Bread of Heaven, on Thee We Feed

Lyrics

Bread of heaven, on thee we feed,
for thy flesh is meat indeed;
ever may our souls be fed
with this true and living bread;
day by day with strength supplied
through the life of him who died.

Vine of heaven, thy blood supplies
this blest cup of sacrifice;
Lord, thy wounds our healing give,
to thy Cross we look and live:
Jesus, may we ever be
grafted, rooted, built in thee.

History

Josiah Conder (1789-1855) wrote this communion hymn in 1824. It first appeared in his collection The Star in the East (1824), under the title 'For the Eucharist'. Conder was a London publisher and man of letters — proprietor and editor of The Eclectic Review from 1814 and editor of the Patriot newspaper — and a Congregationalist layman; he went on to edit the first Congregational Hymn Book (1836).

The hymn as almost universally sung today is a revision of Conder's original. His first version was written in the first person singular; the form given in the Cooke and Denton Church Hymnal (1853, No. 202) changed 'I' to 'we', making the hymn congregational, and it is this revision that spread. Great popularity came with its adoption by Hymns Ancient & Modern in 1861, and subsequently by other important Church of England collections. Hymnary.org records the text in some 355 hymnals.

The words are steeped in the eucharistic language of John's Gospel — among the scriptural references Hymnary.org lists are John 6:32-58 (the bread of life discourse) and John 15:1-17 (the true vine), alongside Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Corinthians 10:16. The two stanzas mirror the two elements: bread of heaven in the first, the true vine in the second.

Performance

The tune most often paired with this text is BREAD OF HEAVEN by William Dalrymple Maclagan (1826-1910), published in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1875 and recorded by Hymnary.org in some 57 hymnals; the tune shares the text's 7.7.7.7.7.7 metre. Other pairings Hymnary.org lists include ARFON, NICHT SO TRAURIG (PRESSBURG), JESU, JESU, DU MEIN HIRT and SPANISH CHANT.

Liturgically this is a Eucharistic hymn — written 'For the Eucharist' and sung at Holy Communion, most naturally during or immediately after the distribution.

Sources: hymnary.org