What a relief it was to hear the bells once more on Holy Saturday, what relief to wake up from the sleep of death with a triple "Alleluia". Easter, that year, was as late as it could possibly be - the twenty-fifth of April - and there were enough flowers to fill the church with the intoxicating smell of the Kentucky spring - a wild and rich and heady smell of flowers, sweet and full. We came from our light, five hours' sleep into a church that was full of warm night air and swimming in this rich luxury of odours, and soon began that Easter invitatory that is nothing short of gorgeous in its exultation.
How mighty they are, those hymns and those antiphons of the Easter office! Gregorian chant that should, by rights, be monotonous, because it has absolutely none of the tricks and resources of modern music, is full of a variety infinitely rich because it is subtle and spiritual and deep, and lies rooted far beyond the shallow level of virtuosity and "technique", even in the abysses of the spirit, and of the human soul. Those Easter "Alleluias", without leaving the narrow range prescribed by the eight Gregorian modes, have discovered colour and warmth and meaning and gladness that no other music possesses. Like everything else Cistercian - like the monks themselves - these antiphons, by submitting to the rigour of a Rule that would seem to destroy individuality, have actually acquired a character that is unique, unparalleled.
Taken from The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith by Thomas Merton
Merton's thoughts on the Easter "Alleluia" as chanted in the monastery call to mind the words of Pope Benedict XVI in his work Dogma and Preaching:
Now singing finds its climatic form in the Alleluia, the song in which the very essence of all song achieves its purest embodiment ... In fact we are dealing here with something that cannot be translated. The Alleuia is simply the nonverbal expression in song of a joy that requires no words because it transcends all words. In this it resembles certain kinds of exultation and jubilation that are to be found among all peoples, just as the miracle of joy manifests itself in every nation ... What does it mean to sing with "jubilation"? It means: to be unable to express in words, or to verbalize, the song that sings to you in your heart. As the harvesters in field or vineyard experience an increasingly jubilant sense of joy, they become incapable, it seems, of find words to express this overflowing joy. They abandon syllables and words, and their singing turns into a jubilus or cry of exultation. A jubilus is a shout that shows the heart is trying to express what it cannot possibly say. And to whom is such a jubilus more fittingly directed than to him who is himself ineffable?
Taken from Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI edited by Peter John Cameron OP
