We Are An Easter People

(This is from about a month ago, the day after Easter, 2022)

Today is Easter Monday, and we, as Church, celebrate Easter not for a day or a week, but for a full 50 days: forty from Easter Sunday to Ascension (rightly celebrated on a Thursday) and another ten to Pentecost. When you add to that the time of Lent, you realize that we spend 25% of the year in preparation for and in celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For we are an Easter people. I love Christmas, with its decorations, joyous celebrations, and happy children playing with their gifts. But had Christ been born, but not died for our sins, not resurrected in his glory – Christmas would have no special meaning. It is through the cross that Christ becomes the reparation for our sins, the one through whom we are redeemed.

Every day at Mass, the opening rites end with a short prayer called the Collect. The Collect does what it says: it collects our prayers together in a short prayer that is drawn from the feast being celebrated or the readings of the day. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, the Collect began: “O God, who on this day, through your only begotten son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity,”. . .

We conquer death through Christ, not in the sense that we will not die from this life, but in recognition that we will be united with Him in heaven. The Collect goes on to say “ grant, we pray, that we who keep the solemnity of the Lord's resurrection may, through the renewal brought by your spirit, rise up in the light of life through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.”

Our task, here in our lives in exile on earth, is to gain our return to our true home, the heavenly kingdom of our Father. May we always follow the exhortation given us by St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”