May the promise of Easter give you strength and courage to face the trials of this world.   May it bring you inner assurance even during difficult times.  May it inspire you to treat your neighbors (even the difficult ones) with kindness and love.  May it guide you to find glimmers of light in the darkness, and beauty in the everyday.  And may it give you a deep and abiding hope for the life to come, when trials, difficulties and darkness will be no more. 

Happy Easter!

Christ is risen, Christ is living, dry your tears, be unafraid!

Death and darkness could not hold him, nor the tomb in which he lay.

Do not look among the dead for one who lives for evermore;

tell the world that Christ is risen, make it known he goes before.

If the Lord had never risen, we’d have nothing to believe;

but his promise can be trusted: “You will live, because I live.”

As we share the death of Adam, so in Christ we live again;

death has lost its sting and terror, Christ the Lord has come to reign.

Death has lost its old dominion, let the world rejoice and shout!

Christ, the firstborn of the living, gives us life and leads us out.

Let us thank our God, who causes hope to spring up from the ground.

Christ is risen, Christ is giving life eternal, life profound.

Words: Nicolas Martinez, 1960; trans. by Fred Kaan, 1972

(1 Corinthians 15)

Music: Pablo D. Sosa, 1960