“Now the Green Blade Riseth” may well be my favorite Easter Carol. The original meaning of the word “carol” was “a joyful song.” This is a wonderful rendition by two monks—Isaiah and Cyprian—from The New Camaldoli Hermitage down the road from Big Sur where I have gone on retreats.

Here’s wishing you and your loved ones a blessed, joy-filled Easter. ~ Dan
P.S. Be sure to scroll down and treat yourself to Brandi Carlile’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Shine.” It seems like that’s a good Easter aspiration and practice.

Now The Green Blade Rises

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

By John M. C. Crum (1872-1958).
First published in the Oxford Book of Carols, 1928.

New Camaldoli Hermitage is a rural Camaldolese Benedictine hermitage in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Big Sur, California, in the United States. The Camaldolese branch of the Benedictine family was founded by St. Romuald in the late 10th century.

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