Christ Beside Me and Christ My All... St. Patrick's Prayer in song

Today is St. Patrick's Day.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't go through the day without spending some time with St. Patrick's Prayer, otherwise known as the "Breastplate of St. Patrick".

I first learned about this prayer three years ago.  In fact I wrote about it in a blog post back then.

There are numerous versions of this prayer.  The more famous portion of this prayer is the section mentioning Christ with the various prepositions of place (within, beside, before, behind, beneath, above).

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

This version is from the Prayer Foundation.

Our lead pastor, Rowland Buck, shared this prayer at the beginning of the pastoral prayer in yesterday's worship service.  It's a wonderful and beautiful prayer.

The rest of the prayer is pretty awesome too.  There are different versions of it.  I will share a couple that I found.  The first one that I found this morning was embedded in a blog and made mention of a Catholic songwriter.  So, let's learn from them first.

The picture grabbed my attention.

As I read the blog of Ann Ammar, I found her words inspiring.  The post is entitled St. Patrick's Breastplate.  The artist she mentions is Mark Mallett.  His song, "Christ My All" is from his Deliver Me From Me album from 1999.  You can listen to the song "Christ My All" by going to the CD baby music store site, scrolling down to song #10 and hitting play.  The lyrics are based on the prayer.  Mark Mallett has an OFFICIAL website with links to a blog, music, store, etc.

I looked for other versions of the prayer and songs throughout this afternoon.  From hymnary.org I learned that a song based on this Gaelic prayer is found in 8 hymnals, one of them being "The Faith We Sing" (#2166, used by UMC).  This tune is entitled "Christ Beside Me" and was adapted by James Quinn.  To learn which 8 hymnals include this song, you can go to this hymnary.org link.  You will also see information about James Quinn, a song pages from two different hymnals, the lyrics to this song, meter (5.5.4.4 D / also written as 55.54 D) and tune (BUNESSAN) information.

Here is a version of "Christ Beside Me"

As you listen to the music played in the video, you may recognize the tune.  The BUNESSAN tune is also used for "Morning Has Broken" (#145 in the UMC hymnal). [If you're wondering, 'why in the world is she talking tunes and meters'?!?! I confess that it is because of worship class weekend #2 this past weekend.  We learned how to "dial 926" in the UMC hymnal to learn about the metrical index.  We also learned about substituting songs so that we wouldn't be teaching a new text and a new tune at the same time.  We learned how to use the metrical index to help us find a different tune that would fit the song with the text that we desired to use.  One must keep in mind the liturgical season in that choice.  This was very fun for me!]  That's my commercial for the WO 510 class, now back to the post....

Another song that comes from this prayer is "I Bind Upon Myself Today" translated by Cecil Francis Alexander per the Oremus Hymnal site.  This song is found in numerous hymnals and is another popular version of the prayer.

If this post has raised your curiosity in any way, you might find yourself searching to see what other songs have been written based on this prayer.  You will notice that I haven't included any biographical information on St. Patrick himself.  I'm hoping that you'll be curious enough to look for some of that yourself.  This post is long enough. ☺

Blessings on your journey,

Debra