04 April 2010

Easter Day: Χριστός ἀνέστη! Christ is Risen!

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Patrick Comerford

The Feast of the Resurrection is the Church’s greatest feast and Easter (Πάσχα, Pascha, from Aramaic paskha and Hebrew Pesach) is the most important festival in the Church’s calendar, celebrating Christ’s resurrection from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion.

In most European languages the feast called Easter in English is known by the words for Passover in those languages and in the older English versions of the Bible the term Easter was the term used to translate Passover.

The Easter Season begins today and traditionally lasts for the forty days until Ascension Day, although it now lasts for the 50 days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week.

The Sung Eucharist for Easter Day in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, this morning is at 11 a.m., with Archbishop John Neill, and the setting is Zoltán Kodály’s Missa Brevis.

For many Anglicans, the musical tradition of Easter is linked intimately with that majestic tune by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), Hail thee, festival day. It was one of the three pieces of music I selected for use in my reflection at the grave in Whitechurch Parish Church yesterday for Easter Eve, using a version sung by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. However, it is not included in the Irish Church Hymnal.

The tune Vaughan Williams used for this work was one he called Salve Festa Dies, roughly a translation of this hymn’s title into Latin. The “Day” in question is Easter Day, and the hymn’s original Latin text, by Venantius Honorius Fortunatus (ca 530-609), was translated by Maurice Frederick Bell.

He composed Salve Festa Dies in 1906 and it was first published in the English Hymnal, which he edited with Percy Dearmer. The hymn begins with the refrain’s famous words:

Salve, festa dies, toto venerabilis aevo,
Qua Deus infernum vicit et astra tenet.

Refrain: Hail thee, festival day!
Blest day that art hallowed forever;
day wherein Christ arose,
breaking the kingdom of death.

Lo, the fair beauty of earth,
from the death of the winter arising,
every good gift of the year
now with its Master returns.

Refrain

He who was nailed to the Cross
is God and the Ruler of all things;
all things created on earth
worship the Maker of all.

Refrain

God of all pity and power,
let thy word be assured to the doubted;
light on the third day returns:
rise, Son of God, from the tomb!

Refrain

Ill doth it seem that thy limbs
should linger in lowly dishonour;
ransom and price of the world,
veiled from the vision of men.

Refrain

Loosen, O Lord, the enchained,
the spirits imprisoned in darkness;
rescue, recall into life those
who are rushing to death.

Refrain

Ill it beseemeth that thou,
by whose hand all things are encompassed,
captive and bound shouldst remain,
deep in the gloom of the rock.

Refrain

Rise now, O Lord, from the grave
and cast off the shroud that enwrapped thee;
thou art sufficient for us;
nothing without thee exists.

Refrain

Mourning they laid thee to rest,
who art Author of life and creation;
treading the pathway of death,
life thou bestowedst on man.

Refrain

Show us thy face once more,
that the ages may joy in thy brightness;
give us the light of day,
darkened on earth at thy death.

Refrain

Out of the prison of death
thou art rescuing numberless captives;
freely they tread in the way
whither their Maker has gone.

Refrain

Jesus has harrowed hell;
he had led captivity captive;
darkness and chaos and death
flee from the face of the light.

Refrain.


The Resurrection, Duccio di Buoninsegna

Vaughan Williams’s music brings a regal manner to its religiosity, bearing a resemblance to much English church music from the 19th century, but also revealing the composer’s vigour in its march-like gait. The main theme is glorious and celebratory without ever veering into a secular sound or mood. This is happy worshipful music then, from the pen of one of the greatest composers ever to have written sacred and church music, principally for use in the Anglican tradition.

Hail thee, festival day is vigorous and jubilant with a rhythmic energy that characterises Vaughan Williams’s hymn tunes. Its broad dimensions and use of triplets may appear formidable, but it is a glorious tune that can be sung in unison by congregations that have good choral and organ leadership. The majesty and strength of this hymn make it appropriate for celebrating the Resurrection.

The Resurrection, a fresco ca 1460 by Pierro della Francesca, in the Museo Civico of Sansepolcro in Tuscany

Vaughan Williams also composed Five Mystical Songs drawing on The Temple (1633) by George Herbert, including Easter [Easter section A]:

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may’st rise;
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, Just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or since all music is but three parts vied,
And multiplied;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.


A second of these five songs, I got me flowers [Easter Section B], was also inspired by George Herbert’s The Temple:

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.


Pascha in the Orthodox Church

The Resurrection, the Harrowing of Hell ... this is the expected and holy day, the Feast of Feasts, the Celebration of Celebrations

Pascha is the fundamental and most important festival of the Orthodox Church:

This is the expected and holy day,
the one among the Sabbaths,
the Sovereign and Lady of days,
The Feast of Feasts, the Celebration of Celebrations,
today we praise Christ for all eternity!


Every other religious festival in the Orthodox calendar, not excepting Christmas, is secondary in importance to the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ.

Throughout the Orthodox world, the customary Paschal Greeting for this season is: Χριστός ἀνέστη! (Christ is Risen!), to which the response is: Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (He is truly Risen, indeed!).

Pascha (Easter) is the primary act that fulfils the purpose of Christ’s ministry on earth. This is succinctly summarised in the Paschal troparion, sung repeatedly during Pascha until the Apodosis (‘Leave-Taking) of Pascha, the day before Ascension Day:

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,
θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι
ζωὴν χαρισάμενος.

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tombs
Bestowing life!


On this morning, Easter Day, there is no Divine Liturgy in Orthodox churches as the Liturgy for today was celebrated at midnight.

Instead, in the afternoon, it is often traditional to serve Agape Vespers. In this joyful service, the Great Prokeimenon is chanted, and it is customary for the priest and people to read John 20: 19-25 as the Gospel reading – in some places extended to include verses 26-31 – in as many languages as possible, to show the universality of the Resurrection. This Gospel reading is accompanied by the joyful ringing of bells.

For the remainder of the week, known as Bright Week, all fasting is prohibited – even on Wednesday and Friday.

The services during Bright Week are similar to those of Pascha itself, except they do not take place at midnight, but are served at their normal times during the day.

The liturgical season from Pascha to the Sunday of All Saints, the Sunday after Pentecost, is known as the Pentecostarion, or the “Fifty Days.” The week that begins on Easter Day is called Bright Week, during which there is no fasting, even on Wednesday and Friday. The After-Feast of Pascha lasts 39 days, with its Apodosis (leave-taking) on the day before Ascension. The Day of Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Pascha.

Although the Pentecostarion ends on the Sunday of All Saints, the influence of Pascha continues throughout the year that follows, determining the daily Epistle and Gospel readings at the Divine Liturgy, the Tone of the Week, and the Matins Gospels, all the way through to the next year’s Lazarus Saturday.

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ
you have overcome death
and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
Grant that, as by your grace going before us
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen Lord
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen
.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Living God,
for our redemption you gave your only-begotten Son
to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection
you have delivered us from the power of our enemy.
Grant us so to die daily unto sin,
that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his risen life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
.

Χριστός ἀνέστη!
Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Christ is Risen!
He is truly Risen, indeed!


Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

The grave of Joseph

A new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock ... Matthew 27: 57-60 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

3, The grave of Joseph

Patrick Comerford

Reading 3:
John 19: 38-42

When Jesus died, and his body was taken down from the cross – the body that had been anointed only a week earlier in Bethany either by Mary or by the penitent woman – he was wrapped in a clean cloth by Joseph of Arimathea, who then laid it what three of the Gospel writers tells us was his own “new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock” (Matthew 27: 57-60; Mark 15: 42-46; Luke 23: 50-53; see John 19: 38-42).

A few years ago, I spent a few weeks in Fethiye on the south-west coast of Turkey. I was there for that blissful combination of a sun holiday and visiting the classical sites, for ancient Fethiye was known in the classical world as Telmessos.

This city had been established in 5th century BC at the frontiers of Lycian civilization. Even the remains surviving to this day provide visual evidence of a city that had a high, rich culture.

This is the region where in classical civilisation King Mausolus, who controlled the area around modern Bodrum, gave us the word mausoleum because of his monumental grave. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and you can see the reconstruction of this splendid tomb in the British Museum in London.

But, better still, I think, are the smaller graves of the rulers and the ruling class from the Lycian civilisation that can be seen in the streets of Fethiye.

As you walk through Fethiye, where Telmessos once stood, even the streets appear to be dotted with Lycian graves, tombs, sepulchres and sarcophagi. From the edges of the harbour, as you look up towards the hills that surround and protect the bay, the subdued majesty of the sculpted, tombs hewn from the rocks, carved in the rocks cannot fail to catch your eye.

The Amyntas Grave has long been the symbol of Fethiye (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It is worth climbing high above the city and the bay to see these tombs, hewn into the edges of the rock face. The best known of these hewn rock tombs is the Amyntas Grave, which has long been the symbol of Fethiye.

This splendid tomb stands out within the cluster of rock graves, hewn out of the hillside and often hanging at the edges of the precipices. This grave has a façade like an Ionic temple, and an inscription on the left ante-wall tells us this is the tomb provided for King Amyntas who ruled the city of Telmessos during the 4th century BC, in the Hellenistic period, around the same time as the sculpted graves and monuments were being erected in Kermameikos in Athens.

So often we want to leave something behind as a memorial, something that people will remember us by.

I suppose this is why genealogists are often found in churchyards and graveyards, searching for primary evidence for dead ancestors.

The ‘saddleback’ grave in Saint Michael’s Churchyard, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Last month I was visiting Saint Michael’s Church, overlooking the cathedral city of Lichfield. In the churchyard are some amazing graves, including one known as the “saddle-back grave”, and another that is almost in the shape of a funerary urn. These graves were erected by people who wanted to be remembered for as long as possible.

I suppose Joseph of Arimathea wanted to be remembered as long as possible. He was a fearful, secret disciple of Jesus, a friend of Nicodemus, and wealthy enough to have his own tomb hewn in the rocks. But he gives up all those hopes, and loses all his fears, when he decides to take Christ down from the cross and bury him in his own tomb.

Joseph takes the Body of Christ.

Joseph says Amen to the Body of Christ.

And the tomb he had left empty for himself, is briefly filled with the body of Christ, but is then left empty forever, for Christ is raised from the dead when this Saturday ends.

When we say Amen to the Body of Christ at the Paschal Eucharist, or Easter Communion, tomorrow, we shall be saying Amen to the presence of the Risen Christ among us.

And as we prepare to say Amen to the Paschal Lamb, the Risen Christ, the Body of Christ, we find that we too are members of that Body to which we say Amen. The Risen Christ is mystically and truly present among us.

To prepare to celebrate the Resurrection, to prepare to celebrate the feast, our third piece of music to reflect on is: Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, in music composed by Mozart in the last year of his life, and sung by the Lichfield Cathedral Choir.

Music 3: Ave verum corpus, W.A. Mozart, Lichfield Cathedral Choir (2’59”).

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This is the third of three addresses in Whitechurch Parish, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, at a special service to mark Easter Eve on Saturday, 3 April 2010.

The grave of Judas

A grave in Kerameikós, Athens, where the cemetery was named after the Potter’s Field ... but what sort of grave did Judas have in Kerameikós, the Potter’s Field, in Jerusalem (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

2, The grave of Judas

Patrick Comerford

Reading 2:
Matthew 27: 3-10

There are two deaths, and two burials on Good Friday, there are two graves on this Saturday, Easter Eve. The death and burial of Christ, and the tomb in which he is buried; and the death and burial of Judas, and his grave plot.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel tells us that when Judas realised the enormity of his betrayal, he repented, returned, threw the 30 pieces of silver back into the Temple, left, and went away. The chief priests did not want this blood money, and so they bought the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners, and it was in that very field that Judas hanged himself. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that Judas bought the field and that he died there (Acts 1: 18-20).

We do not know where Judas was buried. Was he buried in the Potter’s Field?

Potter’s Field or Κεραμεικός (Kerameikós) is the same name as a famous classical cemetery in Athens, close to the Acropolis. It lies in what was once the potters’ quarter in Athens – the root for its name, κέραμος (keramos, “pottery clay”) also gives us the English word “ceramic.”

Here in this cemetery, Pericles delivered his funeral oration in 431 BC, praising the great heroes, whose true burial place is in the hearts of the people. Here, in this other Potter’s Field is the most wonderful collection of graves, monuments, sculptures and sepulchres. The Street of the Tombs in Kerameikos is lined with imposing monuments from the families of rich Athenians, dating to before the late fourth century BC.

But if they left these wonderful, sculpted graves – unique pieces of classical legacy that are as beautiful, imposing and life-like as those in any great Victorian cemetery – did they really believe that they would survive in the hearts and memories of good Athenians?

A sculpted grave stone in Kerameikós, the best place to be buried in classical Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford

The Potter’s Field was the best place to be buried in classical Athens. For it was here too that the Ιερά Οδός (Hierá Odós, the Sacred Way), the road to Ἐλευσίς (Eleusis), the Eleusinian Fields, began its procession. But if those who could afford to be buried here believed in the afterlife offered in the Eleusian Mysteries why did they need to leave behind such splendid memorials in this life?

Did Judas leave behind any memorial or sculpted sepulchre in his Potter’s Field?

The first and second graves of Lazarus, even though they hold no bodies, are places of pilgrimage to this day.

Who would want to visit the grave of Judas?

What did he expect in the afterlife?

All we know is that Judas repented, and that even in the end, his thirty pieces of silver were used for a good cause. It is important in Jewish ritual law to bury the dead. But it appears there was no place in Jerusalem to bury foreigners (see verse 7).

Jesus was crucified outside the city gates, on Golgotha, the place of the skulls (Matthew 27: 33) … a place just like that where the corpses of the foreigners, the aliens may have been dumped.

The aliens, the foreigners, were outsiders, both in life and in death.

By his act of betrayal, Judas moved from being an insider, one of the 12, to being an outsider. But in death he took care of those foreigners who had been rejected both in life and in death.

What happened to his grave afterwards is probably of little concern. What is more important is that after his death, Jesus descended to the very depths of hell, and brought good news to all who were, who are, and who will be dead.

In his death and resurrection, Jesus breaks down all barriers, between the insider and the outsider, between the resident and the foreigner, between the rich and the poor, between those who are forgotten and those who are remembered.

There is no depth to which his love and his mercy cannot reach. In his death and in his resurrection, he has broken, he is breaking, he continues to break, all barriers.

Our second piece of music to reflect on is: Hail thee, festival day, by Vaughan Williams, sung by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. The good news of the consequences of the Death and Resurrection was first brought to those who were dead.

Music 2: Hail thee, festival day, Ralph Vaughan Williams, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge (4’ 46”).

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This is the second of three addresses in Whitechurch Parish, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, at a special service to mark Easter Eve on Saturday, 3 April 2010.

The grave of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus, Juan de Flandes, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Patrick Comerford

1, The grave of Lazarus

Reading 1:
Luke 16: 19-31.

We have been travelling on a journey wih Christ through Holy Week. That journey to Calvary and Gethsemane begins in Bethany (Matthew 26: 6), where he was probably staying with his friends, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus (John 12: 1). While he was staying in Bethany, he dined with Simon the Leper (Matthew 26: 6). During dinner, a woman with an alabaster jar anointed his head at the table (Matthew 26: 7), in a ritual of anointing that prefigures the anointing of the body of Jesus in preparation for his burial (Matthew 26: 12).

The anointing of Jesus during that dinner in the home of Simon triggered the excuse for Judas to betray Jesus to the authorities (Matthew 26: 14) … an excuse that he may have been looking for a long time.

In a variation on this story, Saint John tells us that on the evening before Palm Sunday, Jesus had dinner with Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and Mary anointed Christ’s feet with fragrant perfume (John 12: 1-8), but once again this anointing is seen as prefiguring the anointing of his body on the day of his burial (John 12: 8).

The decision of Jesus to stay with his friends in Bethany attracts the crowds, who come not just to see Christ, but to see Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead, and this too is linked with the plot to bring about the death of Jesus.

Jesus loved Lazarus, who had died in Bethany (John 11). When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he finds Lazarus has been dead four days. Jesus comes to his tomb, and despite the objections of Martha, he has the stone rolled away, prays, and calls on Lazarus to come out. This Lazarus does, wrapped in his grave clothes.

In the Orthodox tradition, last Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday, is also known as Lazarus Saturday. The readings and hymns for Lazarus Saturday focus on the resurrection of Lazarus as a foreshadowing of the Resurrection of Christ and the General Resurrection.

The Raising of Lazarus illustrates the two natures of Christ: his humanity in weeping at the death of his friend (John 11: 35); his divinity in commanding Lazarus to come forth from the dead (John 11: 43).

There is no further mention of Lazarus in the Bible. So what happened to the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany? What happened to Lazarus himself?

Rembrandt, The raising of Lazarus, ca 1630, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The first tomb of Lazarus at Bethany (al-Eizarariya) continues to be place of pilgrimage. But of course Lazarus had to die a second (and last) time. Orthodox tradition says Lazarus went to Cyprus, where he became the first Bishop of Kittim (Larnaka). When he –finally – died, it is said Lazarus was buried in Larnaka. His body was later moved to Constantinople by the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI in 898, but it was stolen by the Crusaders in 1204 and pirated away to France as one of the spoils of war.

In the poem, “The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock,” TS Eliot refers to Lazarus in these lines:

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”


But Eliot is referring to the other Lazarus in the Gospel stories: Lazarus who each day sat begging outside the gate of a rich man, his sores being licked by the dogs, while inside Dives, dressed in fine clothing, is dining sumptuously each day (Luke 16: 19-31).

Both men die, but Dives would like Lazarus to come back to life. But despite what Eliot says and Dives hopes, Lazarus does not come back from the dead once he has been received into Abraham’s Bosom at the heavenly banquet. For his part, the rich man craves merely a drop of water from Lazarus’ finger to cool his tongue, for he is tormented by fire, and wants Lazarus to return and warn his wayward brothers.

Lazarus is the only character in a New Testament parable with a name. The rich man has been named Dives by tradition, but in the telling of the story he has no name: in effect, he has lost his name, and with it his human identity.

Death comes to us all. We all end in the grave. No miracles, no wishing, no praying, can take away that inevitability. Dives learns – when it is too late – what it is to be human, and that we do not come back from the grave.

This Lazarus was rewarded, not because he was poor, but for his virtuous acceptance of poverty. The rich man was punished, not because he was rich, but for his persistent neglect of the opportunities his wealth gave him.

Christ in his life points us to what it is to be truly human. In the grave, he proves he is truly human. He has died. He is dead. Unlike Lazarus the beggar, he can bridge the gap between earth and heaven, even between hell and heaven. That is what was happening this Saturday. That is what we are remembering here today. And like Lazarus of Bethany, he too is raised from death not by human power but by the power of God.

Our first piece of music to help us reflect at the grave is by Paul Spicer. Come out, Lazar is the title track on a recording last year of the shorter choral works of this English choral conductor by the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

I first came across Paul Spicer’s work in Lichfield where he has lived in The Close since 1990.

This anthem is a dramatic, almost apocalyptic setting for mediaeval poetry, in this case an anonymous text. This 14th century English mediaeval poem concludes:

Say me now thou serpent sly,
Is not ‘Come out!’ an asper cry?
‘Come out’ is a word of battle,
For it gan helle soon [at once] t’assail.
Why stoppest thou not, fiend, thine ear?
That this word enter not there?
He that said that word of might,
Shop him felly to the fight. [Advanced valiantly to battle.]
For with that word he won the field
Withouten spear, withouten shield,
And brought them out of prison strong,
That were enholden there with wrong.
Tell now, tyrant, where is thy might?
‘Come out!’ hath felled it all with fight.


The final triumphant section (“For with that word he won the field …”) builds up to a huge climax on the word “might,” and the final page keeps the excitement building to the end.

Music 1: Come out, Lazar (Paul Spicer, the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, 7’24”)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This is the first of three addresses in Whitechurch Parish, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, at a special service to mark Easter Eve on Saturday, 3 April 2010.