“Suddenly, silence and fear prevailed over the whole Creation, for the Lord of Creation came forth from the tomb”

I adore Thy cross, O Christ, God,
And I shall glorify Thy tomb, O Immortal One,
And in celebrating the festival of Thy resurrection, I cry to Thee:
The Lord is risen.

No one, my Savior, knew clearly Thy road
to Hades, except Hades
For he was able from what he saw and what he suffered to learn of Thy power.
So, I wish first to ask him what happened,
And then, after that, I shall ask the guards at Thy tomb who stole Thy body.
For even though I know exactly how Thou wert resurrected,
O Eternal One, since I learned it from Thy friends
Still, even from those who hate Thee I am eager to secure faith in the words of those who cry:
The Lord is risen.

For the one who loves magnifies the one whom he loves, and the one who hates tells the truth even when he does not wish to.
As it is written: Salvation is from our enemies and from those who hate us.

“Tell me, then, first of all, Hades, eternal enemy of my race,
How did you hold in the tomb the One who loved my race?
Who did you consider He was?
In any event, had you considered Him like all men on earth,
O wretch, forever miserable,
You have lost those whom you did possess, and Him whom you said you would hold,
For truly you did not find Him,
The Lord is risen.”

HADES: “Do you desire to learn from me, O man, how my murderer descended against me?
I have been annihilated, and I do not have the strength to bellow against you, for I am still dumbfounded.
O man, as was customary, I was watching Him at the time,
In that very moment, as I was observing, I saw Him move
His mortal remains as He lay there;
And in a short time, leaping up with vigor, He arises, and the hands which I bound
He places around my throat, and all the people I had swallowed
I disgorge as they cry:
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “But why do I mourn for the dead of whom I am despoiled?
I mourn for myself and the way I am mocked.
The one thing was not enough shame for me; but I must be jeered at.
Those who have escaped me call me greedy and a glutton,
And with such words they irritate me, saying,
‘Why do you open up your large gullet?
Why do you thrust in your mouth any old thing in any old way,
O greedy and insatiable one?
Why do you rush for food, causing distress to your stomach?
For lo, having emptied you,
The Lord is risen.’

HADES: “But if they wish an answer, I am able to reply:
Who would not have been led astray
Seeing Him wrapped in the linen shroud and placed in the tomb?
Who would have been so dumb as not to know that He was dead,
When He was anointed with unguent of myrrh and aloe and brought to me?
Again, who would have said that He was not dead when they saw the stone where He was lying?
Who would have imagined such a thing, or who would ever have hoped to hear them say about Him,
The Lord is risen?

HADES: “None of the things they say about me are against me, for He voluntarily came against me;
At first I suffered; and finally I do not know what I suffered.
The sweet flower became for me euphorbia
And all my throat was irritated by the taste, and I disgorged those whom I had held.
No one had imagined or accomplished such a thing against me as He did; I ruled over kings and was in control of prophets and of those who cry out:
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “Lo, I, the master, am in chains, and I am a slave who ruled a short time ago;
I, the terrible, am caught in terror, and I am a laughingstock to all.
I am entirely naked for He has taken from me all my possessions;
He gave a command and suddenly all surrounded Him, as bees, a honeycomb.
And then, having securely bound me, He told them to mock me, and to strike my head,
And to bend my back, and crush my heart and cry,
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “It was night when I endured these things, but by dawn I beheld something else;
As the fiery assembly rushed in to greet and escort Him,
While fears from without and battles within held me,
I did not have the courage to look one way or the other, since all threatened me.
And so, hiding my face between my knees, I cried out, weeping,
‘Thou who hast broken down my gates and crushed the bars, move on, since I cry,
The Lord is risen.'”

But He, smiling at these words, said to those behind Him, “Follow me,”
And to those in front He said: “Precede me, since it is for this that you have come.”
Suddenly, silence and fear prevailed over the whole Creation,
For the Lord of Creation came forth from the tomb.
Before Him were all the prophets repeating what they had foretold and making known to all
That “This is the One who voluntarily came down to earth, and of His will departs from it.
The Lord is risen.”

In a loud voice Sophronias cried to Adam: “He is here
Whom you awaited up to the day of resurrection, as I prophesied to you.”
After him, Nahum announced the good news to the poor, saying,
“From the earth He has arisen, breathing on your face, He who frees from oppression.”
And Zacharias! with joy cries out, “Thou hast come, our God, with Thy saints.”
And David sang a song of good omen, “How like a mighty one, roused out of sleep
The Lord is risen.”

HADES: “While they slapped my face with prophecies, psalms, and hymns,
Women arose and prophesied, dancing in triumph over me;
And the first of them was the sister of Moses,
Leaping and shaking in her hands a drum which she had just brought;
And coming across my domain like another Red Sea, she joyfully beat the drum:
‘Let us praise our God, for He has been gloriously glorified, having demolished Hades,
The Lord is risen.’

HADES: “Ah, of what evils was that one night the mother, and of what horrors was one dawn the father!
The one produced them, the other outstripped them in putting a name to my suffering.
They call the Resurrection the day of my fall;
They make a high festival of the time of my destruction.
Woe is me, woe is me, what I have suffered!”
These things Hades said to me as he answered me; and he did not persuade me by words;
Because he was revealed by facts—after he was shown as naked and destitute,
The Lord is risen.

After this kind of talk for quite a time, when I found the guards of the tomb,
I was moved to hasten to question them, to finish up what I had said before.
Let no one of my friends consider that I am talking foolishly,
Or saying something out of season; I considered it necessary to do what I ought to do.
“Tell me, then, you most unreasonable soldiers, what was it that happened?
Who rolled away the stone and carried off the dead, and said after that,
The Lord is risen?”

But when they heard this, the men who formerly guarded the tomb of the Immortal
Answered, not conversing loudly with me, but explaining in flight:
“What do you see us doing, man, living in peace or fleeing?
From this, then, know that we were absolutely dumbfounded; it is not that we stole,
For not a one of us allowed drowsiness in his eyes, nor terror in his spirit;
But all were awake; all were constantly on guard, and we do not know how
The Lord is risen.”

Now what you say, guards of the tomb is not acceptable to me;
And I am not persuaded that you were entirely ignorant of the resurrection of Christ;
For you do everything in every way with safety in mind;
How could you not know what happened to the one guarded?
Knowing this, then, explain.
“No one is able to report to you accurately what you wish,” the guards said to me.
“No one of these in the tomb, not even the incorporeal one who said in the tomb:
The Lord is risen.

“Whatever we know, this we reveal to you; for if we were to keep silent now,
The stones would cry out and refute our hardness and our blindness;
For we do not know that very hour of the resurrection;
But we know what we have endured since that hour; just hold on and listen.
As we were watching over the tomb and taking care lest something happen, suddenly we perceive
Fiery hands which take away the stone from the tomb, and a voice cries out this:
The Lord is risen.

“By him the stone was rolled away, and all our force was weakened
And nothing was left for us by way of aid, no word, no thought,
For we were all dead men, we who guarded the dead,
And all our wisdom was consumed suddenly as what we beheld was accomplished.
For the shape like fire of the one who rolled the stone was manifest to us,
And on earth he showed spirit, as though angry at those who did not cry,
The Lord is risen.

“What you wish to learn in order that you may marvel is this: he was approachable by the women,
And to us wretched men he was not approachable, that fiery one.
He conversed with them; he threatened death to us.
Them he strengthened; and humbled us with fear, and overtaking us, he buried us.
To the women he was gay; with us he became as one rather haughty.
And he mortified us, but he nerved them to cry: ‘Fear not,
The Lord is risen.’

“When the women stood still, and wisely looked in the vault,
The incorporeal one spoke to them:
‘The One whom you seek is risen.
But if you do not believe and consider me as a phantom,
Follow me and behold the place where the Lord was lying.’
And when they went within, at that time we fled, and said this:
Fiery hands which take away the stone from the tomb, and a voice cries out this:
The Lord is risen.

If the servant has come and has shaken up the earth? what, then, happens now that
The Lord is risen?
“Do not now, man, enlist yourself among those fools,
And believe us when we falsely say that Christ was stolen away and did not arise;
It is gold which persuaded us to conceal the truth,
Gold which turns all the things they wish as they wish, for those who boast of it.
That is exactly why we were bought off, and taking the profit, we filled everyone full
Of the rumor of the theft, for we were paid not to say that in truth
The Lord is risen.”

So Hades first said these things to me, and such are the words the guards
Added besides, as a seal to those words which the insatiable one had babbled.
But I from the two reaped the harvest which I desired,
From the couple of liars I reaped the truth; and for this indeed I rejoiced.
It is what Samson said as a riddle for such times; I now understand:
From Hades who eats, and from the strong army has come forth a sweet pronouncement:
The Lord is risen.

Thou art without beginning and without end,
Creator, and God of truth,
Who hast caused death to Death and hast made man
immortal,
In the last hour, when Thou dost come to resurrect me,
For Thou wilt come, my Savior, not as now from the tomb, but from the firmament:
Then, seeing Thee, I rise up, O Lover of men, for loving Thee, I possess Thee.
Do not then condemn me, I pray, so that I may say,
“Not for my punishment, but to redeem me
The Lord is risen.”

St Romanos the Melodist