First Four Sundays of Easter
The first three Sundays of Easter focus on the various appearances of the Risen Lord: to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples in hiding, to Thomas, and in the context of various meals. On the Fourth Sunday of Easter Christ speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd (John 10), signaling a turn from the post-Resurrection accounts to the ‘Farewell Discourse’ of John 13–17. In this passage, which takes place at the Last Supper, Jesus prepares his followers for the time when he will no longer be physically with them, giving them his peace, his love, the new commandment, and the promise of the Holy Spirit.
Easter 5
On Easter 5, the Gospel is the familiar beginning of John 14, in which Our Lord describes himself as the ‘Way, the Truth, and the Life’. This phrase is quoted in the Collect of the Day – which reminds us that the first name for the Church seems to have been ‘the Way’ – and it also inspired George Herbert’s famous poem ‘The Call’, the text of one of our anthems, written by 20th-century American composer Harold Friedell.
The text of our other anthem, a ‘Hymn to Christ the Savior’, comes from a very early Christian work, the Paedagogus of theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215). Twentieth-century Episcopal priest-poet F. Bland Tucker wrote a translation of this hymn in the unusual metre of ‘Monk's Gate’, Vaughan Williams’s version of an English folk melody [see both at Hymn 478]. This metre is close to that of the Genevan tune for Psalm 8, which I modified slightly in order for the choir to sing this text to several settings of the tune by modern Dutch composers. The text refers to Christ as the Way, asking, like the Collect, that we may follow him in and as such; this and further references to Christ as Word, Good Shepherd, and King, and to the Passion, to the Emmaus account, and more, suit it to many occasions in the Church’s year and life.
Our Eastertide tour through the Acts of the Apostles brings us to the martyrdom of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, who, following Christ – compare his self-commendation to the Father and his forgiveness of his executioners to Christ’s last words on the Cross – was granted a vision of heaven. Thus we sing the saint’s day hymn ‘By all your saints still striving’ [232] with the middle stanza for St Stephen, which summarizes the account and import of his death.
Easter 6
John 14 continues with Our Lord’s promise of the Holy Spirit. Both parts of this passage have been set to music, the second part inspiring the Magnificat antiphon for Pentecost: ‘I will not leave you comfortless [or, orphaned]; I go, and I come to you again, and your hearts shall rejoice.’ Twentieth-century American composer Everett Titcomb’s fine anthem setting cleverly quotes the melody of the great Pentecost hymn ‘Veni creator Spiritus’ [502] underneath garlands of Alleluias. The great 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis wrote a very well-known setting of the first part of the passage: ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may bide with you for ever: even the Spirit of truth.’
Hymn 492, ‘Sing, ye faithful, sing with gladness’, is part of a longer text by the fine 19th-century English hymnist John Ellerton, partly based on Prudentius’s hymn known to us as ‘Of the Father’s love begotten’. Three omitted stanzas following the first one describe the eternal existence of the Word, his role in creation, and the Father’s concern to save the world enthralled to death; our present text then continues with Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, victory over death, Ascension and eternal reign. The tune to which it is set in the Hymnal, ‘Finnian’, is typical of a certain genre of mid-20th-century British hymn-tunes that might be called ‘broad and sweeping’: the melody ranges widely over an octave and a half, repeatedly outlining major triads, and its last two phrases each feature a note held an ‘extra’ beat or two over a ‘walking’ bass line. Thus it offers an appropriate interpretation of the text on a grand scale.
Ascension Day
Ascension Day marks the end of Christ’s earthly ministry by his return to the heavenly throne; his blessing and commissioning of his followers (including us!) to be his witnesses; and the promise of the Holy Spirit to empower that work. We celebrate this, a Principal Feast alongside Christmas, Easter, the Epiphany, and a few others, with a choral setting of parts of the Eucharist by Palestrina. Using a ‘parody’ technique popular at the time, this greatest of Renaissance composers based this Mass on a motet of his own (‘O Rex gloriae’, the Magnificat antiphon for the day, similar to our Collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day) for this feast. Our anthem, ‘Gen Himmel fährt der Herre Christ’ (To heaven goes the Lord Christ), was written by Johannes Eccard, an important composer of the next generation who had studied with another great Renaissance composer, Lassus. For our use I have paraphrased the original German text, which focuses on Christ’s reign upon his return to the Father.
One of the finest Ascension hymns, written by 19th-century bishop-hymnist Christopher Wordsworth, is ‘See the Conqueror mounts in triumph’ [215], whose first stanza draws upon Psalms 24, 68, and 104, and its second upon the Lucan narrative. These celebrate the Son’s triumphal entry into heaven and his return to his rightful place beside the Father, having defeated death. The third stanza turns to the Epistles, where we read of the Ascension’s ultimate import: the Son not only took on human flesh, but took that very flesh, wounded yet redeemed and transformed, to the Throne of God; thus the renewed Creation of which Christ is the first fruits becomes part of heaven itself. Our poet concludes: ‘Mighty Lord, in thine ascension, we by faith behold our own.’
Another strong hymn for the feast, from the 20th century, is ‘Rejoice, the Lord of life ascends’ [222]. Written by Albert Bayly, a Congregationalist minister and prominent hymnist much concerned with social issues, the hymn begins, as does our Collect, with Christ’s triumphant ascension (on Christ’s triumph and ‘strife with human hatred’, compare two Passiontide hymns, 156 and 163), then continues with Our Lord’s promise, fulfilled in the experience of his followers, of his continuing presence among us. The clause ‘He reigns’, introduced in the second line of the second stanza, is then repeated to begin both the third and fourth stanzas. In the third, Bayly continues to explore the paradox of Christ’s transcendence and immanence, with particular attention to Christ’s care for us in all our struggles: his ‘strife with human hatred’ may in one sense have ‘end[ed]’, but at the same time he ‘takes...the cares...pain...and shame of human strife’. In the last stanza, Bayly looks beyond past and present concerns to the future: ‘He reigns in heaven until’ he comes again to complete his work and ‘rule the world’; the love that stoops to share our troubles is in the end characterized by ‘glorious power’.
Easter 7
The Seventh Sunday of Easter continues the celebration of the Ascension. A modern anthem with an intricate organ part in exuberant rhythm and the rich harmonic language of early 20th-century France draws upon one of the Psalms (47) traditionally appointed in this season, a song of the triumph of God (probably originally military and nationalistic in intent), applied now to Christ. Several fine and familiar hymns pick up various important themes. Caroline Noel’s ‘At the Name of Jesus’ [435], like ‘See the Conqueror’, reminds us that Christ has not only ascended to the Father, but has done so precisely as a human, and it looks to the completion of Christ’s work at the end of all things. ‘The head that once was crowned with thorns’ [483] celebrates Christ’s victory but is really a meditation upon the Cross: the crown of victory is the crown of thorns; Christ’s exaltation comes only after his Passion. Somewhat similarly, ‘Hail, thou once despisèd Jesus’ [495] focuses on Christ’s reconciling self-sacrifice, but it goes on to affirm that Christ intercedes for us and prepares a place for us. ‘Alleluia! Sing to Jesus!’ [460] covers some of the same ground, much inspired by the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which Christ is described as the great High Priest who has entered the Holy of Holies; made the one perfect, eternal sacrifice of himself; and then ‘sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high’ – a place to which God has lifted him up: the exaltation alluded to in several Epistles and described in the vividly physical terms of Luke’s Ascension accounts. From there we can back up to Our Lord’s promises – ‘I will not leave you orphaned’ [John 14.18]; ‘I am with you always’ [Matt. 28.20] – and look forward to the Revelation to St John, also quoted or alluded to in the first stanza (and its repetition as the last), and in the third.
The short season of Ascensiontide is not only a time to give thanks for Christ’s presence among us; in it the Church also, with the first disciples, looks for the coming of the Spirit. The 20th-century French organ prelude, quoting chant melodies of the season, depicts the disciples ‘in the Upper Room’ during this period. Our other anthem, Tallis’s ‘O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit’, setting a prayer from a popular 16th-century collection, quotes the Gospel: ‘O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit into our hearts... that we may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.’ The close attention to the text-setting and sophisticated rhythmic groupings – sometimes coinciding, sometimes not, in the differerent voice-parts – shows the hand of a master composer even on this small scale.
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