Canticle: Christ Is Risen or Pascha Nostrum

Music: He Is Risen, He Is Risen

The liturgy for the dead, the Burial Office, for which we have come here today, is an Easter liturgy. And since we are in the midst of the Great Fifty Days of the Easter season, it is doubly an Easter liturgy.

Therefore, we call today a celebration: a celebration of Jesus' resurrection, and the celebration of the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life for those who trust in him.

Early in the nineteenth century, this joy of the resurrection captured Cecil Frances Alexander, a young poet and verse writer. He wrote an Easter poem for children, in simple words so that even children might understand. The first stanza of his poem is now the opening verse of a familiar Easter hymn: He is risen, he is risen,…