Elisabeth Cruciger was a friend and coworker of Martin Luther and the first female hymn writer of the Protestant Reformation. Elisabeth entered monastic life as a young woman, but through books that were smuggled into the monastery, she became convinced of the teachings of the Protestant Reformation and left the convent for Wittenberg. She would eventually marry Caspar Cruciger, who was a professor of theology.

Elisabeth embarked on an active ministry as a hymn writer, producing a number of compositions that helped to teach the Christian faith to laypeople. According to one account, she once dreamed she was standing in the pulpit of the Wittenberg church preaching. When she told Caspar this, he replied that whenever the church sang one of her hymns, she was indeed preaching, just as much as if she had spoken the words from the pulpit. She died when she was in her mid-thirties.

Elisabeth’s hymn “Lord Christ, God’s Only Dear Son” was translated into English by Miles Coverdale, and was one of the most popular hymns used by Anglicans in the sixteenth century. It is still included in most Lutheran hymnals, and is #309 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the current hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The following is the English translation of her hymn translated by Anglican priest Arthur Tozer Russell in 1850:

1. The only Son from heaven, foretold by ancient seers, by God the Father given, in human form appears. No sphere his light confining, no star so brightly shining, As he, our Morningstar.

2. Oh, times of God appointed, Oh bright and holy morn! He comes, the king anointed, the Christ, the virgin-born, Grim death to vanquish for us, to open heav’n before us And bring us life again.

3. Awaken, Lord, our spirit to know and love you more, In faith to stand unshaken, in spirit to adore, That we, through this world moving, each glimpse of heaven proving, May reap his fullness there.

4. O Father, here before you with God the Holy Ghost, And Jesus we adore you, O pride of angel host: Before you mortals lowly cry: “Holy, holy, holy, O blessed Trinity!”

Excerpted directly from “Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2022,” p. 216-217.