“Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”

On this Easter Monday, as we hear the account of the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, in which Our Lord lays out for his apostles the “things concerning himself” in the Old Testament, some of the antiphons at Lauds seem especially striking. The five psalm antiphons at Lauds, on a normal weekday, typically are an excerpted line or two from the psalm or Old Testament canticle in question. So, for example, on a typical Monday throughout the year, the psalms and antiphons at Lauds would look like this

The author of Hebrews explains the “regulations for worship” in the “first covenant.” He makes reference to the tabernacle that God commanded the Israelites to build (Ex 26-31). It was a place of beauty, with the Most Holy Place being where the Presence of God dwelt. It was a place unlike anything else on earth: precious metals, beautiful fabric, the “bread of the Presence,” vested priests, and incense.

Tell us, O all ye witnesses of the resurrection, how you had lost all hope, but then he came to you and revived you, and you began to believe the unbelievable; you started to hope the unimaginable; you dared to trust the impossible, that Christ who was dead had—could it be?—actually risen from the dead, as he had said he would. For our hearts burn within us this day.