Let God Arise!
“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago.”
The reredos of the modern church St Paul de Meythet in southeastern France boats an enormous fresco of the resurrection painted by the French sacred artist Jean-Marie Pirot (often known as Arabacus) in 1998. The golden heavens are open behind Jesus, as an oculus, or perhaps as a womb: his grave clothes are slipping away, as the force of life is restored to his physical body. Angels minister to him, behind and before, their diversity of shape and color representative of the varieties of nature — both human and superhuman — gathered and reordered by this singular, reality-reshaping miracle of the Resurrection.
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
— The Apostle Paul (Col 3:4)
Easter Sunday
Texts for Today
Prayer
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may, by your life-giving Spirit, be delivered from sin and raised from death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Christ ist erstanden
“Christ ist erstanden” (Christ is risen) is a German Easter hymn, the earliest version of which appeared in the seminal Apel Codex, a manuscript of early polyphany from around 1500. Perhaps the most famous of the Apel Codex songs — and without a doubt the most famous of the high medieval German Resurrection hymns — it inspired vocal and organ music from the Renaissance to contemporary periods, and persists today in multiple translations, in dozens of hymnals.
The video linked here from Quire Cleveland attempts to reproduce the medieval anthem in its original acappela sonority.
