Christ is risen!

In the Evening Tears, but Joy in the Morning, Resurrection, Easter

Since the most ancient times the Church has underlined her great feasts by not restricting them to a single day but giving them a whole octave of days. The celebration resounds for a whole week and is renewed on the eighth day. The seven days, completed by the eighth, symbolize the totality of time and its transcendence into eternity. The week-long feast encompasses a basic unit of human life and thus stands as a foretaste of the freedom of eternal life, a sign of hope and peace in the midst of earthly days of toil. The Church has endeavored to help us experience Easter as the feast of feasts, as the basic reason for all celebration and all joy, by causing the Easter octave to last for seven times seven days. So the feast of Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter is not in fact an entirely new feast; it rounds off the circle of the seven times seven days which signify our breaking out of subservience to time into the boundless joy of the children of God, a joy uninterrupted by any striking of the hour.

These fifty days of joy are the answer to the forty days of tribulation and preparation by which the Church leads up to Easter. In Old Testament numerology, forty signified the age of the world: it is an intensification of four, which recalls the four corners of the earth and hence the brokenness, the finite, incomplete, and toilsome nature of all earthly existence. The forty prepare for the fifty, the fragmentary for the complete; and the Lord's Resurrection is at the axis of both. Even through this temporal arrangement the Church has provided a profound psychological interpretation of what Easter means and of how we can and should celebrate it. For all these things, far from being liturgical games, are translations of the mystery in terms of our life; they are where the unique and once-and-for-all Event meets life in its daily newness.

I would like to elaborate on this by referring to another psalm which plays a part in the liturgy of Holy Week. In Psalm 30 the believer speaks with gratitude of his experience of God: "His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning." For Christians these words, read on Holy Saturday, gained an entirely new significance. In the evening tears, but joy in the morning: they saw the evening of Good Friday, the weeping Mother with her dead Son in her lap. But as an answer to this evening picture, in the dusk of history, there comes the morning picture: "The Lord is risen and is going before you into Galilee."

The other words are interpreted similarly: his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. The somber moment of the Cross gives way to everlasting life; the moment yields to eternity. The forty days are followed by the fifty, the fragmented by the whole, the momentary by the everlasting and indestructible, the tears of the evening scene by the morning of full life.

Those who read Holy Scripture in a reflective spirit found this experience in Paul, translated into the profession of Christian hope: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom 8:18). The center of gravity of existence has shifted as a result of this certainty: now it lies at the morning of life, which means that it takes away the oppressiveness and the pressure of the moment and dissolves the tears of evening by the power of a grace which lasts for ever. This is precisely what Easter faith is designed to give us: the ability to look across from the evening to the morning, from the part to the whole, and thus to journey toward the joy of the redeemed which springs from that morning of the third day which first heard the message: Christ is risen!

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
http://www.cin.org/easter3.html

Catholic Church prepares for tens of thousands of U.S. converts

Washington D.C., Apr 1, 2009 / 04:09 am (CNA).- Tens of thousands of new Catholics are expected to join the Catholic Church in the U.S. in 2009, with many doing so at the Easter Vigil liturgies on April 11.Converts to Catholicism are known as catechumens if they have never been baptized and as candidates if they have received baptism in another Christian community and now seek full communion with the Catholic Church.

The Archdiocese of Atlanta, where Catholics have traditionally been a minority, estimates that 513 catechumens and 2,195 candidates will enter the Catholic Church in 2009, about 1,800 doing so at Easter. The figures do not include infant baptisms.

Father Theodore Book, director of the Office of Divine Worship for the Atlanta Archdiocese, said the archdiocese has been “blessed with an authentic dynamism” during recent years. He cited the archdiocese’s annual Eucharistic Congress, saying it draws nearly 30,000 participants.

“One of the many blessings that we have received from the Lord is the large number of individuals entering the Church,” he said.

The Archdiocese of Seattle will reportedly welcome 736 catechumens and 506 candidates, while the Diocese of San Diego will baptize 305 and receive into communion 920 other baptized Christians.

The mostly rural Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama reportedly will have 445 new converts. The diocese’s Cathedral of St. Paul could not hold them and their families for the Rite of Election, which had to be held in three separate ceremonies.

At St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, California resident Heidi Sierras will represent North America at the Easter Vigil, where she will be baptized by Pope Benedict XVI.

The 2008 Official Catholic Directory listed 49,415 adult baptisms and 87,363 people received into full communion in 2007.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15551

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike, receive your reward.
Rich and poor, rejoice together!

Conscientious and lazy, celebrate the day!
You who have kept the fast, and you who have not,
rejoice, this day, for the table is bountifully spread!

Feast royally, for the calf is fatted.
Let no one go away hungry.
Partake, all, of the banquet of faith.
Enjoy the bounty of the Lord's goodness!

Let no one grieve being poor,
for the universal reign has been revealed.

Let no one lament persistent failings,
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death,
for the death of our Saviour has set us free.

from The Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom via The Ironic Catholic

Easter in Rome Unabridged

Easter in Rome: The Secret Homilies of the Successor of Peter
by Sandro Magister

They’re secret, except for those who were able to listen to them in person, while Benedict XVI was pronouncing them. In the "urbi et orbi" message, too, the pope presented much more than a list of countries at war. Here are the complete texts.

Monastic Musings: New Members of the Family (Easter Prayer of the Church)

From Monastic Musings: New Members of the Family
(Easter Prayer of the Church):

Today's prayer begins:

Father, you give your Church constant growth
by adding new members to your family.

This immediately calls to mind the thousands of people around the world who were baptized, received into full communion, or confirmed at the Easter Vigil. But notice the language of the prayer and the dynamic that it points out.

The first line is universal: it is the Church that receives constant growth. But the second line is very personal: new members are added, one by one, not to an institution or an organization, but to God's own family. Each of these people heard God's call in some way: but then met the people of God in a local parish, and studied, prayed and searched alongside those people. At the Easter Vigil, these new members were touched and prayed over and sealed into the local family of the Church. The message is clear: salvation is not about the individual and Christ, it is about the whole family that is gathered around Christ.

CL Easter Poster 2007

Love Stronger than Death

This is the joy of the Easter Vigil: we are free. In the resurrection of Jesus, love has been shown to be stronger than death, stronger than evil. Love made Christ descend, and love is also the power by which he ascends. The power by which he brings us with him. In union with his love, borne aloft on the wings of love, as persons of love, let us descend with him into the world’s darkness, knowing that in this way we will also rise up with him. On this night, then, let us pray: Lord, show us that love is stronger than hatred, that love is stronger than death. Descend into the darkness and the abyss of our modern age, and take by the hand those who await you. Bring them to the light! In my own dark nights, be with me to bring me forth! Help me, help all of us, to descend with you into the darkness of all those people who are still waiting for you, who out of the depths cry unto you! Help us to bring them your light! Help us to say the “yes” of love, the love that makes us descend with you and, in so doing, also to rise with you. Alleluia. Amen!

Pope Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil Homily

PHOTO: Reuters/Giampiero Sposito

idle speculations: Resurrexit

From idle speculations: Resurrexit

In the Easter troparion of the Byzantine liturgy: "Christ is risen from the dead, by his death he has vanquished death, and to those who were in their tombs he has given life."

Christ is flanked by two groups of personages: they are the Just of the Old Covenant, prominent among whom are the figures of King David (with the crown), Moses, and Saint John the Baptist. In the persons of Adam and Eve, rising from their tombs, humanity is won and redeemed.