Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meet-up for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing, is welcome.
Tonight is Easter Sunday, the second most joyous and blessed of all nights. (The most joyous and blessed of all nights, according to the ancient proclamation of Easter praises known as the Exsultet, was last night.)
Follow me below the fold for a translation, some more music, and a reflection.
The Exsultet, or the Easter proclamation of praise, is sung in every Catholic church, each year at the Easter Vigil after the Paschal candle has been kindled from a new fire. The version linked above was from France. The English version goes like this:
Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!
Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes forever!
Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!
My dearest friends, standing with me in this holy light,
join me in asking God for mercy,
that he may give his unworthy minister
grace to sing his Easter praises.
The Lord be with you.
(R) And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
(R) We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
(R) It is right to give him thanks and praise.
It is truly right
that with full hearts and minds and voices
we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father,
and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,
and paid for us the price of Adam's sin
to our eternal Father!
This is our passover feast,
when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain,
whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.
This is the night when first you saved our ancestors:
you freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.
This is the night when the pillar of fire
destroyed the darkness of sin!
This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin
and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.
This is the night when Jesus Christ
broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.
What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?
Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave
you gave away your Son.
O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!
Most blessed of all nights, chosen by God
to see Christ rising from the dead!
Of this night Scripture says:
"The night will be as clear as day:
it will become my light, my joy."
The power of this holy night
dispels all evil, washes guilt away,
restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled with God!
Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night,
receive our evening sacrifice of praise,
your Church's solemn offering.
Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.
Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!
May the morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning;
Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all humankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns forever and ever.
(R) Amen.
Sisters and brothers, our Lenten observance is ended. What that means, for our non-Christian friends and observers, is that the somber time of Lent, the forty days of prayer, abstinence, fasting, and almsgiving, which commemorate the forty days which Jesus spent in the desert in preparation for the beginning of his ministry (and also the forty years the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt), has given way to the joys of the Easter season. As our sisters and brothers in the Orthodox tradition have it:
This is the Paschal troparion, which is sung in Orthodox churches on the Paschal Vigil, and then at the start of most prayers and religious services from the Sunday after Easter through to the vigil of the Ascension:
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν
θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,
ζωὴν χαρισάμενος.
Christ rose from the dead
Trampling death with death
And gracing with life
Those in the tombs. (My translation from the Greek original.)
The thing to remember about the Resurrection, according to my late spiritual director, is that it is not the same thing as resuscitation. Resuscitation is what doctors and EMTs and paramedics do: it brings a human body back to life again. Resurrection, which only God can do, does something different. In John's Gospel, when Mary Magdalene meets the resurrected Christ (John 20:11-18), she falls all over him in tears. Jesus then says to her, in the Greek original, "μή μου ἅπτου, οὔπω γὰρ ἀναβέβηκα πρὸς τὸν πατέρα." Virtually all translations of this passage render this sentence into English as something like "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father."
The problem with that translation is that it misses a significant nuance in the original Greek. The take-home message here is not that Jesus has suddenly become radioactive (or anything like that), such that his physical person can no longer be touched by regular brothers and sisters. (If that had been the case, it would totally screw up the story of Doubting Thomas, which begins a scant five verses later in the same chapter of John.)
A better translation of the original has Jesus say to Mary "Stop clinging to me...." The point is that Jesus has become something new, something more than he was when he was in human form. If his disciples cling to the Jesus they once knew--physically or metaphorically--he can't go to his Father, and the disciples can't go do what they're supposed to do (more and greater things than Jesus did, according to his own words to them in John 14:12).
The other thing to remember about Resurrection is that it's our destiny as people of faith. (This is straightforward Christian doctrine; people of other faiths will necessarily have different views.) As Jesus was changed and raised from the dead, so we shall be. Exactly what those changes entail, nobody knows.
Or, to put it another way, in a saying variously attributed to the epitaph of Akbar the Great, one of the Mughal emperors of India (1542-1605); an inscription above one of the gates of the Fathepur Sikri mosque; and the Buddha (which would seem implausible, given that he lived before the birth of Christ):
Jesus, peace be upon him, said this: Life is a bridge: cross it, but build no house upon it. Life endures for but an hour: spend it in devotion. The rest is unseen.
So it is that we have the Triduum, a Latin word meaning a period of three days. Specifically, it refers to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday--the three most solemn and significant days in the Christian calendar. Today is pretty much an afterthought--all the fireworks (in some cases literally) take place Thursday through Saturday. This is why it is not oxymoronic for us to call the day on which we commemorate the horrific Passion and death of Jesus "Good Friday." Because Christ was raised, we can rely on his promise that we, too, can do the same.
And so, to send us forth into the Easter season, here is my favorite Easter hymn, as it was meant to be presented:
Jesus Christ is ris'n today, Alleluia!
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!
Who did once upon the cross, Alleluia!
Suffer to redeem our loss, Alleluia!
Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!
Unto Christ, our heav'nly King, Alleluia!
Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
Sinners to redeem and save, Alleluia!
But the pains which he endured, Alleluia!
Our salvation have procured, Alleluia!
Now above the sky he's King, Alleluia!
Where the angels ever sing, Alleluia!
Sing we to our God above, Alleluia!
Praise eternal as his love, Alleluia!
Praise him, now his might confess, Alleluia!
Father, Son, and Spirit blest, Alleluia!
Let us go in peace.