"This is the day that the Lord has made." At first, this seems curious to me. Why do we drag this psalm out only during the Easter season? Didn't the Lord make yesterday as well, and the day before?
Easter, for all the flowers and festive music, is a grim reality. The rhetoric of the Christian Scriptures, firm in its conviction of the triumph of God in Jesus Christ over sin and death, is nonetheless peppered with references to death and pain. There is no mistaking true Christianity for an optimists' club or a sacralized version of Epicureanism. The kerygma of the Church is Jesus Christ, and him crucified, yet in that very image the Church finds its hope and glory.
It shouldn't be hard for us to identify with this. Even though the Easter proclamation points to God as rock and refuge, rescue and deliverer, we all know that God shows up with rescue and delivery three days late. The seeds of the tremendous changes in Eastern Europe were sown in blood, in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, in the mine fields and barbed wire of a divided Germany for some forty years. The mortal witness of Steven Biko and the children of Soweto and members of the African National Congress who suspiciously died in police custody will be the matrix of the resurrection of a new South Africa, long after words and rhetoric are forgotten. Yes, God is a God of deliverance and rescue, but we don't know exactly what God means by that. The revelation of passover and Exodus, of the death and resurrection of Jesus, are valuable myths, and their value is precisely in the truth we experience in their retelling. They are stories of victories purchased at great price. The object of the quest in fact turned out to be other than what the journeyers expected. They are stories with surprise endings, or, if you will, with no endings at all, only a transformed vision of life and the journey.
This is why I'm always a little suspicious of triumphalistic Easter celebrations: they may miss the point of the paschal mystery. The resurrection is not the return of a macho Jesus with armies to crush his enemies, armies heralded by our trumpets and acclamations. The resurrection is Jesus so new that his friends give him new names: Christ, Lord, Savior. The resurrection is so quiet that it went unnoticed except for stories that began to circulate: here about women finding the tomb empty; there about appearances in the upper room; there again, stories of appearances in Galilee. But so firmly planted is faith in the resurrection that the lives of Jesus' strangely mixed inner circle of disciples are transformed permanently and completely, sending these clannish homebodies to distant lands to tell the story that consumed them with a passion that not even hardship, torture, or death could extinguish.
Our assemblies think they know this story. We think we know this story. We think of resurrection as getting what we want, whether it be heaven in the future or some perk we have to have right now. The truth is that resurrection-transformation is a thing we experience infrequently in life, and always completely by surprise. Perhaps there will be a moment of awakening in adolescence, perhaps when we first fall in love, perhaps in a moment of betrayal and healing, perhaps in the death of a loved one, perhaps in random moments of blinding insight and decisive vision. These are all rehearsals for Easter, rehearsals for leaving an old world behind and stepping into a new and strange land.perhaps in deliverance from an addiction.
It is this newland into which the newly baptized have stepped, and which conjures in the hearts of us who surround them the memories of our future, the tremendous hope into which we have been born. Sunday by Sunday, in the words of the earliest witnesses to the resurrection, we hear what these events mean to us and the world. We hear how faith in Christ forms a community even among those who have not seen him, and how Christ lives in this community (2nd Sunday), how the living Christ is recognized in shared word and meal in the community (3rd), how Christ is the gateway to life, and that accepting Christ and his way of life lead to peace and salvation (4th), how the chosen people express their love and gratitude through works of service, by entering completely into the way, truth, and life of Christ (5th), how obedience to the commandment to love leads the community outward to heal and evangelize others who long for the good news (6th), and that Christ's life continues in the world through those who believe in him, a life which belongs to the Father and returns to him (7th). The gospel of John in five of these six weeks bathes the neophytes and us in the love Jesus has for the disciple, usually in texts from the farewell discourse. The first letter of Peter, the question of authorship aside, gives words of love and encouragement from a leader completely in touch with his fragile humanity, offered to believers who are experiencing the horror of persecution.
Sustaining the celebration of Easter over seven weeks will be a lot easier if we are not pretending; that is, if we are not trying to buy into a false picture of Resurrection. If we sing and tell story faithfully, in all its ambiguity and hope, we will sing a less triumphal story, a story of strength discovered in a meal shared in solidarity, a story of a faithful but unknowable God whose plans are beyond our anticipation, a story of one who became the way, the truth, and life for us, who has taken us into himself, so beloved of God that "it was impossible that death should keep its hold on him." During these weeks of Easter we have a message that we chew over around the table to discover the threads in it that weave our lives together. Slowly but certainly, the doors of our meeting place fly open, and Fire sends us out of the room to invite all people to that meal, beginning with those who have little else to hope for. If we thought we were insignificant, we have been cured. To the extent we are willing to preach the Gospel with breath and blood, we join the ranks of those whose sacrifices, gathered into the icon of Jesus, have begun to transform the world.liverer, to our way of thinking,
It is then that we begin to realize that "this is the day the Lord has made," no matter what day we sing those words on. It dawns on us that because God is the author of our days, every day is Easter. Certainly we know that every Sunday is a celebration of the paschal mystery, but precisely because the community gathers to share its experience of the paschal mystery in its life every day preceding the Sunday. The Sundays of Easter can be a way of reinforcing both the extraordinariness of the moment of conversion (in the lives of the neophytes) and the ordinariness of the paschal mystery. The invitation to conversion to the way is continually present and symbolized by the "repeatable sacrament of initiation," the Eucharist.
GATHERING RITES. The gathering rite has the elements to shape the consciousness of the assembly along these lines. By the use of a gathering song which refers both to the cross and the resurrection, we can be reminded of the mystery which calls us together. "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today," "Lift High the Cross," "We Rely on the Power of God" (Hillert), and "Festival Canticle are songs from the "cathedral" tradition which have this element. The "pilgrim" or "folk" tradition is much younger, and in some ways is only beginning to gain the theological sophistication of its elder sibling. Both traditions have plenty of avoidable Easter music, which span the realm of the lie from "death and sorrow is no more" on the one hand to "have a nice day" on the other.
From the gathering song, the Easter liturgy should turn to the baptismal pool for the sprinkling rite. This rite is penitential in the sense that it confesses God's great mercy in rescuing a people through baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, and the blessing of the water and sprinkling of the assembly reinforce the baptismal memory which is the beginning of mystagogy. The "Glory to God," a hymn of praise to the trinity in whose name all have been baptised, can be sung during the sprinkling, and the gathering rite concludes with the opening prayer of the mass.
LITURGY OF THE WORD. The Easter gospels of the A cycle, with their beautiful motif of the love of Jesus for the disciple and their gentle words inviting the disciple deeper into the Way, can be set off by a longer "Alleluia" before it, possibly with a procession and incense, and possibly, as is being done in more and more places, repeating the "Alleluia" at the gospel's conclusion. It is also possible, with some rehearsal, for the instrumentalists to provide a musical motif for the proclamation of the Gospel, and even to sing the "Alleluia" more frequently during the proclamation, at appropriate times.
There are good arguments for and against seasonal responsorial psalms. Surely this season is one in which a strong case can be made for Psalm 118 as the psalm of choice, with its antiphon, "This is the day the Lord has made...." However, given the motif of the readings from Acts and 1 Peter, a setting of Psalm 23 (a favorite of the initiation liturgies) like "Shepherd Me, O God," by Marty Haugen, or of Psalm 116, "I will walk in the presence of God in the land of the living," would be appropriate as well. The proper psalms for the day are certainly always appropriate: the temptation might be to do unmusical settings of them, settings which lack the aesthetic impact to involve people on a human level. It is better, I think, to gradually build a repertoire of strong, developed musical settings, and this might be best done by introducing one excellent psalm per season, which can then become part of an ongoing and growing repertoire.
LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST. I have said it before and I will probably say it in every article I write: the music for the Eucharistic prayer and the way we pray it together says everything about who we are as Church, and a well-done version of this prayer is the best catechesis we can provide. Minimally, a parish should be using a set of musically related acclamations which arise from the proclaimed text by carefully crafted introductions and musical lead-ins under the proclaimed text. Gradually, we should grow toward a fuller sharing of the prayer of Christ, led by the presider in song or speech, with the assembly assenting in its praise, acclamation, and petition at appropriate times.
The fraction rite and communion processions during the Easter season might be heightened musically, as the image of "Lamb of God" carries the complexity of the paschal mystery in its simplicity. Music from the "Lamb of God" might continue as a subtext to the "Behold the Lamb of God...", and through the beginning of the communion procession, and segue into the communion song. We have done this type of ritual approach with my song, "As We Remember," which we sing as the fraction rite music, then continue during the procession. At the end of the communion procession, we might sing together some communal song of unity in the meal of the risen Christ.
CONCLUSION. Let the "Alleluias" ring out. There is no mistaking the message that "Christ the Lord breaks the bonds of death/ Lives again, and forever reigns." But this message does not erase the agonies of the present in their global and personal incarnations: Easter is not the feast of cheap grace. The Easter proclamation is that our great hope is that the war is won even though the strife is not o'er. The murderous despots who orchestrated the slaughter at Tienanmen Square may cling to their power and their unbelievable protests of innocence, but as long as people stand in solidarity with those in their thrall, their days are numbered. We have seen the evidence as other walls start to crumble. Similarly, the ones in our congregations who have lost loved ones to death or betrayal may lie, in a sense, in the prisons of their own pain, but Easter holds out the hope of a new morning for them. It is not a morning of smiley faces and balloons, but a morning on which we have heard that a good man, an innocent man who had been murdered by the powerful, had been seen eating breakfast on a lakeshore, whose tomb had been found empty by those who had gone to minister to his body. As impossible as it sounds, we have the testimony of eyewitnesses. Our hearts believe that their testimony is true, and we have taken his name to ourselves in witness to our faith. Every blade of grass, every flowering tree, every voice lifted in freedom these mornings bear witness to the resurrection. As I write these words during the heady days of December when politburos crumble and Gorbachev speaks in peace with Pope John Paul, I can believe more firmly than ever in the words of the medieval Easter sequence:
Alleluia! Christ Liberator lives!
Music Suggestions for the Easter Season
Psalmody
Easter Sunday:
Easter 2:
Easter 4:
Easter 5:
Easter 6:
Easter 7:
Ascension:
Easter seasonal psalms include Psalm 118, Psalm 66, and Psalm 16. As I pointed out above, Psalm 118 seems most appropriate this year.
Hymns and songs
Ascension