We Gather Together

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The text which you heard for “We Gather Together” is an updated version by Omer Westendorf. He founded the World Library of Sacred Music, which evolved into World Library Publications (WLP), which is part of J.S. Paluch. Westendorf took a lot of well-known hymns, often Protestant or ecumenical, and rewrote the lyrics to give them a more Catholic tone. He did this with “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as well as “We Gather Together” and many others. Here is the text you would have heard;
  1. We gather together to sing the Lord’s praises,
    To worship the Father through Jesus, his Son.
    In this celebration, all sing with jubilation!
    We are his holy people whose freedom he won.
  2. We greet our Lord present within our assembly,
    We hear his good news announced clearly to all.
    Our priest is presiding, in Christ we are abiding,
    As we invoke God’s blessing and answer his call.*
  3. Since Christ is the vine and his people the branches,
    In him we give praise to the Father above.
    He brings ev’ry nation to learn of his salvation,
    That all may grow in knowledge, in faith, hope, and love.
*newer versions of the hymn editorially change the third line of this text:
“With songs of rejoicing our praises we are voicing”
This was done either to make the song more ecumenical or for use in non-eucharistic celebrations. (Incidentally, some other lyrics were gracefully inclusified.)

The hymn tune itself is somewhat suspect, originally a folk song (which sounds a bit like a drinking song) with words that translate to “Wilder than wild, who will tame me?”
 
GabrielPenfield said:
The text which you heard for “We Gather Together” is an updated version by Omer Westendorf. He founded the World Library of Sacred Music, which evolved into World Library Publications (WLP), which is part of J.S. Paluch. Westendorf took a lot of well-known hymns, often Protestant or ecumenical, and rewrote the lyrics to give them a more Catholic tone. He did this with “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as well as “We Gather Together” and many others. Here is the text you would have heard;
  1. We gather together to sing the Lord’s praises,
    To worship the Father through Jesus, his Son.
    In this celebration, all sing with jubilation!
    We are his holy people whose freedom he won.
  2. We greet our Lord present within our assembly,
    We hear his good news announced clearly to all.
    Our priest is presiding, in Christ we are abiding,
    As we invoke God’s blessing and answer his call.*
  3. Since Christ is the vine and his people the branches,
    In him we give praise to the Father above.
    He brings ev’ry nation to learn of his salvation,
    That all may grow in knowledge, in faith, hope, and love.
*newer versions of the hymn editorially change the third line of this text:
“With songs of rejoicing our praises we are voicing”
This was done either to make the song more ecumenical or for use in non-eucharistic celebrations. (Incidentally, some other lyrics were gracefully inclusified.)

The hymn tune itself is somewhat suspect, originally a folk song (which sounds a bit like a drinking song) with words that translate to “Wilder than wild, who will tame me?”
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In the Worship III hymnal it has the original verses, not the one above. It’s not even printed in the OCP missal that I have (it’s from 2003 which was the last time I worked in a parish that used this missal, so the newer edition might have it in there again.) That said, as a kid I remember the original verses, as I liked the melody and had the words memorized. My childhood parish used the OCP missalettes. (Again the newer edition might have the hymn back in with the new text. I wouldn’t know though.)

In regards to the hymn melody origins, many melodies could probably be traced to having traditional folk song roots. People have used that excuse for not using “Joyful, Joyful” because the origins of the melody was that of a drinking song with its own words. Then Beethoven took it to an entirely new level and then it was refined to incorporate it as a hymn with new text. Composers worth their salt will always refine the music to sound less than a folk song and become more of it’s own entity within any genre the composer is writing. Good musicians will do the same in terms of playing the music. There are many Irish and English hymn melodies that if played like a dance jig, would sound totally inappropriate for a mass. But played with solemnity and refinement, can be appropriate. The Slane melody, for instance, is one such creature. I have heard it done very distastefully and then with so much majesty and spiritual beauty when the tempi was slowed down, it became a totally different hymn. The same would go with “We Gather Together”.

I think what is more important is if the text is appropriate and if it is played and sung in an appropriate way for mass.
 
We learned it in public school when I was a child. It was a Thanksgiving music standard, along with Come Ye Thankful People Come.

I wish with all my heart that this song or any song honoring the Christian God, Catholic or Protestant, could be sung in public school again without a huge lawsuit.

I suspect that one reason why it is still done in Catholic Churches is historical tradition. It is a traditional Thanksgiving hymn, and we in the U.S. are not necessarily thinking of theology when we sing it at Mass, but of recognizing our history, especially the pilgrims and their desire to worship God freely.

I have to admit that I don’t think Mass is the best place to teach American history, but OTOH, when so many public school children are receiving a godless, religionless version of history every day, why shouldn’t God’s Church try in a small way to refute this and help our kids to know the truth about their history?

There aren’t many forums in the Catholic Church to teach little children that their public schools are twisting history into something religionless. The Catholic schools, yes, for those who actually go to them. CCD? Is there singing during CCD classes? (Since I wasn’t Catholic growing up, I honestly don’t know.)

Church children’s clubs would be ideal (e.g., AWANA, Pioneers, etc.), and I know that there are Catholic Children’s Clubs, but how many parishes actually do these, and if they did, how many parents would enroll their children and make the time for this one more activity?

Oh, well. Again, I admit that Mass is not the time for an American history lesson.
 
Cat said:
I suspect that one reason why it is still done in Catholic Churches is historical tradition. It is a traditional Thanksgiving hymn, and we in the U.S. are not necessarily thinking of theology when we sing it at Mass, but of recognizing our history, especially the pilgrims and their desire to worship God freely.
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That may be a reason, but the problem IS the history of the actual text and what it stood for. Yes, it was a hymn of Thanksgiving – the Dutch thanking God for delivering them from Catholic Spain and her Catholic idealogies which were abhorrent to them.

I agree that history is extremely important. I LOVE history – always have and can’t get enough of reading about it and the individual biographies of important people in history. I’m even a dork, revolutionary war re-enactor who promotes living history. But if we want to really teach the truth about history and are truly employing this hymn and the original words because of the history and tradition of it being a Thanksgiving hymn, we would also have to admit to the children, that although the Puritans were thanking God for religious freedom from Anglican England, they weren’t willing to give religious freedom to those who were not of their own theological thinking – even to the point of banning or killing those who didn’t agree with them or who worshipped differently. For instance Quakers and people of other faiths at one point could not enter these colonies without the fear of being put to death. It is also the reason why Anne Hutchinson left Massachusetts with her family and began RI and then eventually moved to New York. Her theological and idealogical thinking was different, so she was outlawed. Her “rebelliousness” was one of the many reasons why Harvard was started. They didn’t want people like her (especially as a woman) teaching or believing differently from what they believed.

For these reasons, it would be a bit confusing to a child, saying that this hymn was used for religious freedom from Catholics first and then from Anglicanism (if we want to take the slant of the Pilgrims) who actually didn’t grant religious freedom to other faiths – especially to Catholicism. People, especially the colonists, were really ticked off when Maryland was granted to Catholics. They really worked hard to make it into a Protestant colony in a matter of years by taking it over politically. Unfortunately, that isn’t talked about much in history classes in public schools, but many of our friends in these re-enacting units are history majors, professors, etc. (not even Catholic) and they will tell you these things. It can also be looked up.

So, if we are just doing it for the historical tradition to teach the children their history and ignoring the theological reasoning, there is a lot of baggage with this hymn just with the historical background alone.

P.S. I attended Catholic school till I was 16, but my husband and many people I knew did attend CCD, so to answer your question, yes, they did learn hymns in CCD. It wasn’t a lot because they all tell me that CCD was a major joke. My husband even said they taught more secular humanism in his classes rather than actual theology (back in the 80s/90s). He didn’t realize it until he attended a Catholic prep school and started to get more involved in his faith.
Cat said:
Oh, well. Again, I admit that Mass is not the time for an American history lesson.
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I agree. 🙂
 
Cavaille-Coll said:
So the “wicked oppressing” refers to Catholicism?
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I would interpret it as such since it was originally written as a hymn of Thanksgiving to God for delivering them from the oppression of Catholicism and the Catholic monarchy of Spain. In my previous post #6, I attached some links with the historical origins of the hymns. The Dutch protestants were forbidden to gather for their services, so the phrase “We gather together…” was important. And it was apparently considered a secular hymn since Dutch pilgrims and Calvanists only sung psalms a capella during their worship as they did not believe in musical accompaniment. It wasn’t until much later did it be incorporated into Protestant hymnals and eventually Catholic ones. You can read the rest in the link.
 
In case I had not made myself clear above regarding the revised 1970 text which was heard by a poster at Mass: this text is only found in WLP/J.S. Paluch publications, such as Seasonal Missalette, We Celebrate, Word and Song, People’s Mass Book, Celebremos!, etc.
 
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