PASCHAL JOY

 No season of the Christian Year is so beautiful or joyous as Eastertide. The liturgical celebrations are full of beautiful expressions of the joy flooding the world through the Risen Lord’s triumph over sin and death in his Paschal Mystery. The notes of paschal joy – gaudium paschale – ring out in many beautiful hymns. Thus, in the second stanza of the hymn, At the Lord’s High Feast, which goes back to the 7^th century, we raise “Hymns of glory, songs of praise” to the Father and to our Saviour-Lord for his victory:

Where the paschal blood is poured,

Death’s dread angel sheathes his sword;

Israel’s hosts triumphant go,

Through the wave that drowns the foe.

Christ the Lamb, whose blood was shed,

Paschal victim, Paschal bread!

With sincerity and love

Eat we manna from above.

The imagery refers here to those crucial events of Israel’s Exodus that foreshadow and lead to the freedom Christ brought to all humankind.

This joy, like the peace that Jesus promised at the Last Supper to bestow on his followers, whom he calls ‘friends’ because he conveyed to them all that he heard from his Father, is beyond anything the world can offer or give: “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you; not as the world gives… Theses things I tell you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full” (Jn 14:27; 15:11). This same joy is the Gaudia paschalia of our Easter Greetings welcoming one another to enter fully into the spirit of this new springtime of grace. Our faith restored, our hope invigorated, in grateful love we rejoice since through Christ

Hell’s gloomy gates yield up their key,

Paradise door thrown wide we see;

Never-tiring be our choiring, alleluia.

(Ronald Knox’s translation of Simphonia Sirenum [1695])

St Augustine pointed out that the worth and highest dignity of the whole Christian life consists in being given by God a share in the freedom of heart, since he who created us without our help will not save us without our cooperation and response in love. This response finds best expression through a life of worship in the joy of praising and giving thanks to God as his children. On numerous occasions this zealous pastor expounded the significance of the Church’s joyous song of praise of God, Alleluia, as an incentive to rise above life’s commonly experienced frustrations. “In what does your praise consist?” –he asks, and explains in a sermon commenting on Psalm 101: “It consists in believing that Christ is risen and in hoping that you will rise through Christ. This is the praise of faith.” Christians, therefore, should be an Alleluia from head to foot, that is, they are joyous praise-singers, becoming the song they sing. The singing of Alleluia during Eastertide, he says, awakens us from our drowsiness; it buoys us up through the drudgery of our present condition; it stimulates and in a certain sense already even satiates our longing for being at home with the Lord:

When the glory of Christ, now hidden from you, appears then you also will appear with him in glory (cf. Col 3:4). Then Alleluia will be real, whereas now it is a matter of hope. Hope sings it, love sings it now, love will sing it also then. But love sings it in yearning now, then love will sing it in joy. (Sermon 255)

Quoting words attributed to this greatest convert to Christianity, who was baptized on Easter night 387, St John Paul II said in his address to a group of African Americans at Harlem, New York, on 2 October 1979:

Are not Jesus’ words still true today? If we are silent about the joy that comes from knowing Jesus, the very stones of our cities will cry out! For we are an Easter people and “Alleluia” is our song. With Saint Paul I exhort you: “Rejoice in the Lord always, I say it again, rejoice” (Phil 4: 4). 

This quality of world-transforming Easter joy that Christians sing in Alleluias is truly the Word made Eucharist, thankful praise of God for the wonderful work of his love in every season of the year! It is rooted in our living faith in Christ Jesus being alive, raised up by the Father’s love. Otherwise all existence would not only be dull and drab, but also submerged in an empty outlook without perspective or vision, bound to a future of doubt, uncertainty and fear. St Paul’s challenge to the Corinthian Christian community remains true today to our materialistic-minded times: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain… your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:14, 17).

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