Easter Sunday (2025) - Fr Anthony Walsh, OP

VICTIMÆ PASCHALI LAUDES

The liturgical hymn we sing on Easter Sunday, the Victimæ paschali laudes, is one of only three sequences retained in our Roman liturgy: the others are Veni Sancte Spiritus at Pentecost and Lauda Sion on Corpus Christi. A trace of a Christmas sequence survives too—in the beloved carol Adeste fidelis (O Come, All Ye Faithful).

This glorious Easter composition places us within the joy of the Resurrection, yet not without paradox. The Sequence proclaims:

Mors et vita duello                                          Death with life contended

confixére mirando:                                         combat strangely ended

Dux vitæ mórtuus                                            Life’s own Champion, slain,

regnat vivus                                                     Yet lives to reign.

Christ overthrows death by dying—in that mysterious and spectacular duel between life and death. The readings from the fifth week of Lent through Holy Week have already been preparing us for this moment, recounting the growing opposition to Jesus and the final conflict between Christ and his enemies. This reached its terrible crescendo on Good Friday with his death upon the Cross.

The Easter Sequence, like all such hymns in the liturgy, prepares us to hear the Gospel. It invites us into contemplative meditation, as we remain seated in stillness, awaiting the Gospel Acclamation to stir us with renewed force: “Christ has become our paschal sacrifice…”

In that quieting of our souls, the Sequence draws us into the mystery of Easter morning—into the garden, in the pre-dawn, where Mary Magdalene makes her way to the tomb.

She goes in love, to perform a final act of tenderness for the dead. But in doing so, she encounters, what is to some implausible, the truth we celebrate at the heart of our Faith. And like some, she struggles at first to comprehend: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary does not look into the tomb. Instead, in John’s Gospel, she becomes the bearer of the news to Peter and the other disciple—the one Jesus loved. By turning to Peter, Mary brings the first news of the Resurrection to the nascent Church, still scattered and reeling in the aftermath of Jesus’ death.

Peter, the one who denied Jesus three times outside the high priest’s house, and John, the beloved disciple who rested on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper and stood with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, at the foot of the Cross—these two now run to the tomb.

They run together, but John reaches it first. He stoops to look in yet waits for Peter to enter. We are told nothing of Peter’s immediate reaction, but his act of going in first is significant. The leader now enters to assess what has happened.  John follows him in.

John’s Gospel unfolds this discovery as a progression: Mary sees that the stone is rolled away. John sees the linen cloths. Peter enters and examines them—along with the rolled-up cloth that had covered Jesus’ head. These details quietly refute Mary’s initial fear that “they have taken the Lord.” If someone had stolen the body, they would not have carefully left the grave cloths behind. Unlike Lazarus, who emerged to earthly life still wrapped in burial cloths, the tomb of Jesus is empty—yet the wrappings remain.

Then John enters. He saw, and he believed. The beloved disciple recognises, at once, what has taken place. His is the first clear expression of faith in the Resurrection.

Yet the Gospel concludes by noting that the disciples still did not understand the teaching of Scripture: that Jesus must rise from the dead. This would become, over time, the heart of the Church’s kerygma or statement of belief—the cry of faith in the Risen Lord.

We, too, can echo John’s belief: “to see and believe”. We, too, can profess the same faith as we peer into the empty tomb. By living our lives in full awareness of the mystery of death, we begin to take the Resurrection seriously. The Risen Christ still bears his wounds—but now, they are no longer signs of suffering or defeat. They are radiant with the glory of God.

The Resurrection is not a return to earthly life as it was for Lazarus; it is not a reversal of time. It is the stepping beyond time—the complete triumph not only over death, but also over life.

We believe and profess: the risen Christ is bodily in heaven. Alleluia.

Fr Anthony Walsh, OP is the Master of Novices, assigned to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide, South Australia.