Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.
Amen.
La Résurrection du Christ, Andrea della Robbia pic.twitter.com/JiD8B0O2fv
— Academia Christiana (@AcademiaChristi) July 30, 2020
Sam believes that Gandalf has fallen a catastrophic distance and has died. But in the end of the story, with Sam having been asleep for a long while and then beginning to regain consciousness, Gandalf stands before Sam, robed in white, his face glistening in the sunlight, and says:
“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?”
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed… “How do I feel?” he cried.” Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel” –he waved his arms in the air– “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King
Intense sunset skies over the Cuillin from Tarskavaig, Isle of Skye #Scotland 🏴 @BBCScotWeather @VisitScotland @StormHour @ThePhotoHour @SeanBattyTV @krobertsonitv pic.twitter.com/hYWgVAPDXY
— James MacInnes (@Macinnesplant) April 23, 2025
When I see blossoms spring,
And hear the birds’ song,
A sweet love-longing
My heart through-stung, [pierces]
All for a love new
That is so sweet and true,
That gladdens all my song:
I know in truth, iwis,
My joy and all my bliss
On him is all ylong. [is all because of him]
Of Jesu Christ I sing,
Who is so fair and free, [noble]
Sweetest of all thing;
His own ought I well to be.
So far for me he sought,
With suffering he me bought,
With wounds two and three;
Well sore he was swung,
And for me with spear was stung,
Nailed to the tree….
Happy Orthodox Easter!
— Russian Icons (@mrussianicons) May 2, 2021
The Resurrection and the Descent
About 1850
Russia
In this icon, the resurrected Christ is shown surrounded by a mandorla and standing above an empty grave. He is shown again atop the destroyed gates of hell. He raises Adam out of a tomb by his wrists, pic.twitter.com/pfJy5FZ8br
God of hosts,
who so kindled the flame of love
in the heart of your servant George
that he bore witness to the risen Lord
by his life and by his death:
give us the same faith and power of love
that we who rejoice in his triumphs
may come to share with him the fullness of the resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Today's the feast of St George, by tradition a 3rd Century soldier in the Roman army and martyr under Diocletian. He's the patron saint of England. In an 11th Century legend he defeats a dragon to save a city, as shown on the early 16th Century roodscreen at Wellingham, Norfolk. pic.twitter.com/VnUzk6icqX
— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) April 23, 2025
Listen to it all.
Lyrics:
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And having harrow’d hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win.
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we may for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean wash’d from sin,
May live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for Thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought;
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad;
The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory. Amen.
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in the fullness of his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Christ is Risen! We'll be ringing as usual before and after this morning's Holy Communion. Unusually for us, we'll start this morning by ringing up bells that have been silent all week. pic.twitter.com/EMbjowysVi
— St Giles' Oxford Bells (@StGilesOx_Bells) April 20, 2025
Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
–Acts 3:1-10
Guten Morgen und einen stressfreien Wochenteiler wünsche ich Euch 🙋♀️☕️🌸🌷🌞🍀 pic.twitter.com/TUU9J1z3En
— Eva Rossol (@willi_katze) April 23, 2025
Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou hast broken for us the bonds of sin and brought us into fellowship with the Father.
Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou hast overcome death and opened to us the gates of eternal life.
Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because where two or three are gathered together in thy Name there art thou in the midst of them.
Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou ever livest to make intercession for us.
For these and all other benefits of thy mighty resurrection, thanks be unto thee O Christ.
—New Every Morning (The Prayer Book Of The Daily Broadcast Service) [BBC, 1900]
A colourful exhibit at Cornwall's Lost Gardens of Heligan, near St.Austell. pic.twitter.com/sUn27tV9S0
— Michael Perry (@MikePer85818309) April 22, 2025
[Easter]…is the proclamation of a war already won. The war is at an end ”“ even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind ”“ and truly it is burning ”“ but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.
–Karl Barth Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 123
San Pietro, adesso. Nessun filtro. pic.twitter.com/Fi2R6TbjJl
— Valentina Bisti (@BistiValentina) April 22, 2025
Take the time to listen to it all from the Oxford Philomusica.
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that pierced died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
–John Updike (1932-2009)
Study for a "Resurrection of Christ", 1533 #highrenaissance #michelangelo https://t.co/48FaBf9R7s pic.twitter.com/ntaEHDNejp
— Michelangelo (@fanmichelangelo) January 4, 2023
For then he opened their vnderstanding, that they might perceiue the Scriptures, and sayd vnto them: Thus it is written, and thus it behooued Christ to suffer, and to rise from death the third day, and that there should be preached openly in his name pardon and remission of sinnes to all the Nations of the world (Luke 24.45-47). Yee see (good Christian people) how necessary this Article of our faith is, seeing it was prooued of Christ himselfe by such euident reasons and tokens, by so long time and space. Now therefore as our Sauiour was diligent for our comfort and instruction to declare it: so let vs be as ready in our beliefe to receiue it to our comfort and instruction. As he died not for himselfe, no more did he rise againe for himselfe. He was dead (sayth Saint Paul) for our sinnes, and rose againe for our iustification (1 Corinthians 15.3-4). O most comfortable word, euermore to be borne in remembrance. He died (saith he) to put away sinne, hee rose againe to endow vs with righteousnesse. His death tooke away sinne and malediction, his death was the ransome of them both, his death destroyed death, and ouercame the deuill, which had the power of death in his subiection, his death destroyed hell, with all the damnation thereof. Thus is death swallowed vp by Christs victory, thus is hell spoyled for euer.
Happy #Easter! Commemorating the Resurrection of Christ after his Crucifixion on Good Friday, Easter is one of the most important Christian holidays. This dynamic drawing by Rubens from 1614 shows Jesus rising from the tomb pic.twitter.com/0XiN1fMvFI
— British Museum (@britishmuseum) April 1, 2018
O God, who by the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that we, who have been raised with him, may abide in his presence and rejoice in the hope of eternal glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
Hope you had a wonderful Easter my friends pic.twitter.com/vmI0Dctf5n
— Memory Medieval (@MemoryMedieval) April 21, 2025
Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
–Acts 2:36-41
Each morning we open a window to the National Park and share some of the special qualities to inspire us all to spend time in nature to improve health and wellbeing. This is a great misty view of Bolton Castle
— Yorkshire Dales National Park (@yorkshire_dales) April 22, 2025
📸 Wendy McDonnell | #YorkshireDales #SpendTimeInNature pic.twitter.com/U5hKlICjFi
Lord Jesus, risen from the dead and alive for evermore: Stand in our midst tonight as in the upper room; show us thy hands and thy side; speak thy peace to our hearts and minds; and send us forth into the world as thy witnesses; for the glory of thy name.
The Emmaus Disciples (1822), by Abraham Bloemart pic.twitter.com/B3qAjO7Htl
— Richies Place (@lastdays58) August 21, 2020
Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter’s robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.
Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe.
Chaplets for disheveled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.
Seek God’s house in happy throng;
Crowded let His table be;
Mingle praises, prayer and song,
Singing to the Trinity.
Henceforth let your souls alway
Make each morn an Easter Day.
Golden lane at sunrise. Taken in Glastonbury on one of the lanes near Glastonbury Tor. pic.twitter.com/izoG9eQbdA
— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) April 21, 2025
“Without Easter, Good Friday would have no meaning. Without Easter, there would be no hope that suffering and abandonment might be tolerable. But with Easter, a way out becomes visible for human sorrows, an absolute future: more than a hope, a divine expectation.”
–Hans Urs von Balthasar To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), p.39
Happy Easter . Durer. Praying hands x pic.twitter.com/r4IYV0ZEm4
— Gea Austen (@GeaAusten) April 1, 2018
Found courtesy of Alan Jacobs there:
What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. — If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, — what I need is certainty — not wisdom, dreams of speculation — and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.
Happy Easter
— Vir Desideriorum (@VirDesideriorum) April 19, 2025
Frohe Ostern
Buona Pasqua
Feliz Pascua
Joyeuses Pâques
—
Resurrection of Christ (Attavante degli Attavanti, Florence). Cutting, probably from a missal produced for Pope Leo X, commissioned around 1513 for use in the Sistine Chapel
Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books pic.twitter.com/PqR4wyso3R
Words cannot utter
Christ His returning:—
Mankind, keep Jubilee,
Strip off your mourning,
Crown you with garlands,
Set your lamps burning.
Speech is left speechless;—
Set you to singing,
Fling your hearts open wide,
Set your bells ringing:
Christ the Chief Reaper
Comes, His sheaf bringing…
Happy Easter Monday ☀️ pic.twitter.com/GHioesF7no
— Ailish Sinclair (@AilishSinclair) April 21, 2025
Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that we who celebrate with reverence the Paschal feast may be made worthy to attain to everlasting joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Three Women on the Tomb of Christ (1843), by Irma Martin pic.twitter.com/UpZgQRTFUG
— Classical Art (@SeekAfterBeauty) April 20, 2025
I keep the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also dwells secure.
For thou dost not give me up to Sheol,
or let thy godly one see the Pit.
Thou dost show me the path of life;
in thy presence there is fulness of joy,
in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.
Resurrection day #EasterSunday
— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 20, 2025
BL Add MS 19352; Theodore Psalter; 1066 CE; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.146 @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/5PUDFv3Ols
Christians around the world are celebrating Easter.
All Christians, from Orthodox and Western churches, are observing the holiday on the same day this year – not often the case because the churches use different calendars.
In Greece, the sky lit up with fireworks, while worshippers in Jerusalem lit candles at the church where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried. Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead, which is remembered at Easter.
Here is a look at how some have been celebrating the holiday as days of festivities culminate in Easter Sunday.
In pictures: Easter celebrated around the world from Greece to Iraq https://t.co/kK2brsmn7I
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 20, 2025
ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
Resurrection of Christ (c. 1700), by Noël Coypel pic.twitter.com/N5zAGOP8rs
— Classical Art (@SeekAfterBeauty) April 20, 2025
This is the real meaning of Easter…
No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb.
The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes. Death is not a wall, but a door. And eternal life which may be ours now, by faith in Christ, is not interrupted when the soul leaves the body, for we live on…and on.
There is no death to those who have entered into fellowship with him who emerged from the tomb. Because the resurrection is true it is the most significant thing in our world today. Bringing the resurrected Christ into our lives, individual and national, is the only hope we have for making a better world.
“Because I live ye shall live also.”
That is the real meaning of Easter.
–Peter Marshall (1902-1949), The First Easter
Happy Easter
— Vir Desideriorum (@VirDesideriorum) April 19, 2025
Frohe Ostern
Buona Pasqua
Feliz Pascua
Joyeuses Pâques
—
Resurrection of Christ (Attavante degli Attavanti, Florence). Cutting, probably from a missal produced for Pope Leo X, commissioned around 1513 for use in the Sistine Chapel
Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books pic.twitter.com/PqR4wyso3R
‘It ought to be noticed at this stage that the Christian doctrine, if accepted, involves a particular view of Death. There are two attitudes towards Death which the human mind naturally adopts. One is the lofty view, which reached its greatest intensity among the Stoics, that Death ‘doesn’t matter’, that it is ‘kind nature’s signal for retreat’, and that we ought to regard it with indifference. The other is the ‘natural’ point of view, implicit in nearly all private conversations on the subject, and in much modern thought about the survival of the human species, that Death is the greatest of all evils: Hobbes is perhaps the only philosopher who erected a system on this basis. The first idea simply negates, the second simply affirms, our instinct for self-preservation; neither throws any new light on Nature, and Christianity countenances neither. Its doctrine is subtler. On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call ‘ambivalent’. It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and THE MEANS BY WHICH HE CONQUERED.’
–Miracles, emphasis mine
Cecco di Caravaggio Resurrezione di Cristo 1619 pic.twitter.com/3UQBOzdJpN
— Ugo Ramella (@RamellaUgo) April 19, 2025
“A story that is any good can’t be reduced, it can only be expanded. A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you. In fiction two and two is always more than four.”
–Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1957) p. 102
The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education wishes you a blessed Easter: He is risen; He is risen, indeed! May this time of joy and prayer bring consolation to you, your families, and your school communities!
— Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (@CathLibEd) April 4, 2021
(Image: The Resurrection of Christ, Reubens, 1611-1612) pic.twitter.com/3v29whHAoz
The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks did not believe in resurrection; in the Greek worldview, the afterlife was liberation of the soul from the body. For them, resurrection would never be part of life after death. As for the Jews, some of them believed in a future general resurrection when the entire world would be renewed, but they had no concept of an individual rising from the dead. The people of Jesus’ day were not predisposed to believe in resurrection any more than we are.
Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number of works listing arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most telling went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women””and we all know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For them, that was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know, women were marginalized, and the testimony of women was never given much credence.
Do you see what that means? If Mark and the Christians were making up these stories to get their movement off the ground, they would never have written women into the story as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ empty tomb. The only possible reason for the presence of women in these accounts is that they really were present and reported what they saw. The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty and an angel declares that Jesus is risen.
#EasterSunday 🙏🏻 #ShallottePoint @EdPiotrowski @medwick @ChrissyKohler @WXIIJackie @jamiearnoldWMBF @LeeHaywoodWX @dogwoodblooms @marioncaldwx @JustinMcKeeWx @StarboardRail @ThePhotoHour @CMorganWX @Christina4casts @AndrewWMBF @ScottyPowellWX @jgreenhillwx @TimBuckleyWX pic.twitter.com/SmeJvnREDK
— Mark Moore (@MMoore_hoops) April 20, 2025
O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have this day given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.
Annibale Carracci, Holy Women at Christ' s Tomb, ca. 1590 pic.twitter.com/nwMvS6LPyM
— Solas (@solas_na_greine) April 20, 2025
Listen to it all and you can read more about it, including finding the lyrics, at Lent and Beyond.