Holy Week: Love Divine

LOOK: Crozier head with the Crucifixion

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This carved head of a bishop’s staff from medieval France depicts Christ crucified on the tree of the cross, flanked by his mother Mary and his friend John. From the base of the cross flows a healing stream of blood, which an angel kneels to catch in his hands.

LISTEN: “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done” | Words by Charles Wesley, 1742

I can’t decide which of the following two tunes I prefer, so I proffer them both. The first is a traditional four-part hymn tune, sung a cappella, whereas the second is a contemporary guitar-driven tune.

>> Music by Isaac Baker Woodbury, 1850 | Performed by the Choral Arts Society of Washington, dir. Scott Tucker, on Lift Up Your Voice: Hymns of Charles Wesley, 2015:

>> Music by Heaven’s Dave, on Beyond the Starry Skies, 2023:

O Love divine, what hast thou done?
Th’ immortal God hath died for me;
The Father’s co-eternal Son
Bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th’ immortal God for me hath died;
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.

Behold him, all ye that pass by,
The bleeding Prince of Life and Peace;
Come, sinners, see your Savior die,
And say, “Was ever grief like his?”
Come feel with me his blood applied;
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.

Is crucified for me and you,
To bring us rebels back to God.
Believe, believe the record true:
We all are bought with Jesus’ blood.
Pardon for all flows from his side;
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.

Then let us sit beneath his cross,
And gladly catch the healing stream;
All things for him account but loss,
And give up all our hearts to him—
Of nothing speak, or think beside,
But Jesus and him crucified.