CHRIST the Lord is risen today; Hallelujah!Sons of men and angels say:
Raise your joys and triumphs high:
Sing, ye heavens; thou earth, reply:
Love's redeeming work is done;
Fought the fight, the battle won:
Vain the stone, the watch, the seal;
Christ hath burst the gates of hell:
Lives again our glorious King!
Where, O death, is now thy sting?
Once He died our souls to save:
Where's thy victory, boasting grave?
Soar we now where Christ hath led,
Following our exalted Head:
Made like Him, like Him we rise;
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies:
King of glory! Soul of bliss!
Everlasting life is this,
Thee to know, Thy power to prove,
Thus to sing, and thus to love.
By Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
This glorious Easter hymn which finds its inspiration from the accounts of the Ressurection in the four Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 15, first appeared in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) with the title "Hymn for Easter Day". Many would agree with W. T. Stead who said, "This hymn has long been accepted as the best English Easter hymn."
Remembering our brothers and sisters in Christ:
ReplyDelete"Easter for China's Catholics has a familiar ring this year as priests and activists say 60 years of government repression of those loyal to the Pope shows no sign of easing.
'The situation is going from bad to worse,' said Joseph Kung of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a US-based Catholic activist group.
Followers of the underground Church continue to be detained, he said.
China has millions of Catholics who either attend mass at official churches overseen by the communist government, or who are part of illegal, 'underground' congregations."
http://news.my.msn.com/topstories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3141427#toolbar
"Tens of thousands of survivors of central Italy's devastating earthquake marked a mournful Easter on Sunday as the bells of the region's many destroyed churches lay silent.
On the most joyous day of the Christian calendar commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, survivors spoke of their fears for the future after a disaster that claimed 293 lives and wiped out some 10,000 homes as well as entire livelihoods.
The earthquake last Monday was the worst the mainly Roman Catholic country had seen in a generation."
http://news.my.msn.com/topstories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3143374