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Dear
Sisters and Brothers in the Lord:
ALLELUIA,
HE HAS RISEN!
CHRIST HAS
RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!
Over this weekend, shops will pack away unsold Easter
cards, candy, eggs and other merchandise. Easter Sunday is passed and
Easter is over for another year.
But for the
Church it is quite a different matter. Easter Sunday marks the
beginning of fifty days of celebration – the season of Easter. The
Roman document on the liturgical year says that these fifty days “are
celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day or better as one great
Sunday.”
The Easter
season is the oldest season of the liturgical year. By the end of the
second century two annual festivals have developed in the Church –
Pascha and Pentecost. The Pascha feast corresponds to
our paschal Triduum. Pentecost (“fifty days”) originated in a
Jewish festival of thanksgiving for the harvest and the gift of the law
on Sinai. For the Christian community it became a fifty-day celebration
of the resurrection. During Pentecost kneeling and fasting were not
permitted as both were considered signs of penance.
For the early
Christians, the whole fifty-day period was a celebration of the paschal
mystery in its entirety. The resurrection, ascension, outpouring of the
Holy Spirit and the founding of the Church were understood as different
facets of the one mystery. It was only later that the community came to
mark the coming of the Spirit on the fiftieth day of the season.
Celebrating the ascension on the fortieth day developed in Antioch
around 380 AD. So the
unity of the fifty days was broken as the resurrection, the ascension
and Pentecost began to be celebrated separately. Easter and Pentecost
became two separate days rather than two names for the same fifty-day
period. Only in recent years has the unity of the liturgical rites been
re-established. The period after Easter can seem a letdown after the
exuberance of the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. It is difficult in
today’s world to sustain a celebration over seven whole weeks.
Perhaps the
best way to understand the Easter season is to consider it as an
overflow of the Vigil and a time for unfolding the Easter mysteries.
During the fifty days the Church continues to instruct the newly
initiated about the faith which they have embraced. For these people,
it is the period of mystagogy when the “spiritual and heavenly
mysteries of the Church are explained”. At the same time all members of
the community are called to reflect on the meaning of their own baptism
and to celebrate the conversion that has happened during Lent. We
celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death and we need to celebrate
that long and well.
have a great fifty days!
Let’s
give our minds and hearts to the Lord this Easter Season.
Father
Joe |
