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The buzz on the new "Exultet": here come the bees! Mar 15th, 2011 by Deacon Greg Kandra With Easter rapidly approaching, deacons everywhere will be clearing their throats and getting ready to give voice to the great hymn of the Paschal Proclamation — also known as “The Exultet,” a seven-minute a capaella chant that fittingly, as the lyric proclaims, “humbles earthly pride.”    It is the Mother of All Chants, an epic best approached with a strong heart and steeled nerves.(For those interested, there’s an excellent downloadable version here that I’ve used for the last three years.)My pal Elizabeth...

The Exultet is a very lengthy, yet beautiful proclamation of the resurrection of Christ, resembling Haggadah, the great proclamation in the Jewish Pascal supper.The deacon singing the Exultet at Easter VigilThe Benedictine theologian of liturgy, Cyprian Vagaggini, points out that there are certain attitudes, surprisingly, within the church today, which have muddled the understanding of Easter. First, there is a positivist-historicist mentality which kind of tricked us into seeing the resurrection of Christ separately from his passion, and, then, his passion and death separately from his resurrection, and, both of these, separate from the sacraments. There is also a “juridic...