Now lives the Lamb of God

Now lives the Lamb of God. David Mowbray* (1938- ). Written for Easter 1981 at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, when Mowbray was rector, this is a metrical paraphrase of ‘The Easter Anthems’. The chain of Scripture verses from 1 Corinthians 5 and 15 and Romans 6, as originally arranged in 1549 by Thomas Cranmer (‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast’), is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer to be ‘sung or said’ on Easter Day as a morning canticle instead of the Venite (Psalm 95). Recent alternative liturgies incorporate it at various points. The author wrote, ‘…our people have forgotten how to chant, so I had to write a hymn! Verse 4 strikes out in a...