Benedicamus and Benediction

Having received the Lord’s body and blood in the Sacrament and given thanks for His gracious gifts in the Collect, the service concludes with the Benedicamus and Benediction. Once again the pastor announces the Salutation, “The Lord be with you.” The Salutation is not a mere greeting, but it announces that the Lord is truly present in this place to bring His blessings to His people. The Salutation occurs three times in the Divine Service: before the Collect and Scripture readings, at the beginning of the Service of the Sacrament, and finally, before the Benediction. The final Salutation announces to the congregation that we are about to receive the blessing of the Lord as we prepare to go out into the world.

Benedicamus is Latin for “let us bless.” The language of blessing is closely tied to praise in Hebrew, especially when the Lord is the object of blessing, for example, “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1). Each of the five books of the Psalms ends with an invitation to bless the Lord for all His wondrous works. It is fitting that we conclude the Divine Service with a similar invitation to acknowledge the Triune God and the gifts He has bestowed upon us in the service. The congregation responds, “Thanks be to God.” This is the response of faith in thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins and life we have received.

The Benediction is a blessing that imparts what it says. It is taken from Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” This blessing was first given to Moses for Aaron and the priests to bless the people and place His name on them. So also at Jesus’ ascension, He lifted up His hands to bless His disciples before He departed from their sight (Luke 24:50). With this threefold Benediction, we have come full circle, recalling the Invocation of the Triune God at the beginning of the Divine Service. The Lord has placed His name upon us in Baptism and He continues to bless us through the Means of Grace. The presence and blessing of Christ which we receive in Word and Sacrament now abides within us as we prepare to go out into the world to love God and serve our neighbor in our vocations. In this final Benediction, we have the assurance that we are Christ’s and that all He has is ours by virtue of His name. As we confess in the Large Catechism, “Where God’s name is, there must also be life and salvation” (LC IV 27).

Post-Communion Collect

After singing the Nunc Dimittis, the Church confesses that the Eucharist is the Lord’s gracious gift and responds in thanksgiving using the words of Psalm 107:1, “O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever.” This verse introduces the Post-Communion Collect, a prayer in which we give thanks for the gifts received in the Sacrament and ask for the continued blessings which our Lord promises to give through the Sacrament. The first option for a Post-Communion Collect in the Lutheran Service Book was composed by Martin Luther for the Deutsche Messe (1526). In this prayer, Luther notes that the Sacrament brings salvation, which stands in stark contrast to the Roman Catholic teaching that the Eucharist is a sacrifice that we offer to God. He also emphasizes the proper relationship of faith and works—that as the Sacrament refreshes our faith, so also it strengthens us for love and service of our neighbor. This prayer was the most common Post-Communion Collect found in church orders after the Reformation and remains popular today.

The second Post-Communion Collect in the LSB calls upon God the Father as “the fountain and source of all goodness” (p. 201). We confess in the Creed that the Father is the creator and sustainer of all things, and here in this prayer we acknowledge that the greatest gift He has given us is His only-begotten Son, born in the flesh to redeem us from our sins. In this collect, we give thanks for the “pardon and peace” which we receive in the Lord’s Supper and we ask that the Holy Spirit would always rule our hearts and minds so that we are enabled to serve God in all that we say and do. With its emphasis on forgiveness, this collect is especially appropriate during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent.

The third collect in the LSB recalls the language of the Eucharistic Prayer, calling the Lord’s Supper a “foretaste of the feast to come” (p. 166). The emphasis of this prayer is eschatological as we ask that our heavenly Father would keep us steadfast in the one true faith until that day when we join with all the saints to “celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end.” This collect refers to our earthly life as a pilgrimage, recalling Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, which is the Old Testament picture of the life of the Church as God rescues us out of the slavery of sin and death and brings us to everlasting life. This prayer is closely tied to the seasons of Christmas and Easter as we celebrate the central acts of God to bring us salvation.

Nunc Dimittis

The text of the Nunc Dimittis is taken from the Song of Simeon in Luke 2:29-32, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not taste death until he saw the promised Messiah (Luke 2:26). When Jesus was born and brought to the temple, Simeon took him up in his arms and sang this canticle, declaring that he was ready to die in perfect peace because he had beheld the salvation of the whole world in the infant Christ.

The Nunc Dimittis is a most fitting canticle to sing after receiving the Lord’s Supper. Although we do not see Christ in human flesh with our eyes as Simeon did, the Holy Spirit works in us to behold Him with the eyes of faith to see that Jesus is truly present in His body and blood on the altar to bring us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Just as Simeon took up the infant Jesus in his arms, so we too have touched Christ in the eating and drinking of His body and blood. We therefore confess along with Simeon and the whole Church that we are ready to face death because we have seen the Lord’s salvation. We are at peace with God because Christ has covered us with His righteousness, and we are at peace with one another because Christ has knit us together as His body, the Church.

The Nunc Dimittis is a relatively new addition to the Divine Service. There is some evidence that it was sung in the Mozarabic Rite in ancient Spain, but it was more commonly used in the early and medieval churches as a canticle in the Office of Compline, a late evening prayer service (LSB p. 253). It began to appear in a few Lutheran orders of the Divine Service in the sixteenth century, but it did not gain widespread popularity until Wilhelm Löhe included it in his Agenda in 1844 for Lutheran churches in America.

Some settings of the Divine Service in theLutheran Service Bookinclude an alternate post-communion canticle, “Thank the Lord.” This text is drawn from the Psalms and calls upon us to give thanks to God for His wondrous works among us, namely, the incarnation and passion of our Lord, and our reception of Christ’s body and blood in the Sacrament. Our joyous gratitude to God prompts us to proclaim His wonderous deeds to all people that they too might be brought to saving faith in Christ.