O Deus ego amo te

Template:Short description (Latin for "O God I love you") may refer to one of two Latin lyrics sometimes attributed to Francis Xavier, but of uncertain date and authorship.

The one whose first stanza runs: Template:Poem quote has four additional stanzas in similar rhythm, the last three being apparently a paraphrase of part of a prayer in the of Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual: "Take, O Lord, my entire liberty … whatever I have or possess you have bestowed on me; back to thee I give it all, and to the rule of thy will deliver it absolutely. Give me only thy love and thy grace and I am rich enough; nor do I ask anything more."

The hymn (probably first printed in the Cologne, 1695) received in Zabuesnig's (Augsburg, 1822), the title of "The Desire of St. Ignatius". Edward Caswall's version appeared in his "Masque of Mary" etc. (1858), and in his "Hymns and Poems" (1873); also in various Catholic hymnbooks (e.g. "Roman Hymnal", New York, 1884; Toner's "Catholic Church Hymnal", New York, 1905; and in Ould's "The Book of Hymns", Edinburgh, 1910).

The hymn was translated by John Keble, John William Hewett, Erastus C. Benedict, Hamilton Montgomerie Macgill, Samuel Willoughby Duffield.

The first stanza of the companion hymn is: Template:Poem quote There are four additional stanzas in irregular rhythm, while a variant form adds as a final line: (this given in Moorson's "A Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern", 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1903, p. 176). The hymn has been styled the "love-sigh" of Francis Xavier, who, it is fairly certain, composed the original Spanish sonnet –on which the various Latin versions are based, about the year 1546. There is not, however, sufficient reason for crediting to him any Latin version.

The form given above appeared in the (Cologne, 1696). An earlier Latin version by Joannes Nadasi in his (Rome, 1657), beginning: Nadasi again translated it in 1665. F. X. Drebitka ( Budapest, 1899) gives these versions, and one by Petrus Possinus in 1667. In 1668 J. Scheffler gave, in his a German translation– – of a version beginning

The form of the hymn indicated above has been translated into English verse about twenty-five times, and is found in Catholic and non-Catholic hymn-books. Samuel Willoughby Duffield, a Presbyterian, speaks of both hymns in glowing terms, in his "Latin Hymn Writers and Their Hymns" (New York, 1889): "From the higher critical standpoint, then, these hymns are not unacceptable as Xavier's own work. They feel as if they belonged to his age and to his life. They are transfused and shot through by a personal sense of absorption into divine love, which has fused and crystallized them in its fiercest heat" (p. 300).

The Scriptural text for both hymns might well be II Cor., v, 14, 15, or perhaps better still I John, iv, 19 – "Let us therefore love God, because God hath first loved us". The text of both hymns is given in Daniel's II, 335; of the second hymn, with notes, in March's "Latin Hymns", 190, 307 etc.