Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Jesus has risen! Alleluia!
Back in the 4th Century AD St
Augustine wrote a beautiful discourse on the psalms. For Psalm 148 subtitled All
Creation Summoned to Praise he wrote “we are given two liturgical seasons,
one before Easter and the other after. …What we commemorate before Easter is
what we experience in this life; what we celebrate after Easter is something we
do not yet possess. This is why we keep the first season with fasting and
prayer; but now the fast is over and we devote the present season to
praise. Such is the meaning of the Alleluia
we sing. “
It is so easy for us to get stuck in the
before Easter mindset that St Augustine wrote about so long ago. All we have to do is turn on the television
or read the newspaper. Bad news makes
for exciting media. But we are not bad
news people. We are good news
people. And the good news is that three
days after he was crucified, died and was buried, Jesus Christ, our Lord and
Savior, was raised from the dead. ALLELUIA! And, St Paul tells us, “Just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness
of life” (Romans 6: 4). ALLELUIA!
Given this extraordinary historical event we
all should be out in the streets shouting “Alleluia, Alleluia, Jesus has risen
from the dead.” There is more, St
Augustine tells each one of us to make sure “your praise comes from your whole
being in other words, see that you praise God not with your lips and voices
alone, but with your minds, your lives and all your actions.” Sixteen centuries later, Saint Pope John
Paul II said “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people
and hallelujah is our song.”
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Jesus has risen! Alleluia!
