Getting back to the New Living Parish Hymn Book, I find a song I haven’t looked at before, “Glory Be to Jesus” a hymn for Holy Week or Body and Blood of Christ. It’s the sort of traditional Catholic hymn that I doubtless would know if I were a cradle Catholic, but I haven’t heard in the Catholic churches I’ve been to in the last thirty years and certainly wasn’t on high rotation in the Presbyterian church I grew up in.
This is a C18 Italian hymn, “Viva! Viva! Gesù! Che per mio bene” attributed to S. Alfonso and translated by Edward Caswall and set to CASWELL (aka WEM IN LEIDENSTAGEN) by Friedrich Filitz, as arranged by Anthony Gregory Murray.
Hymnal.net has basic sheet music and slightly different lyrics. LiturgyShare also has the sheet music and his lyrics match these ones.
BIAB supplied the fake organ for a backing:
1 Glory be to Jesus,
Who in bitter pains
Poured for me the life-blood
From His sacred veins.
2 Grace and life eternal
In that blood I find:
Blest be his compassion,
Infinitely kind.
3 Blest through endless ages
Be the precious stream,
Which from endless torment
Does the world redeem.
4 Abel’s blood for vengeance
Pleaded to the skies;
But the blood of Jesus
For our pardon cried.
5 Oft as it is sprinkled
On our guilty hearts,
Satan in confusion
Terror-struck departs.
6 Oft as we exult it,
Lifting praises high,
Powers of evil tremble;
Victory fills the sky.
7 Lift ye then your voices;
Swell the mighty flood;
Louder still and louder,
Praise the precious blood.
