Easter Alleluia

Every year, once we have reached the summit of the Easter mountain, a word, silent since Ash Wednesday, rings out again and stays with us for many months; a strange-sounding word, foreign, not only to our native language, but also to Church Latin. This word is “alleluia”. It does not really sound like a word at all; more like a child’s stammer, especially if sung with many notes to the last syllable.

The “Alleluia” is a Hebrew word which, untranslatable, like the “Amen”, the Church has brought along the centuries. It is a root from her Jewish Mother Earth, a reminder of her earliest childhood. As a joyful shout in the psalm it means “Let the Lord be praised”. But why does the Church still keep it as an expression of her Easter joy?

I think she wants to say that an ordinary word, easily grasped, must surely fail to express what we celebrate at Easter: the mystery of our Redemption, the abundance of divine mercy. So we have a word which resembles either the wonder-filled stammer of a child or the yodelling of an Alpine shepherd when he sees the morning sun light up the snow capped mountain peak.

So with us Christians: words fail us when we regard the Sun, Christ our true morning-sun, rise out of the darkness of the grave, and shine strong and bright and warm over the cold Good Friday. “Alleluia” we sing, as we wait the warmth of this Sun in those valleys of our life where Good Friday still lingers.

Is it not wonderful to think that this Easter cry has rung out in the Church through the ups and downs of two thousand years, and that it will be with us until the Alleluia praise resounds in heaven? Is it not the very foundation of our faith that, for us, as for Christ, Good Friday, is not the end but the place for passing through? “Pasch”, the old name for Easter, means precisely that: “Passover”. All our life is but a passing through to that City in whose streets “Alleluias” is forever sung. So – all through the Easter Season of 2012, which lasts for 7 weeks, let us sing: “May the Lord be praised” – he will lead us along the way which he himself has gone as Victor through death to Life.