HYMN FOR EASTER II O Sons and Daughters of the King
- Gracia Grindal
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
Text: Jean Tessarand (d. 1494) Tune: French 15th century
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
O sons and daughters, let us sing!
The King of heaven, the glorious King,
Over death today rose triumphing.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
That Easter morn, at break of day,
The faithful women went their way
To seek the tomb where Jesus lay.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
An angel clad in white they see,
Who sat, and spake unto the three,
“Your Lord doth go to Galilee.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!
That night th’apostles met in fear;
Amidst them came their Lord most dear,
And said, “My peace be on all here.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!
When Thomas first the tidings heard,
How they had seen the risen Lord,
He doubted the disciples’ word.
Alleluia! Alleluia!“
My piercèd side, O Thomas, see;
My hands, My feet, I show to thee;
Not faithless but believing be.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!
No longer Thomas then denied;
He saw the feet, the hands, the side;
“Thou art my Lord and God,” he cried.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
How blessed are they who have not seen,
And yet whose faith has constant been;
For they eternal life shall win.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
On this most holy day of days
Our hearts and voices, Lord, we raise
To Thee, in jubilee and praise.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
REFLECTION
Today doubt, if not plain disbelief is chic.. On the other hand our certainty in things political and social seem not to be in doubt. But as to the faith, that is another story, except...something is happening that the Spirit is surprising us with. We read in the papers now that more people than in a long time are converting to Catholicism and not a small number are returning to churches, the ones of their childhood. The Spirit is working to bring people into the faith, often times people who are weary of living without rules or rituals that give order to the day. Families and individuals need rites and customs to live, and so much of what we see around us today is people living in disarray and only for the present. To be a Christian is to care about past, present and future. Those who don't become nihilists, where nothing means anything and one should simply do what seems right at the moment. A more disastrous way of living is hard to imagine.
The churches, too many, have abandoned old rites and rituals in favor of sponteneity. That makes for problems. Maybe what we have is what I have come to call the burden of sponeneity. If everything has to be spontaneous, only chaos will emerge. It makes us rootless and blown about in the winds of change and time. True sponteneity comes when one is in a routine or a ritual and someting new breaks forth from that routine.
The meeting with Thomas happens as the disciples are gathered as usual. They have heard Thomas' demand that he needs to see and touch Jesus' wounds to believe he has risen. During their ordinary time, Jesus does something extraordinary. He appears without going through the door, he answers Thomas' urgent demand.
It isn't what he expected, but Thomas' response to this good news is worship; he kneels down and worships Jesus, now his Lord and God. This is new, for Thomas to see Jesus as not only Lord, but his God! The fulfillment of centuries of longing.
It is then Jesus looks down the halls of history into the future and blesses those who have not seen but believe, his final beatitude. And it is to us. It is a wonderful blessing that we should treasure. This is a new thing, but it has always been there, couched in the stories and language of the old, the law and prophets. And now we can see to see it.
At this meeting, Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit upon his disciples and gives them the power to pronounce the forgiveness of sins to others and give new life to the old broken down sinner. It is an awesome thing. Through the power of the Holy Spirit which gives us the faith and power to speak Jesus to the world, he extends himself to all the world. To be a disciple is to follow, one who gets the message of the Lord to all the ends of the earth, as we see when we read the Acts of the Apostles, and the work of missionaries down through the millennia. Jesus is in charge and sending us everywhere with his word which is the fulfillment of long ago old prophecies now come true! Sing praise!
HYMN INFO Jean Tissarand (d. 1494) was a Franciscan monk about whom we know little except that he died in Paris. It is thought he founded an order for repentant women and wrote a service to remember the martyrdom of fellow monks that were killed in Morocco. The translator, John Mason Neale, became one of the leaders in bringing ancient Greek and Latin hymn texts into the life of the English church. Ill health prevented him from serving out his call as a priest in the Anglican Church, but he worked tirelessly as a theologian and translator of early Christian texts. Without his work we would not have had as many hymns for Advent, or less celebrated festivals of the church. Lutherans took many of his translations into their hymnals at the end of the 19th century and they have become necessary to the hymnody of the church year, as this one has.
LINKS
From Notre Dame before the fire
Richard Proulx