After all our trials have ceased, our life will be taken up entirely with God’s praises. Therefore, it is our custom to commemorate this peaceful and blissful state by chanting Alleluia more frequently and joyfully during these fifty days.
In the book of Revelation, John the Evangelist says that he heard the throngs of heavenly powers singing this word. And the venerable father, Tobit, perceiving something of the glory of the citizens on high and the splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem, described it with these mystical words:
All the streets shall be paved with white and clean stones,and, Alleluia shall be sung in its streets. (Tobit 13:22)
St. Bede the Venerable
Quoted in: Your Hearts Will Rejoice
Ludolph of Saxony, Carthusian
In the Gospel it is revealed that Jesus breaks bread on the road to Emmaus. This 12th century monastic author teaches:
“Break yourself, then, by the labor of obedience, by the humiliation of repentance. Bear in your body the marks of Jesus Christ by accepting the condition of a servant, not of a superior. And when you have emptied yourself, you will know the Lord through the breaking of bread.”
Dear friends in Christ: today, right now, we realize that our lives are filled with Divine meaning. Our personal stories are a part of a much bigger narrative. Your life, my life — our lives are all a part of the story of the family of God and the history of salvation. Jesus Christ is the point of unity and completeness in God.
In the First Ode of the Canon of Pascha, we read (sing):
It is the day of Resurrection! O people, let us be enlightened by it.
The Passover is the Lord’s Passover,
snce Chrits our God has brought us from death to life,
and from earth to heaven,
Therefore we sing the hymn of victory!
CHRIST IS RISEN FRM THE DEAD!
Let us cleanse our sense that we may see the risen Christ,
in the glory of the Resurrection and clearly hear Him greetinbg us:
Rejoice! as we sing the hymn of victory!
CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD!
Let the heaves properly rejoice and let the earth be glad;
and let the whole visible and invisble world celebrate,
for Christ, our everlastng joy, is rosen!
CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD!
It is the day of Resurrection! O people, let us be enlightened by it.
The Passover is the Lord’s Passover,
snce Chrits our God has brought us from death to life,
and from earth to heaven,
Therefore we sing the hymn of victory!
Happy Easter!