Easter Triumph, Easter Joy

Every Easter blessing to all readers!

I've just returned, refreshed and uplifted, from the Easter Vigil at St Francis, Riverside, my parish (indeed, where I was baptized and confirmed).  Daylight saving having ended, it was already darkening into night as the Easter fire was kindled (yours truly again looking after the "smoking handbag" as one wry Dominican calls it) just after six o'clock; Exsultet sung, readings read, psalms chanted (mirabile dictu, in between thurifying I had to sing one myself), Baptismal vows renewed, Sacrifice offered, consecrated and received, all concluded by a quarter to eight – including a most uplifting fervorino delivered after the Prayer after Communion by our special guest in choir, Bishop Robarts of the TAC, keeping Easter Vigil with us and our parish priest, his "mentor" in the process of reception into full communion with Rome, as he and his little flock await the official word from Rome on the date of commencement of the Australian Ordinariate.  The packed church gave him an ovation.

The only person not entirely delighted by the music, incense and all else was – of all people! – my dear Mum, who had come along unawares of Father's liking for incense and my willingness to accommodate him: she said (as only one's mother would do to a grown man) that I had smoked the place out far too much and had been very naughty: LOL.  The irony is that I have a particularly poor sense of smell and, while I can enjoy the sight of the smoke as it "from the censer curling rise[s]", I could hardly smell it at all myself, and certainly never once coughed nor spluttered in that sillly way some people do: yet the vapours would surely have been most potent in their effects on me, which just goes to show...

A special blessing had been to have my confession heard before Mass; my penance, the beautiful words of the Victimæ Paschali laudes, the Easter Sequence:

Victimæ paschali laudes

immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves:

Christus innocens Patri

reconciliavit peccatores.

Mors et vita duello

conflixere mirando:

dux vitæ mortuus, regnat vivus.

Dic nobis Maria,

quid vidisti in via?

Sepulcrum Christi viventis,

et gloriam vidi resurgentis:

Angelicos testes,

sudarium, et vestes.

Surrexit Christus spes mea:

præcedet suos in Galilæam.

Scimus Christum surrexisse

a mortuis vere:

tu nobis, victor Rex, 
miserere.

Amen.
Alleluja.