An Easter hymn, particularly appropriate for the Easter Vigil, with its references throughout to baptism and light. I’ve set it to Geoffrey Webber’s stately ‘Radcliffe Square’, which was the unofficial ‘Mirfield anthem’ in my time there. It is usually set to ‘Adore te devote’, ‘Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour, thee’, but I feel the wonderfully reflective mode v plainchant (usually referred to by the same Latin name) works so much better with that text, and is simple and rhythmic enough for the congregation to pick up.
The hymn begins and ends with the theme of light triumphing over darkness, employing imagery from the Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation. The final verse is a paraphrase of the first and last couple of lines of the Exsultet – ‘Rejoice now, all you heavenly choirs of angels; rejoice all you holy ones around God’s throne … Rejoice too, O earth, in the radiance of this brightness … know that the darkness of the whole world has been put to flight … Christ your Son, who came back from the grave, that shed his clear light upon mankind, and lives and reigns for ever and ever.’
Verse two is inspired by a paschal homily by St Hesychius of Jerusalem: ‘Hidden first in a womb of flesh, [Christ] sanctified human birth by his own birth; hidden afterward in the womb of the earth, he gave life to the dead by his resurrection.’
Verse three is after St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 6. 3-5: ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.’
Verse four is inspired by a paschal homily attributed to St Hippolytus, using that classic kind of paradox found in so much of the Fathers’ work: ‘[Easter Day is] the day upon which freedom from suffering comes from suffering, immortality from death, life from the tomb, healing from a wound, Resurrection from the fall, and Ascension into heaven from the descent into hell.’
Alexander Crawford
Tune: Radcliffe Square (A&M (2013) 468ii)
O sacred feast, the vict’ry of the Lord,
Our sins are washed away, our life restored!
This broken world, that once in darkness lay,
Has woken to the light of endless day.
From Mary’s womb the blessèd Saviour came,
To guide his people, lost in sin and shame,
And now, from shameful womb of earth and stone,
He rises to redeem and save his own.
Now born again, through water and the blood
Poured freely from his side—O precious flood!
Baptized into his death, to sin we die,
And rise with him, no more in death to lie.
Such pow’r of love, such mystery we sing:
Through pain would come the end of suffering,
From death and grave would endless life begin,
By man would come the cure to human sin!
Sing, choirs of heav’n, rejoice around God’s throne,
Rejoice, O earth, for death is overthrown,
The darkness of this world is put to flight,
The Saviour reigns in everlasting light!
