Prayer of Adoration for Easter Day

Holy Jesus, Almighty God, Creator and Redeemer of all life,
On this Easter day we praise you with our whole heart, mind, and voice,
As we celebrate the mysterious Passover
In which you yourself are the Paschal Lamb;
For by your death and resurrection you have freed us from our sins
As once you freed your people from slavery in Egypt.

What might have been a day of mourning after your death
You have made instead a day of rejoicing and a feast,
For in the very night we thought all hope was lost
You saw fit to work your transformation of the world.

This is the day/night when you brought our ancestors
Out of slavery, leading them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the day/night when you delivered us from the bonds of death and sin,
And brought us to life with you as you rose victorious from the grave.

How wonderful is the mystery of your unfailing grace, O God,
That you would give yourself in exchange for your mortal creation.

How holy and blessed is this day when earth and heaven are joined
And all creation is reconciled to you who love us even unto death.

O God our Savior, look favorably upon us your Church and continue in us the live-giving work you began in the hours before dawn on that first Easter day. Make us a beacon of your eternal love and grace; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, that things which had fallen to disrepair are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Amen. Alleluia.

Based in part on the English text of the Exsultet chant.

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The Light Begins to Stir: A Poem for Holy Saturday Night

It’s in the night’s darkest hours
That the light begins to stir
When you feel the light before the haze
That precedes the light
That precedes the dawn
It’s in the pre-pre-pre-dawn
That the light begins to stir

It’s in the soul’s darkest hours
That the light begins to stir
When there’s nothing left to see
But the emptiness and fog
The fog that makes you hide from light
Because it throws the light at your face
And all it brings is pain
But here in the pre-pre-pre-dawn time
The gentle light begins to stir

Nobody knows the moment in the night
That the light begins to stir
It’s not like the Nile
Not the same every year
Or every month
Or every day
It’s the mystery in the Mystery
That moment that no one sees
When the light begins to stir
And the life begins to stir

But if you listen, put your ear to the wind
You can hear the music start to swell
You can smell the start of something new
Like the air before the stormclouds brew
You can feel the moments near the moment
That the light begins to stir
And if you watch through the night
You may get to see
The changing of the moments
Where the light begins to stir

But you who sleep soundly
All the hours of this night
Look when you wake to the dawn’s shining light
Put your ear to the wind
And breathe in the scent
Of what happens in the night
That the light begins to stir
And the Life begins to stir
Once more.