Today we commemorate Philipp Nicolai, Johann Heermann, and Paul Gerhardt, Hymnwriters. Philipp Nicolai was a German pastor who lived through the Great Plague, which took the lives of thirteen hundred members of his parish. Despite hardships, he contributed hymns which the Church uses to this day — among them, “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying” and “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright”. Johann Heermann was a German pastor who lived through the Thirty Years’ War, and contributed a number of hymns to the corpus. Paul Gerhardt was a German pastor who also lived through the Thirty Years’ War, lost his pastoral position for refusing to compromise his beliefs, and wrote over one hundred hymns; he is regarded as one of Lutheranism’s finest hymnwriters.