Easter Prayers
Easter Festival Prayers, Prayers For Easter
Easter Festival Prayers
The Resurrected Christ Who Saves Us
O Jesus, King,
Receive my supplication,
And consider my supplication,
As a pledge to you.
For you, O living King,
Have gone forth and gone up,
Out of hell,
As conqueror.
Woe to those who have rejected you;
For, to evil spirits and demons,
You are sorrow,
To Satan and to Death,
You are pain,
To Sin and Hell,
You are mourning.
Yet, joy has come today,
For those who are born anew.
On this great day therefore,
We give great glory to You,
Who died and is now alive,
That to all you may give
Life and resurrection!
– St. Ephrem the Syrian
Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest, our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
– John Donne
Christ Resurrected
Christ, rising again from the dead
Dieth now no more:
Death shall no more have dominion over him;
For in that he died, he died once:
But in that he liveth, he liveth unto God,
Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the Jews now tell us,
How the soldiers,
Who guarded the sepulchre,
Lost the King,
Though they had placed a rock over him.
Why kept they not the Rock of Justice?
Either let them restore the buried One,
Or adore with us the risen One, saying:
But in that he liveth,
He liveth unto God,
Alleluia, alleluia.
– The Liturgical Year: Book 7