​There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come,
No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.

— Isaac Watts
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Psalm 23 is perhaps the most beloved and well known of all psalms. Martin Luther summarizes the content of this Psalm:

The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men
And be crucified and on the third day rise.
                                                                                                -- St. Luke 24:7

As the Church transitions from the forty penitential days of Lent to the Fifty Great Days of Easter, the word of the resurrection once again rings true: "Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!" Perhaps in no other sacred choral work do they ring more clearly or gloriously than in the Et resurrexit ​movement of Bach's Mass in B Minor. 

— Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676)
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On this Holy Saturday, the Faithful remember the connection between the incarnation (Christmas) and the cross (Good Friday). Christ cannot redeem what He has not assumed, as we see in the following exploration of two complimentary movements in The Mass in B Minor by J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Et incarnatus (“And was incarnate”) and Crucifixus (“And was crucified”).
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With the inclusion of the hymns “Now, My Tongue, the Mystery Telling” (Lutheran Service Book 630) and “Thee We Adore, O Hidden Savior” (LSB 640) in the 2006 hymnal of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, it would appear that St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) is gaining a foothold in his contribution to Lutheran sacramental piety. Still missing from our hymnic repertoire, however, is perhaps his finest contribution, “O Sacred Feast”:

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Confirmation Sermon, March 13, 1932
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On Sunday, April 8, 1945, in an abandoned schoolhouse in the village of Schönberg, the Lutheran pastor and prisoner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), celebrated the first Sunday after Easter (hereafter “Easter I”) with a short service of preaching, prayer, and praise. Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned since April 5, 1943, charged with collaboration in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. Hitler, whose army was reduced to young boys and old men, was handing out death sentences aplenty. On this solemn occasion, Bonhoeffer read from a devotional book known in German as the Losungen (“watchword”), which appointed Isaiah 53:3 as the Old Testament watchword for the day and I Peter 1:3 as the New Testament counterpart (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, pp. 527-529). The traditional Communion propers for this Sunday, especially the Introit and the Gospel Lesson, were certainly on his mind, if not included in his sermon. Inspired by these events, this issue of “Lifted Voice” will focus on musical settings of the aforementioned devotional readings and appointed propers for Easter I. 
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