Also by John of Damascus, this text opens the "Golden Canon" sung during Matins of Pascha in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. John Mason Neale (1862) quoted a travel diary describing its use in Athens: at the stroke of midnight, after the archbishop shouted "Christ is risen!", the crowd erupted into "indescribable joy," lighting thousands of tapers and firing cannons while the priests chanted this "glorious old hymn of victory." The first stanza refers to "the passover of gladness" and "the passover of God," drawing on the Greek pascha (both "Passover" and "Easter"). The tune LANCASHIRE by Henry T. Smart was composed around 1835 for a missionary meeting yet sat unpublished for thirty years until 1866.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026