Take, eat, this is my body (website only)

Take, eat, this is my body,
Take, eat, broken for you.
Take, drink, blood shed for many.
I will always love you.

1. Bread of life, Cup of healing –
Open to all, not to just a few.
We come in our weakness, not in strength,
Leaving our burdens at your feet.

Refrain

2. Risen Christ here with us
With the promise of new life.
Strengthen us now to walk with you,
Faithful and strong to do you will.

Refrain

Words and music: © Rachael Prince

Metre: Irregular

Download words and tune as a PDF

Ideas for use

Written to be sung during the celebration of Holy Communion, Rachael here takes words familiar from the service itself (the Refrain) and opens them out with two verses of response and reflection.

Though written with two vocal lines in mind, the setting works just as well with only the top line sung.

The setting also suggests the possibility of the refrain being sung by the presiding minister, other cantor or small singing group, and the congregation responding with the two verses.

More information

Prior to entering presbyteral ministry, Rachael Prince was a freelance musician and a local preacher in the Witney and Faringdon Methodist circuit in Oxfordshire. “Take, eat, this is my body” was first sung, in its two-part version, at an Easter Day communion service by a small choir formed for that occasion. It was one of the first word settings that Rachel had composed.

Rachael recalls being an organist and pianist at church, and improvising as communion was being served. "This tune came about and then wouldn’t leave me – so I had to write it down. And as I was playing it through some words were turning in my head…” – the beginnings of “Take, Eat”.

As a local preacher, Rachael found her training and service preparation helpful when it came to writing the words of hymns; however, it was usually the melodies that came to her first. She describes how, when she was teaching piano and violin, in between music lessons she would often find herself sitting at the piano, improvising.

Partly, perhaps, because these were quiet, personal moments, Rachael found that it was a reflective style of music and setting that came most naturally to her, as in this hymn. At the same time, the words need to have resonance with her own everyday experience. “The hymns I like to sing are those that have some relevance to my own daily life – they will be reflect what’s going on for me.”