Fr Peter Helman

An Easter Sequence, by Wippo of Burgundy (d. 1048),
Chaplain to the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II1.

1. Sing to Christ your paschal victim,
Christians sing your Easter hymn.

2. The sinless Lord for sinners,
Christ God’s Son for creatures died,
the sheep who strayed,
the Lamb of God redeemed.

3. Then death and life their battle
wonderfully fought, and now
the King of life, once dead,
for ever lives.

4. Tell us, Mary, we pray,
what you saw on Easter day?
Empty was the grave, and looking
I saw there the glory of his rising.

5. The angel witnesses I saw,
and folded linen.
Christ my hope is risen truly,
in Galilee he goes before you.

6. We know he rose from death indeed,
and so to him we pray,
great King and Lord of life,
bless us This day.
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Dear beloved,

The disciples saw Jesus die, and they saw him alive again after three days.

“Empty was the grave, and looking
I saw there the glory of his rising.
The angel witnesses I saw,
and folded linen.”

That is the testimony across the centuries.

Mary's words are not finally of an abstraction, which would describe nothing concerning the resurrection, but the echo of surprise and shock to a simple encounter with a man she loved and had lost now beyond the frontiers of any possibility risen and standing with her.

The disciples knew the place of the hewn tomb where Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus, wrapped in linen, and they knew what Mary Magdalene saw. Early on the morning of the third day, while it was still dark—

“The angel witnesses I saw,
and folded linen.
Christ my hope is risen truly,
in Galilee he goes before you.”

The man Mary encountered, whom she saw at the place of burial and said she mistook for a gardener, was Jesus alive from the dead. The Church exults in her words, unfolds them like a standard held aloft. "I have seen the risen Lord" (John 20:18).

This is the hymn of Eastertide. Mary's encounter with the risen Jesus has become "the necessary condition for our living as we live," as someone wrote.

"We know he rose from death indeed,
and so to him we pray,
great King and Lord of life,
bless us This day."

Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Peace to you ~

Fr. Peter