a hymn with them and led them out to the garden to watch and pray together with You. You prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” You promised Paradise to the penitent thief. When You had finished Your redeeming work, You prayed, “Father, into Your hands I commit my Spirit.” On the third day, You rose from the dead and opened the minds of Your disciples to understand the Scriptures. Now You are seated at the right hand of the Father, ready and eager to hear and answer our prayers. Under the bread and the cup, You give us Your body and blood to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of all our sins. At Your final advent, You will raise all the dead and every eye will see You. All who have done good will live with You forever in Your Father’s house, and all who have done evil will depart from You into the eternal flames prepared for the devil and his demons. You come first because You are the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. You are the same, yesterday, and today, and forever.

You hovered over the face of the waters in the beginning, when the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep. You inspired the prophets to preach and to write. You are the heavenly Dove who descended upon Jesus when He was baptized by John in the Jordan. On the same night in which He was betrayed, our Lord promised His disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” After His resurrection, Jesus ordered His disciples to wait for the promise of the Father: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” You inspired the Your inspiration. Only by Your intervention can any man say, “Jesus is Lord.” You help us in our infirmities when we don’t know what we ought to pray for; You make intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. You cultivate in us the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You come first.

You are the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There never has been and there never will be any other god before You. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are Your ways higher than our ways and Your thoughts above all our thoughts. You place Your triune name upon us in Holy Baptism, in the Invocation, and in the Absolution. You remove all our sins and iniquities. Even though You know all things, You remember our sins no more. You surpass all understanding even as through the Gospel You bestow upon us that peace which the world cannot give.

We praise You because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We praise You because You loved us with an everlasting love—even when we were dead in our trespasses. We praise You with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, giving thanks to You with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. We praise You because we love You, and we love You because You first loved us. ❉ We sing Your praises together with each other here on earth and together with the hosts of heaven. We are composers and musicians, congregations and choirs, sinners and saints from every nation and every age, united by the faith You have revealed and given to us. ◆ We trust You, heavenly Father, because You have given Your only begotten Son to die for us and You have poured out the Holy Spirit upon us to call, gather, enlighten, sanctify, and keep us with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. ◆ We worship You, Lord Jesus, because all who are baptized have been buried with You and raised to walk in newness of life. Since we have been united with You in Your death, we will certainly also be united with You in Your resurrection. ◆ We rejoice, O Spirit of God, in our tribulation because You have taught us that tribulation produces patience, and patience produces experience, and experience produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love is poured into our hearts when You are given to us. Our bodies are the temples in which You deign to dwell. ◆ We hearken to Your Word because the New Testament largely was born of controversy and in our faith-life today we recognize the fundamental factors of Law and Gospel at issue and in operation. The warning of the hardening of our hearts is coupled with and distinct from the good news of the forgiveness of sins through our blessed Savior. Therefore, we yearn to hear the melody of Your Gospel which is the power of God for our salvation. ◆ We pray to You because You invite us to pray and promise to hear us and to answer our prayers—all in Your good time and according to Your good and gracious will. ◆ Together with Ambrose and Gregory, with Martin Luther and Martin Franzmann, we join the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven to sing in marvelous harmony, “Te laudamus.”

I entreat every pious Christian to give a favorable reception to these hymns, and to help forward my undertaking, according as God hath given him more or less ability.

—Martin Luther’s preface to Geystliche Gsangbuechlin 1524

Michael Albrecht

Available Spring 2026

Published by
The Protes’tant Conference
❦
Hardcover | leatherette
Smythe-sewn binding
765 pages
Color illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-934328-06-4

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