AS EASTER DRAWS NEAR

The Exultet is the poem proclaimed at the Easter vigil in praise of God for the light

of the Paschal candle - for the coming glory of the Resurrection. A leading

Roman liturgist, a Benedictine of the Sant'Anselmo monastery, reflects

by Father Cassian Folsom

The Exultet is the long and beautiful poetic text proclaimed by the deacon, priest or cantor during the Easter vigil as a type of lucernarium or hymn of praise to God for the light of the Paschal Candle. This ancient text, which may go back as far as St. Ambrose (died 397), entered the Roman tradition through the 9th-century supplement to the Gregorian Sacramentary. It is a masterpiece of the liturgical tradition, and of very great beauty.

Since beauty leads us to the mystery of God, a greater appreciation of the beauty of the Exultet can help lead us to the very heart of the paschal mystery of Christ. Let us consider the beauty of both the form and the content of the Easter Proclamation.

Beauty of form: The poetic style of the Latin text is formal and elegant, communicating at once the sacred quality of what is being said and the warmth and fervor of the speaker. The ancient chant melody is at the same time lyrical and solemn: transporting the listeners beyond the mundane cares of everyday living, tugging at the heart, and inviting all present to a deeper kind of prayer.

The setting in which the Exultet is proclaimed is extremely important for its effectiveness. The Church is in shadows, lit only by the candles of the faithful and by the single flame of the paschal candle itself. Such an atmosphere is conducive to prayer; while electric lights are fine for seeing the things of this world, candlelight is better. All wait in hushed expectation for the opening words of the Exultet: "Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing choirs of angels!"

Beauty of content: The text that the deacon sings is theology expressed in prayer, a rich synthesis of what we celebrate at Easter: the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the Christian. For greater understanding, we can divide the text into three parts:

1) An introduction, which is an exhortation to exult (from whence comes the title Exultet);

2) A proclamation of the wonderful works of God in the paschal mystery, including both a calling to mind (or anamnesis) of the history of salvation and a contemplative meditation on the effects of that salvation in the life of the believer;

3) A concluding petition, asking the Father to receive the paschal candle as a symbol of our evening sacrifice of praise.

Who is it that the deacon exhorts to rejoice? There are three groups: the angelic hosts and spiritual powers above, the earth below, and Mother Church, who embraces all. The angels have their own glory, while the earth and the Church are described as surrounded by light, shining with the splendor of the eternal king. The deacon sings with ecstatic jubilation, with the impassioned affection of his whole heart and mind, and with the gift of his voice. He addresses all present as "beloved brethren" and asks them to invoke the mercy of Almighty God, so that the Lord who sheds abroad the glory of such light, may enable him to perfectly perform the praise of this candle. The members of the congregation are not idle spectators, but pray with the deacon and for him, that he may perform his task well.

The anamnesis begins with the customary preface dialogue: Sursum corda! Lift up your hearts! Put aside all earthly cares, and enter into the sacred mysteries! And what are these mysteries? All the things contained in the paschal feast: when Christ paid for us the debt of Adam, when the true Lamb was slain whose blood consecrated the doorposts of the faithful.

What follows is a glorious use of biblical typology: the text names various elements of the Exodus story and applies them to the Christians gathered around the paschal candle today, hodie, on this holy night of Easter. "This is the night when you brought our fathers out of Egypt and led them dry-shod through the Red Sea." "This is the night which purified the darkness of sins by the pillar of fire." "This is the night which has such power for all those believing in Christ throughout the entire world: it restores them to grace and joins them to holiness." "This is the night in which Christ, bursting the bonds of death, rose victorious from the underworld!"

After the chanting of the mirabilia Dei, the wonderful works of God, the Exultet then turns to a more contemplative meditation on what all this means for us. "What good would life have been to us, had Christ not come as our Redeemer?" This poignant reflection is reminiscent of the words of St. Paul: "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are all men most to be pitied" (1 Cor 15:19). The text once again breaks into praise of the Father: "O wondrous condescension of your great kindness toward us! O immeasurable charity: for to redeem a slave, you handed over your Son! O truly necessary sin of Adam, which was wiped out by the death of Christ! O happy fault, o felix culpa, which merited to have so great a redeemer! O truly blessed night, which alone merited to know the time and the hour in which Christ rose from the dead!"

These exclamations of praise embrace the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, and put on our lips such bold confidence that we thank God even for the original sin of our first parents. God turns all things to the good, even sin, and we can call that first sin "happy" because it was the cause of the sending of the Only-Begotten Son into the world.

This section of the Exultet ends with a description of the effects of the paschal mystery. The sanctification of this night drives away evil deeds, washes sins away, restores innocence to the lapsed and joy to those who mourn, drives out hatred, produces concord and curbs tyranny.

The final section has an A-B-A structure, something like the art form of a symphony: i.e., petition-reprise-petition. The first petition asks the Father to accept our evening sacrifice of praise. This refers not only to the praise of the Exultet, but also to the sacrifice of Christ himself, since in patristic writings, the evening sacrifice of Vespers is frequently associated with the evening sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. So the holy Church asks the Father to accept our unbloody sacrifice of praise, just as He accepted the bloody sacrifice of His Son.

Included in this section is a meditation on the flame of the candle (which although divided into parts suffers no diminution of its light) and a meditation on the wax of the candle (produced by the mother bee, as it says in one place, or by the work of bees, as it says in another). The reprise is a return to a familiar theme heard earlier in the composition: "O truly blessed night!"

In this case, the night is praised because in it, heaven is joined to earth and divine realities are joined to earthly ones. In liturgical texts this is usually the language of Christmas, when through the Incarnation divine nature was joined to human nature. But because of the saving death and resurrection of Christ at Easter, human nature is not only redeemed, but even - we dare to say - divinized, for as it is written in 2 Pt 1:4, we have "become partakers" of the divine nature.

Finally, after this reprise, the Exultet petitions the Father once again, this time asking that the paschal candle, consecrated to the honor of His Name, might persevere undimmed in scattering the darkness of the night; that it might mingle with the heavenly luminaries and be acceptable as an odor of sweetness: and that the day star of the morning might find it still burning.

Who is the day star from on high, which never sets? Christ the Son of the Father, who returning from the grave, has shed His serene light upon the human race.

We who have the good fortune to participate in the Easter Vigil can listen with the ears of our heart to the proclamation of the Exultet. If we do not grasp its full significance this year, no matter. One of the reassuring characteristics of the liturgy is that it is repeatable, and the Exultet will come around again next year. Then we can listen once more, attentively, pondering these things in our heart as Our Lady did, repeating with wonderment and awe: "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so great a Redeemer!" l