Easter Prayer by St. Hippolytus (AD 190-236) link
Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate
Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen
Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing
Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty
Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,
the first of the sleepers,
Glory and power are his forever and ever.
Amen
Easter Prayer by Saint Gregory the Great link
It is only right,
with all the powers of our heart and mind,
to praise You Father
and Your Only-begotten Son,
Our Lord Jesus Christ:
Dear Father, by Your wondrous
condescension of loving-kindness toward us,
Your servants, You gave up Your Son.
Dear Jesus You paid the debt of Adam
for us to the Eternal Father by
Your Blood poured
fourth in loving-kindness.
You cleared away the darkness of sin
By Your magnificent and radiant Resurrection.
You broke the bonds of death
and rose from the grave as a Conqueror.
You reconciled heaven and earth.
Our life had no hope of eternal happiness
before You redeemed us.
Your Resurrection has washed away our sins,
restored our innocence and brought us joy.
How inestimable is the tenderness
of Your love!
Traditional Easter Prayer from the Oxford Prayer Book link
“Come all the faithful, let us worship God,
for through the Cross, joy has come to all the world.
Ever blessing the Lord, we sing His Resurrection,
for having endured the Cross for us,
He has destroyed death by death.”
Amen
Benediction link
As you go out into God’s world this week, be Easter people!
Be those who say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? Jesus is not here. He is risen.”
Be ready to be surprised with what God will do next. Look for the risen Christ in those you meet.
Let the Holy Spirit nudge and guide you. The tomb is empty because Jesus is out in the world,
and now we must go out into the world too! May the joy and wonder of that first Easter morning live in your hearts today and everyday.
Amen.
He is risen, indeed!
Alice Reads Here(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
Alice Reads Here,
Alleluia!
Elizabeth Klein(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
” Sometimes I go about in pity for myself,
and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.”
(from the Ojibwe Indian tribal wisdom)
christiane(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
Thank you, Dee.
Prof. Wright’s observation there is no universally agreed (“ecumenical” in the sense of the early councils that are universally accepted) theology of the meaning and efficacy of The Cross strikes me as both “troubling” and “wonderful”. “Troubling” in that the churches have been at this for nearly 2000 years and seem to have been willing to live with this state of uncertainty regarding something that is at the core of their message, but “wonderful” (NTW speaks of his sense of scholarly excitement) in that it seems that there is still more, waiting, one might say, to be understood in the Jesus Story.
—
Something seems to have gone wrong in North American Christianity; the “old-time religion” does not seem as compelling to people as it used to. NTW thinks there are problems (the elements of Platonism, moralism, paganism that he mentions) in our thinking that can be corrected; perhaps these corrections can help the churches to find continuing relevance in a post-Christendom, post-Christian-cultural-supremacy world.
Christ is risen and exalted to rulership, but that rule seems more de jure than de facto.
May the Kingdom come on earth as in heaven.
Samuel Conner(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
There’s no doubt that the American church has strayed from the “ancient paths.” It would take a miracle for things to get back on track … for the organized church to become ‘the’ Church … for the people of God to forsake the counterfeit and pursue the genuine. But God …
Max(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
Samuel Conner,
As I grow old, and have, for better and worse, experienced things in life.. one thing that stands out to me is how little I really understand, and how what I thought was true, especially about people, individuals and collective, is not as correct as I thought…
So, when it comes to the concept of G$d, and the act of Christ and the Holly Spirit, and the whole creation.. creating something out of nothing, I just plead, I do not understand.. and that is OK… and this is scientist/engineer talking, that spends their life trying to understand things…
The overall message of Christ is both simple for a child, and impossible for the most intelligent to really understand..
Jeffrey J Chalmers(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
“At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!” (1 Corinthians 13:12 Phillips)
Max(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”
― William Booth (Founder, Salvation Army)
I’d say Brother Booth prophesied that right!
Max(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
That clarifies the Rabbi from Tarsus a lot better than the official KJV version. As Rich Buhler often said on the air, “God Lives in the Real World”. (And both of these quters pre-date MTV’s The Original Reality Show.)
Then why is it the more Godly and Spiritual they get, the more UNREAL they become?
Headless Unicorn Guy(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)
The old Christian Monist blog focused on the influence of Platonism, specifically the complete separation of the Spiritual from the Physical and (using Plato’s parable of the cave) that only the Spiritual is worth anything. “SPIRITUAL GOOD! PHYSICAL BAAAAAAAD! SPIRITUAL GOOD! PHYSICAL BAAAAAAAD!”
It reminds me of the Fringies who are so far gone into Furry or Otherkin that they constantly rant about “Those Evil Hy00mans”. As far as I can tell, all of those making these rants are themselves human. (If they’re not, they’re faking it really well.)
Headless Unicorn Guy(Reply & quote selected text) (Reply to this comment)