Written by John of Damascus (ca. 675–749) at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem, this hymn is the first of eight "odes" in the Byzantine canon for St. Thomas Sunday (our Quasimodogeniti). The first stanza (the heirmos) connects the canticle of Moses at the Red Sea with the theme of the day, while the following stanzas (troparia) expound upon it. John declares that God has triumphed even more gloriously through Christ bursting the "tomb’s dark portal" than when He threw horse and rider into the sea. The English translation by John Mason Neale appeared in 1859. A mystery surrounds the fifth stanza: its first four lines appeared in Hymns Ancient & Modern (1868) with no indication of authorship. Sequence Hymn: “Christians, to the Paschal Victim” (Victimae Paschali Laudes) This is the only "sequence" hymn in our hymnal. Sequences were ancient choral chants sung before the Gospel reading; most were abandoned after the Reformation, yet this eleventh-century Easter masterpiece (attributed to Wipo of Burgundy) triumphantly survived. Its theological legacy is immense: it directly inspired the medieval folk hymn "Christ is Arisen" (LSB 459), which in turn inspired Luther’s "Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands." The text is structured as a dramatic dialogue between a narrator and Mary Magdalene, linking the risen Christ to the Passover lamb and marveling at the "stupendous" combat where the Prince of Life died yet now reigns immortal. As early as the thirteenth century, congregations sang this sequence in alternation with the vernacular "Christ is Arisen," a practice our hymnal preserves.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026