Easter
Lyrics to the tune People, Look East:
People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.Angels, announce with shouts of mirth
Christ who brings new life to earth.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Lord, is on the way.
People, Look East was written in about 1928 by Elanor Farjeon, a devout Catholic living in London, who was best known for her children’s nursery rhymes and games. The song was first published as “Carol of Advent”, although eventually the first line of the song lent a new title to the piece.
The tune that is typically given to the words is called Besancon, an old setting that has been used for several tunes over the centuries.
In short, it’s a traditional Christmas carol with Advent-themed wording.
But upon second examination, it is also revealed as an exceptional tune for Easter, and especially for Easter Saturday and the spirit of anticipation that permeates the celebration that is called the Easter Vigil, in which Catholics enact the anticipation not only of Christ’s resurrection, but of His return in glory. The readings for the Vigil are many, and reflect a cross-section of what is called “salvation history”, examining times throughout the Gospels when God has intervened to preserve, renew, and bless first Israel and the Hebrew people, and then all the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Indeed, it is a reminder of the way in which Christ’s death and resurrection completely fulfill all earlier aspects of God’s love, mercy and salvific works.
(For the curious, the readings used during the Vigil Mass this year, at least at my church, will be: Genesis 1:1-2:2; Genesis 22:1-18; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 54:5-14; Isaiah 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 32-44; and Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28. The Epistle reading will be Romans 6:3-11, and the Gospel will be Luke 24:1-12.)
It is perhaps fitting to examine, then, how Easter completes the whole of the Christian year and unifies the faith. Christianity is not a series of beliefs, each atomically isolated from the others, but is rather one unified faith out of which flow many teachings that complement and enhance each other, and all of which are completed and joined by the pivotal historical event that is remembered this week: the death and resurrection of Christ. There is, within Holy Week, a smaller example of this same phenomenon, in our observance of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), His institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Holy Thursday) and his re-statement of the need for the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation (also Holy Thursday), to His death (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter Sunday). Within the week now almost over, the whole of Christianity and the whole of the Catholic expression of that faith finds its core, its foundation.
And to their credit, most Catholic churches emphasize the Sacraments during this season, as they ought…indeed, it is not by accident that adult baptisms take place during the Vigil Mass.
The need for baptism is, as noted, re-iterated by Christ in poignant fashion on Holy Thursday, when He washed the feet of the disciples. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,” our Lord taught, and as with everything Christ said there is a deeper message being conveyed in that teaching than just the necessity of personal hygeine. Baptism is our first washing, the Sacramental sign of the way in which we are cleaned by the Lord, and water is the symbol of cleansing which we use. I’ve always been mystified by Protestants who declare confidently that water baptism is not necessary for salvation; while it is doubtless true that God, in His mercy, welcomes into His Kingdom those infants which die before being baptized (but then, to what extent are infants capable of sin?), it is equally true all the same that God desires, and that Christ taught, that baptism is necessary.
Likewise, many churches offer special penetential services during Holy Week, and again they do well to do so, because Christ likewise commanded that we return again and again to be cleansed, and commissioned His disciples to forgive sins in His name, and through His grace. Confession — the Sacrament of Reconciliation — is necessary as well in a fully-lived Christian life. “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” Christ cautions Peter, following it up with the teaching outlined previously, and again the Lord is not here talking about personal hygeine. We too must seek to be cleansed of our sinfulness in Christ, and must do so repeatedly, just as in Hebrew custom the feet were to be washed regularly. If we do not seek that repeated cleansing, we too will have no share in Christ.
And of course, Catholic churches offer the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Real Presence, the literal and truthful Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, which Christ Himself gave to us in His transformation of the Passover Meal into the Feast of the Lamb and the food by which all might know salvation.
All of those are elements, but they are all given their whole meaning not only in Good Friday, but in what we celebrate on Easter Sunday — the risen Christ, the resurrection, Christ (and, by extension, God’s) victory over death won for the sake of all mankind, that we too might be able one day to join the chorus of angels in glorifying God in the Kingdom that is to come. It is in Christ’s death and resurrection that the Eucharistic meal is given its meaning, its form, and its power, for as it marks Christ’s being broken and shedding blood for our sake, so Christ was actually broken, and did actually shed blood, for our salvation.
At the same time, it is in Christ’s death and resurrection that we are truly cleansed from our sinfulness, for in His death and resurrection Christ took upon Himself the full weight of all human sin — past, present, and future — and made it to die with him, that we too might be dead to sin and risen in Christ, just as he later arose in glory.
And just as water and blood poured from our Lord’s pierced side, so too do we baptise with water, that all who share in baptism might have a share in due time in the life that is to come, which Christ’s resurrection has secured for His faithful.
Everything ties together in this one week, and as I have said this is an atomic expression of the whole of Christian year, and the whole of the Christian faith, and the way it ties together as well.
I’ve had People, Look East stuck in my head all day, and it is such a fitting tune for this night and the time prior to the Vigil Mass, as much as it is fitting to the spirit of anticipation and excitement for the return of the Lord that permeates this evening. Because just as at Advent we look again for the coming of the Lord as we remember His birth, so too do we look for the coming of the Lord as we wait breathlessly for His rising from the dead.
And indeed, in His rising from the dead, he completes the meaning and purpose of His birth and the anticipatory spirit of Advent, for it is by His death that he achieved what He was born to achieve. “For this I was born,” Christ told Pilate, and indeed for this He was born — to save.
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