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Easter, which begins
this Season, is the greatest Feast of the year for Christ is risen! The alleluia,
which was omitted from the Mass since Septuagesima, returned at Vespers on
Holy Saturday, and is now heard after every Introit, Antiphon verse, and
Response. The Vidi Aquam replaces the Aspèrges, and the Regina Coeli
replaces the Angelus. The Paschal candle remains lit in the Sanctuary until
Ascension Thursday, and like the Christ Candle during the Twelve Days of
Christmas, we have a Paschal Candle
in our homes, too, until the Ascension (see the page on
Easter Sunday for more on the Paschal
Candle).
...and the Lenten fast is over!
During this Season, we are obliged to receive the Eucharist to fulfill the
Church precept that we receive the Eucharist at least once a year.
During Lent, most of us have already fulfilled the precept to go to Confession
at least once a year, but if we haven't, we can do that now.
During the Octave of Easter, we greet each other (and even answer our telephones)
with the triumphant "Christus resurrexit!" (Christ is risen!) to which comes
the response "Et apparuit Simoni, alleluia" (and appeared unto Simon, alleluia!).
This joyous greeting totally crystallizes the mood of this season. This
triumphant attitude is also shown by the replacing of
the Angelus with the Regina Coeli throughout
Paschaltide.
A note on terminology: The word "Easter" is actually a word rooted in the
name either of an alleged Teutonic goddess (Eostre) or, more probably, from
the name "Eostur" meaning the "season of rising" and indicating springtime.
It is only used in the English language. It came into use because the month
of April was known in Anglo-Saxon countries as easter-monadh, and
Eastur became an old Germanic word meaning springtime. Other languages
have different names for Easter -- "Pascha" (Latin and Greek), "Pasqua"
(Italian), "Pascua" (Spanish), "Paschen" (Dutch), Pasg (Welsh), etc. -- all
of which derives from the Hebrew word "Pesach" meaning "Passover." The point
is that the claim that "Easter is a pagan holiday" because of the word "Easter"
is ridiculous. The English word for it might have pagan origins deriving
from Eostre and/or the word for springtime, but the Solemnity is rooted in
the Old Testament Pesach which was fulfilled at the Crucifixion which gave
us the fruits of the Resurrection. In addition, all the names for the days
of the week are "pagan" in origin, too. Sunday is named for the Sun; Monday
for the Moon; Tuesday for god Tiu, Wednesday for Woden, Thursday for Thor,
Friday for Freya, and Saturday for Saturn, so anyone who balks at celebrating
"Easter" because of its "pagan origins" had better not refer to the days
of the week by their English names!
Reading
"The Mystery
of Paschal Time"
from Dom Gueranger's "The Liturgical Year"
Of all the seasons
of the liturgical year Eastertide is by far the richest in mystery. We might
even say that Easter is the summit of the Mystery of the sacred Liturgy.
The Christian who is happy enough to enter, with his whole mind and heart,
into the knowledge and love of the Paschal Mystery, has reached the very
centre of the supernatural life. Hence it is that the Church uses every effort
in order to effect this: what she has hitherto done was all intended as a
preparation for Easter. The holy longings of Advent, the sweet joys of Christmas,
the severe truths of Septuagesima, the contrition and penance of Lent, the
heartrending sight of the Passion-all were given us as preliminaries, as
paths, to the sublime and glorious Pasch, which is now ours.
And that we might be convinced of the supreme importance of this solemnity,
God willed that the Christian Easter and Pentecost should be prepared by
those of the Jewish Law-a thousand five hundred years of typical beauty
prefigured the reality: and that reality is ours!
During these days, then, we have brought before us the two great manifestations
of God's goodness towards mankind-the Pasch of Israel, and the Christian
Pasch, the Pentecost of Sinai, and the Pentecost of the Church. We shall
have occasion to show how the ancient figures were fulfilled in the realities
of the new Easter and Pentecost, and how the twilight of the Mosaic Law made
way for the full daylight of the Gospel; but we cannot resist the feeling
of holy reverence, at the bare thought that the solemnities we have now to
celebrate are more than three thousand years old, and that they are to be
renewed every year from this till the voice of the angel shall be heard
proclaiming: 'Time shall be no more!' The gates of eternity will then be
thrown open.
Eternity in heaven is the true Pasch: hence, our Pasch here on earth is the
feast of feasts, the solemnity of solemnities. The human race was dead; it
was the victim of that sentence, whereby it was condemned to lie mere dust
in the tomb; the gates of life were shut against it. But see! the Son of
God rises from his grave and takes possession of eternal life. Nor is he
the only one that is to die no more, for, as the Apostle teaches us, 'He
is the first-born from the dead.' The Church would, therefore, have us consider
ourselves as having already risen with our Jesus, and as having already taken
possession of eternal life. The holy Fathers bid us look on these fifty days
of Easter as the image of our eternal happiness. They are days devoted
exclusively to joy; every sort of sadness is forbidden; and the Church cannot
speak to her divine Spouse without joining to her words that glorious cry
of heaven, the Alleluia, wherewith, as the holy Liturgy says, the streets
and squares of the heavenly Jerusalem resound without ceasing. We have been
forbidden the use of this joyous word during the past nine weeks; it behoved
us to die with Christ-but now that we have risen together with him from the
tomb, and that we are resolved to die no more that death which kills the
soul and caused our Redeemer to die on the cross, we have a right to our
Alleluia.
The providence of God, who has established harmony between the visible world
and the supernatural work of grace, willed that the Resurrection of our Lord
should take place at that particular season of the year when even Nature
herself seems to rise from the grave. The meadows give forth their verdure,
the trees resume their foliage, the birds fill the air with their songs,
and the sun, the type of our triumphant Jesus, pours out his floods of light
on our earth made new by lovely spring. At Christmas the sun had little power,
and his stay with us was short; it harmonized with the humble birth of our
Emmanuel, who came among us in the midst of night, and shrouded in swaddling
clothes, but now he is 'as a giant that runs his way, and there is no one
that can hide himself from his heat.' Speaking, in the Canticle, to the faithful
soul, and inviting her to take her part in this new life which he is now
imparting to every creature, our Lord himself says: 'Arise, my dove, and
come! Winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared
in our land. The voice of the turtle is heard. The fig-tree hath put forth
her green figs. The vines, in flower, yield their sweet smell. Arise thou,
and come!'
In the preceding chapter we explained why our Saviour chose the Sunday for
his Resurrection, whereby he conquered death and proclaimed life to the world.
It was on this favoured day of the week that he had, four thousand years
previously, created the light, by selecting it now for the commencement of
the new life which he graciously imparts to man, he would show us that Easter
is the renewal of the entire creation. Not only is the anniversary of his
glorious Resurrection to be, henceforward, the greatest of days, but every
Sunday throughout the year is to be a sort of Easter, a holy and sacred day.
The Synagogue, by God's command, kept holy the Saturday or the Sabbath in
honour of God's resting after the six days of the creation; but the Church,
the Spouse, is commanded to honour the work of her Lord. She allows the Saturday
to pass-it is the day on which her Jesus rested in the sepulchre: but, now-that
she is illumined with the brightness of the Resurrection, she devotes to
the contemplation of his work the first day of the week; it is the day of
light, for on it he called forth material light (which was the first
manifestation of life upon chaos), and on the same, he that is the 'Brightness
of the Father,' and 'the Light of the world,' rose from the darkness of the
tomb.
Let, then, the week with its Sabbath pass by; what we Christians want is
the eighth day, the day that is beyond the measure of time, the day of eternity,
the day whose light is not intermittent or partial, but endless and unlimited.
Thus speak the holy Fathers, when explaining the substitution of the Sunday
for the Saturday. It was, indeed, right that man should keep, as the day
of his weekly and spiritual repose, that on which the Creator of the visible
world had taken his divine rest; but it was a commemoration of the material
creation only. The Eternal Word comes down in the world that he has created;
he comes with the rays of his divinity clouded beneath the humble veil of
our flesh; he comes to fulfil the figures of the first Covenant. Before
abrogating the Sabbath, he would observe it as he did every tittle of the
Law; he would spend it as the day of rest, after the work of his Passion,
in the silence of the sepulchre: but, early on the eighth day, he rises to
life, and the life is one of glory. 'Let us,' says the learned and pious
Abbot Rupert, 'leave the Jews to enjoy the ancient Sabbath, which is a memorial
of the visible creation. They know not how to love or desire or merit aught
but earthly things.... They would not recognize this world's creator as their
king, because he said: "Blessed are the poor!" and "Woe to the rich!" But
our Sabbath has been transferred from the seventh to the eighth day, and
the eighth is the first. And rightly was the seventh changed into the eighth,
because we Christians put our joy in a better work than the creation of the
world.... Let the lovers of the world keep a Sabbath for its creation: but
our joy is in the salvation of the world, for our life, yea and our rest,
is hidden with Christ in God.'
The mystery of the seventh followed by an eighth day, as the holy one, is
again brought before us by the number of weeks which form Eastertide. These
weeks are seven; they form a week of weeks, and their morrow is again a Sunday,
the glorious feast of Pentecost. These mysterious numbers-which God himself
fixed when he instituted the first Pentecost after the first Pasch-were adopted
by the Apostles when they regulated the Christian Easter, as we learn from
St. Hilary of Poitiers, St. Isidore, Amalarius, Rabanus Maurus and from all
the ancient interpreters of the mysteries of the holy Liturgy. 'If we multiply
seven by seven' says St. Hilary, 'we shall find that this holy season is
truly the Sabbath of sabbaths, but what completes it and raises it to the
plenitude of the Gospel, is the eighth day which follows, eighth and first
both together in itself. The Apostles have given so sacred an institution
to these seven weeks that, during them, no one should kneel, or mar by fasting
the spiritual joy of this long feast. The same institution has been extended
to each Sunday; for this day which follows the Saturday has become, by the
application of the progress of the Gospel the completion of the Saturday,
and the day of feast and joy.'
Thus, then, the whole season of Easter is marked with the mystery expressed
by each Sunday of the year. Sunday is to us the great day of our week, because
beautified with the splendour of our Lord's Resurrection of which the creation
of material light was but a type. We have already said that this institution
was prefigured in the Old Law, although the Jewish people were not in any
way aware of it. Their Pentecost fell on the fiftieth day after the Pasch;
it was the morrow of the seven weeks. Another figure of our Eastertide was
the year of Jubilee, which God bade Moses prescribe to his people. Each fiftieth
year the houses and lands that had been alienated during the preceding
-forty-nine returned to their original owners; and those Israelites who had
been compelled by poverty to sell themselves as slaves recovered their liberty.
This year, which was properly called the sabbatical year, was the sequel
of the preceding seven weeks of years, and was thus the image of our eighth
day, whereon the Son of Mary, by his Resurrection, redeemed us from the slavery
of the tomb, and restored us to the inheritance of our immortality.
The rites peculiar to Eastertide, in the present discipline of the Church,
are two: the unceasing repetition of the Alleluia, of which we have already
spoken, and the colour of the vestments used for its two great solemnities,
white for the first and red for the second. White is appropriate to the
Resurrection: it is the mystery of eternal light, which knows neither spot
nor shadow; it is the mystery that produces in a faithful soul the sentiment
of purity and joy. Pentecost, which gives us the Holy Spirit, the 'consuming
Fire,' is symbolized by the red vestments, which express the mystery of the
divine Paraclete coming down in the form of fiery tongues upon them that
were assembled in the Cenacle. With regard to the ancient usage of not kneeling
during Paschal Time, we have already said that there is a mere vestige of
it now left in the Latin Liturgy.
The feasts of the saints, which were interrupted during Holy Week, are likewise
excluded from the first eight days of Eastertide; but when these are ended,
we shall have them in rich abundance, as a bright constellation of stars
round the divine Sun of Justice, our Jesus. They will accompany us in our
celebration of his admirable Ascension; but such is the grandeur of the mystery
of Pentecost, that from the eve of that day they will be again interrupted
until the expiration of Paschal Time.
The rites of the primitive Church with reference to the Neophytes, who were
regenerated by baptism on the night of Easter, are extremely interesting
and instructive. But as they are peculiar to the two octaves of Easter and
Pentecost, we will explain them when they are brought before us by the Liturgy
of those days.
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