Easter Sunday: The Day of Resurrection!

Editor's note: We celebrate, with thankful hearts, a debt that was paid twenty centuries ago.

The Day of Resurrection!

John Neale de­scribed how ear­ly Greek Christ­ians sang this hymn:
As mid­night ap­proached, the arch­bi­shop, with his priests, ac­com­pa­nied by the king and queen, left the church and sta­tioned them­selves on the plat­form, which was raised con­sid­er­a­bly from the ground, so that they were dis­tinct­ly seen by the peo­ple. Ev­er­y­one now re­mained in breath­less ex­pec­ta­tion, hold­ing an un­light­ed ta­per in rea­di­ness when the glad mo­ment should ar­rive, while the priests still con­tin­ued mur­mur­ing their mel­an­cho­ly chant in a low half whis­per. Sud­den­ly a single re­port of a can­non an­nounced that twelve o’clock had struck and that Eas­ter Day had be­gun; then the old arch­bi­shop, ele­vat­ing the cross, ex­claimed in a loud, ex­ult­ing tone, “Christ­os anes­te!” “Christ is ris­en!” and in­stant­ly ev­ery sin­gle in­di­vid­u­al of all that host took up the cry…At that same mo­ment the op­press­ive dark­ness was suc­ceed­ed by a blaze of light from thou­sands of tap­ers which…seemed to send streams of fire in all di­rect­ions.

The Day of Resurrection

by John of Damascus, Sixth Century

The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad;

The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God.

From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky,

Our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, that we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal of resurrection light;

And listening to His accents, may hear, so calm and plain,

His own “All hail!” and, hearing, may raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful! Let earth the song begin!

Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein!

Let all things seen and unseen their notes in gladness blend,

For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end.