During Lent, we silence the Alleluia. For forty days, the word disappears from our liturgy. Then Easter explodes with it: Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! We sing it over and over because death is defeated, because Christ is risen, because resurrection changes everything.
But what happens after Easter Sunday? How do we keep singing Alleluia in our ordinary lives, when resurrection feels distant and Monday morning feels very present? We write our own Alleluia song. We compose it from the raw material of our actual existence. Here’s how.
Step One: Find Your Alleluias in the Mess
Your Alleluia song begins with noticing. Teresa of Ávila found Alleluia in terrible convent food, difficult nuns, and chronic illness. She praised God not because everything was wonderful, but because God was present in everything, even the unwonderful parts.
Start where you are. Look at your actual life right now. Where can you see God’s fingerprints, even faintly?
Try this exercise: Set a timer for five minutes. Write down ten Alleluias from your past week. They can be tiny:
- My child laughed
- I didn’t yell when I wanted to
- The sun came out
- I finished a project I’d been avoiding
- A friend texted at exactly the right moment
- I felt peace during prayer, even briefly
- I chose forgiveness over resentment
These are real-life glimpses of grace. Each one is a note in your Alleluia song.
Step Two: Write the Verses You’d Rather Skip
A genuine Alleluia song includes the hard verses; i.e., the parts of your story you wish you could delete. The psalmist understood this. Read Psalm 88; it ends with: “Darkness is my closest friend.” No resolution. No happy ending. Yet it’s still Scripture, still prayer, still somehow Alleluia.
John of the Cross wrote his most beautiful poetry during imprisonment. Locked in a tiny cell by his own religious brothers, he composed The Spiritual Canticle, verses overflowing with love, longing, and mystical joy. His Alleluia didn’t wait for freedom. It rose from captivity.
Try this: Write one difficult truth from your life. Don’t analyse it. Just state it:
- “I’m lonely.”
- “My marriage is struggling.”
- “I’m afraid I’m failing as a parent.”
Now add this line: “And yet…”
- “I’m lonely and yet I felt God’s presence in silence this morning.”
- “My marriage is struggling and yet we’re still choosing to try.”
- “I’m afraid I’m failing as a parent and yet my children still trust me.”
The “and yet” refuses to let difficulty have the final word. That refusal is Alleluia.
Step Three: Identify Your Refrain
Every song needs a refrain; that is, the line you return to, the anchor that holds when everything else shifts. For Teresa, it was “God alone suffices.” Three words that grounded her through twenty years of founding convents, managing crises, and dealing with opposition. When everything else failed, that truth remained: God is enough.
What is your refrain? What truth can you return to when you are lost, when you are doubting, when you can’t feel anything remotely like Alleluia?
Some possibilities:
- “I am loved.”
- “God is near the broken-hearted.”
- “Resurrection comes.”
Choose something short, something true even when you can’t feel its truth. This becomes your Alleluia refrain, the note you can always find when you have lost the melody.
Step Four: Sing It Imperfectly
Your Alleluia song doesn’t have to be beautiful by any external standard. It just has to be yours. Thérèse of Lisieux, while known as the “Little Flower,” wasn’t exactly the “Nightingale of Lisieux.” The other nuns complained about her off-key singing. However, she sang anyway, joyfully, terribly, wholeheartedly. She understood that God doesn’t judge our worship by professional standards. He delights in authenticity.
Your Alleluia song might be:
- A journal entry
- A prayer you repeat while washing dishes, or while commuting
- Showing up to pray even when it feels pointless
The form doesn’t matter. The heart does.
Try this: Choose one way you will “sing” your Alleluia this week. Make it concrete, make it doable, make it yours. Not something you think you should do but something that actually connects your heart to God’s heart.
Step Five: Let Others Join the Chorus
Your Alleluia song is personal, but it’s not private. Eventually, you’re meant to share it. Not by posting inspirational quotes on social media (though that’s fine if it’s genuine) but by letting people see you choosing joy in the mess, choosing gratitude in the struggle, choosing to keep showing up even when faith feels fragile.
When someone asks, “How are you?” and you answer honestly, “I’m struggling, but I’m still here. I’m still finding things to be grateful for,” you are inviting them into your Alleluia song. You are teaching them the melody by living it. When you serve someone even though you are tired, when you forgive even though you are hurting, when you keep praying even though heaven feels silent, your life becomes the song. Others hear it and remember their own capacity for Alleluia.
Your Alleluia song need not sound like anyone else’s. God delights in the unique music of each soul. Teresa sang hers through convent reform and chronic pain. John sang his from a prison cell. Thérèse sang hers in a cloistered convent doing small tasks with great love. You will sing yours in your kitchen, your office, your commute, your quiet moments, your chaotic days. The risen Christ meets you there, in the ordinariness, in the struggle, in the fleeting joys, and says, “Sing. However you can. Whatever you have. Just sing.”
Here is your invitation: Write your Alleluia song this week. Not perfectly. Not beautifully by anyone else’s standard. Just truthfully. Find ten small graces. Name one hard truth and its “and yet.” Choose your refrain. Pick one imperfect way to sing it. Invite someone else to hear it.
And then keep singing — through Easter, through ordinary time, through whatever comes. Keep singing until your whole life becomes the song, until Alleluia isn’t just what you say but who you are.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. The song has already begun.