Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven!
So begins the Easter Proclamation, known as the Exsultet. It is a winding, rhythmic chant delivered by a single cantor amid almost total darkness.
Exult, let Angel ministers of God exult!
The only light is the ten-foot Easter candle which moments before had been processed from a blazing fire outside, through the blackness of the sanctuary. It is placed beside an altar that has been stripped bare in commemoration of the entrance into death of God Himself. Slowly, its light multiplies among the congregants as they pass its flame between them.
Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her!
In its overawed tone, its sober gaiety slowly building to joyous exultation, it marks the culmination of the Lenten journey. I find it to be the pinnacle of the Western liturgy, fractally synthesizing the entirety of the church year, indeed the entirety of the human drama, from creation to fall to redemption to new life, into a single achingly beautiful expression. The raucous, full-throated Glorias and Alleluias that we subsequently sing after six weeks of fasting from them are the emotional catharsis finally breaking through.
Let this holy building shake with joy,
Filled with the mighty voices of the peoples!
This year like other years it makes me think of this word, exult. From the Latin exultare, to leap up. But I always conceive of the emotion, somatically, not as an upward leaping, but as a deepening, a resounding. An opening and a broadening, a sort of heedless vulnerability, a dropping of the guard. An echoing reverberation that connects the deepest deep and the highest height. It suggests the violence of apocalypse, or unveiling; the unexpected suddenness of epiphany, or glittering revelation.
It is the abrupt and overwhelming apprehension of the wholeness of things, which in their culmination are found to be better, much better, than you ever could have imagined. Inconceivably better, in a literal sense. I certainly can’t conceive of it. We don’t have to. We can just exult in it.
The Exsultet famously calls our brokenness a “happy fault” and you could call God’s response to it a “happy ambush.” You and your merry band of thieves have been taken unawares and all of your efforts and defenses and plans are hopeless. Exult!
This is the night
of which it is written:
The night shall be as bright as day,
dazzling is the night for me,
and full of gladness.
Where in our lives do we really exult? Do we even remember what it feels like? I for one need to relearn it over and over again; I wonder if many go through life finding no outlet for this most fundamental emotion. Like someone who loses the original range of their palate due to neglect, the deepness and complexity of exultation, requiring as it does the fullness of attention, vulnerability, and surrender, may be forgotten. It may be replaced by less demanding pleasures, not bad in themselves, but incomplete.
The exultation of God’s victory over Death is the highest form, but it is not the only one. Just as our world is full of particular reflections of the ultimate Beauty, the source of all exultation flows liberally throughout creation. Where do we find it? Fourth quarter comebacks? Sure, though a bit thin perhaps. The birth of our children? Probably, though I wouldn’t yet know. Personally I exult in Manet, in apple blossoms, in the caress of salt-waves, in certain heartbreaking arrangements of words on paper.
This is the night,
when Christ broke the prison-bars of death
and rose victorious from the underworld.
In the homily our priest focused on this second-century quote from Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” It’s important. Because especially now, it can be hard to recognize that our job is not to transcend our humanness, not to leave it behind, but to exult in it. To become ever more human, ever more ourselves.
This is not what we, so frustrated and self-loathing and dimmed by separation from our creator, expect. It’s not what the faithful women who arrived at the empty tomb expected. Nor the mourning apostles to whom they reported: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Exultation competing, as always, with fear and uncertainty. Epiphany, as always, equal parts bewildering and terrifying. He is risen indeed! Exult!