Planning for Easter

VREUCHTEN is a lovely Dutch melody, and many of you will know the text by George Ratcliffe Woodward (d. 1934) traditionally sung to it. But depending on your political inclinations, some of you might stumble a bit over that stanza…

This joyful Eastertide,
away with care and sorrow!
My Love, the Crucified,
hath sprung to life this morrow.
Refrain:
Had Christ, that once was slain,
ne’er burst his three-day prison,
our faith had been in vain;
but now is Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen, arisen.

Death’s flood hath lost its chill,
since Jesus crossed the river:
Lover of souls, from ill
my passing soul deliver, Refrain

My flesh in hope shall rest,
and for a season slumber,
till trump from east to west
shall wake the dead in number. Refrain

Editor

Katharine E. Harmon, Ph.D., edits the blog, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit & Wisdom.

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Comments

8 responses to “Planning for Easter”

  1. Lee Bacchi

    Fr. Anthony — I don’t get your meaning concerning political inclinations and “that” stanza. Am I missing something?

    OK, NOW I see it.

    Reply
  2. Michael Silhavy

    Or as one hymnologist quipped earlier today – don’t forget Franzmann’s “Weary of All Trumpeting”

    Reply
  3. Alan Griffiths

    TRUMP is a lovely word with connotations both comic and bawdy. Don’t let the unsavoury aspects of contemporary US politics spoil it!

    AG

    Reply
  4. David Jules

    My choir is in the midst of preparing the wonderful Hal Hopson arrangement of this hymn. Every week without fail, someone has to dredge up the joke! I was almost tempted to change it just to put an end to it.

    Reply
  5. Karl Liam Saur

    While the reference to “trump” may register with people raised on the KJV text (1 Thess. 4:16) [not many Catholics], I was tooling around and learned aa bit about the referenced instrument, the salpinx:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salpinx

    Reply
  6. Alan Hommerding

    Coming from a card-playing family, “trump” always carried the connotation of playing a superior card.
    It’s interested me for some time that the Lectionary includes only one of the three NT apocalyptic trumpets – the one in Thessalonians. Paul’s in 1 Cor. 15 is excluded, as is the one in Matthew’s apocalypse (ch. 24).
    Sound the trumpet of salvation! Just not during the Liturgy of the Word.

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      @Alan Hommerding:
      It’s interesting that the cursus of I Corinthians 15 in Week 24 of Year 2 elides that passage.

      Reply
      1. Alan Hommerding

        @Karl Liam Saur:
        Of course, I should have noted specifically that it’s the Sunday cycle in which we never hear of the 1 Cor. or Matthean trumpets.

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