Pipasaya Niwunada Lyrics by Rev Fr Shiran Chamaka

Was your thirst ever quenched?
Did you ever find your peace?
By slaughtering the innocent,
did you win your victory?

That day at Calvary,
what flowed from your body
was our blood, mankind, it was our blood
and even today, from your sacred body,
the blood that flows is that same blood
our blood, mankind, it was our blood
though he rose again, why are we still dead?
though he rose again, why are we still dead?

Was your thirst ever quenched?
Did you ever find your peace?
By slaughtering the innocent,
did you win your victory?

Say the thing you want to say,
without taking lives as the price
a victory won atop a heap of corpses
is no victory, it is a curse
the ones we destroyed were only ourselves
the ones we destroyed were only ourselves

Was your thirst ever quenched?
Did you ever find your peace?
By slaughtering the innocent,
did you win your victory?

This is a prophetic, anti-violence hymn, and it is one of the most searching songs in the collection. Rather than simply praising God, it turns to confront humanity, and its refrain is a set of piercing questions aimed at everyone who has ever justified killing: “Was your thirst ever quenched? Did you find your peace? By slaughtering the innocent, did you win your victory?” The questions expect the answer “no.”

Its central image ties every act of violence back to the crucifixion. At Calvary, the song says, “what flowed from your body was our blood, mankind,” identifying Christ, the innocent one killed, with all the innocent who are killed. And it insists this is not ancient history, “even today, from your sacred body, the blood that flows is that same blood.” Then comes the haunting line that exposes the futility of it all: “though he rose again, why are we still dead?” The resurrection offered life, yet humanity keeps choosing death.

The final verse states the moral plainly. “Say the thing you want to say, without taking lives as the price,” and “a victory won atop a heap of corpses is no victory, it is a curse.” The last line is the deepest wound of all: “the ones we destroyed were only ourselves.” What the listener is left with is not comfort but conviction, a hymn that reads the cross as God’s verdict against all killing, and calls a violent world to see that in murdering the innocent it only crucifies Christ, and itself, again.