“O night brighter than the day!
O night more luminous than the sun!
O night whiter than the snow, more brilliant than our stars, more delicious than paradise!
O night freed from darkness!
O night which pushes off sleep!
O night that incites us to watch with the angels!
O night, terror of demons, night awaited all year, nuptial night of the Church, mother of those whom Baptism has just illuminated and who have despoiled the sleeping demon; night on which the Heir leads the heirs to their inheritance!”
Paschal hymn

Saint ASTÈRE (350-410)
Bishop of Amasee

“The “Capital Z” was the black letter, illuminated with floral and animal motifs, which, from Maundy Thursday to Easter, decorated the first letter of the first word of the first antiphon of the first nocturn of the office of Matins of Maundy Thursday which we chanted in fact on Holy Wednesday evening and which, like all the offices of Holy Week, was well named Darkness because they were sung in the middle of darkness hardly broken by a few gleams of light, and because they were stamped with that sort of tranquil gravity proper to funeral wakes: the great Pan is dead, Christ will die and rise again… I still remember this first antiphon and — as well as nearly all the Gregorian repertoire—I would still know how to sing it by heart, in its Eighth Mode: “Zelus domus tuae comedit me, et opprobria exprobrantium tibi ceciderunt super me.” (The zeal of your house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who persecute you have fallen upon me.). It seemed to me that this Great black ornamented Z scratched my soul with its griffon’s claw, streaked my interior heaven with a type of dark lightning which would, with its black light, fill Holy Week and my entire life with its illuminated night (in fact, my memory still bears this imprint and my life is forever marked by it).”

Jean-Marie PAUPERT (1927-2010)
Essayist and novelist