Currents News Staff
Easter is a celebration of hope triumphing in the face of despair. This year, it’s also an opportunity to grow in faith during a spiritually challenging time.
That’s what inspired Father Mark Baumgarten of the Archdiocese of Perth in Western Australia, to write the song “Easter Sunday Morning.”
The musician-turned-priest says it was during the first series of lockdowns that he noticed the connection between the challenges of the pandemic and the story of Easter.
“It was just during Holy Week and I was starting to be struck by the similarities between us being stuck behind closed doors in a sense, and with some of the, I guess you could say, bad headlines of recent years,” Father Mark said. “And we’ve come to a bit of a pounding in some ways, that there are some parallels with the Apostles after the Crucifixion when they’re kind of behind locked doors with their heads hung low.”
Some of the lyrics include: “It’s Easter Sunday morning but the sun has yet to rise. If the Lord is up to something, he’s tremendously disguised.”
The song conveys the sense of worry and confusion shared around the world during the early stages of the pandemic, only to suggest that hope is waiting just over the horizon.
For Fr. Mark, music is more than storytelling. It’s a way to capture life’s powerful moments.
“If there’s an event or something going on in my life that’s fairly prominent, I’ll think ‘There’s a song in this’ and I’ll try to capture it down,” he said. “A little bit like how you’d take a photo or journal to capture a memory or an emotion, that songwriting became something a bit like that for me.”
The lyrics continue with: “There’s light on the horizon, the atmosphere is clean on Easter Sunday morning.
It can be difficult to articulate what it was like living through the lockdowns. It’s like an experience that may only be able to be expressed through music.
“We are body and soul and so those things that stir our bodies and our minds and our souls—music is a bit of an intersection of that,” Father Mark said. “Where you can have both lyrics as well as sometimes mysterious properties that the musical melodies and the chords can have on us.”
“Easter Sunday Morning” is the first single from Fr. Mark’s upcoming album. It’s also a song to console and uplift those facing challenges this Easter season.