“This is my body, which will be given up for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)
As our Lenten journey ends, we follow the path of Jesus through the Triduum into the fantastic, miraculous, joyful celebration of the resurrection. Again and again we marvel at the beautiful and impossible-to-describe time of year in which we celebrate. Jesus has risen! Allelulia! There are no words to capture the essence of what this means to Christians worldwide. We can marvel at how nature, which seems dead, bursts into life again each spring; we have faith that this will happen. We also have faith that God’s gift of Jesus to us, who then forfeited his life, is very real to all of us. All our little trials and tribulations, our prayers, fasting, and almsgiving over the season, have prepared us for what can only be said in our “Alleluia”.
A wonderful and obviously musical League leader said years ago that when we sing, we pray twice. When we sing the haunting hymns during the Triduum; and the Gloria, as well as the traditional and contemporary hymns celebrating Easter, it is less than a shadow, a whisper of how God holds us in his loving arms and gives us nourishment and hope. We know that everything we do in this life is only by the exceeding grace of the Father, and so,
“We remember how you loved us to your death, and still we celebrate that you are with us here; And we believe that we will see you when you come in your glory, Lord. We remember, we celebrate, we believe…” (Marty Haugen. 1980, GIA Publications)
Jesus Christ is risen! Happy Easter! Alleluia! Alleluia!