Christ IS Risen: A Sunday Reminder That Easter Is More Than Just Easter Sunday
On this Sunday after Easter, here's a reminder that Easter is more than just Easter Sunday. For this we share our post from last year...
It's eight days from Easter. In the traditonal calendar, today is designated "Low Sunday." Such designation provides us with a contrast to the incomparable glory of Easter Sunday. In the newfangled calendar it's Divine Mercy Sunday, a creation of Pope St. John Paul II.
Whichever you observe today, we're all well on our way into the Easter Season, the Resurrection having left Lent in its wake. And whatever our state of mind and spirit, it behooves us to keep Easter fresh throughout the coming days.
As we tried to do during the Octave of Easter at work, so we shall continue our efforts on this glorious Sunday in the Easter Season. We might start with simply spending a few minutes reflecting on the Resurrection. What does it mean both to all of us and to each of us as individuals? If the answer seems too obvious, it might serve us to dig a little deeper.
In a certain sense it's easier to observe Lent than it is Easter. We know what to do (or should) during Lent: increase our prayers, almsgiving, and fasting. But what about the Easter Season. Should it just be a time when we slip back to the way things were before Lent began?
Of course, it shouldn't. We want to hold tightly on to any little bit of progress we may have made in our spiritual life, not let it dissipate. More than just holding on to what we've got, we can begin our lives anew with our Risen Lord. He showed us the way to eternal life when He rose from the dead. Shouldn't this cause us not only to rejoice, but to redouble our efforts to both follow His Commandments, and increase our love for Him from one day to the next?
With that in mind, here's something give us some guidance as well as an extra boost to whatever efforts we've made on our own:
“The
Christian life consists in actions which reflect the spirit of Christ,
nay, more, in actions that incarnate, as it were, the spirit of Christ.
Jesus must, by our union with Him, by our elimination of self in favor
of Him, be permitted to perpetuate, in some measure, His life, in us. If
we are to fulfil the designs of God in our regard, we must allow God to
discern some dim outline of the features of His Divine Son in the
physiognomy of our soul. It must be the aim of the true Christian to
make applicable to himself the words of Saint Paul: ‘I live, now not I,
but Christ liveth in me.’
“The great Apostle has
invented a completely new vocabulary to crystallize this truth. He
speaks of being buried with Christ, of suffering with Christ, of rising
with Christ, of being glorified with Christ, and so on. For the Apostle,
the Passion, Death, and Resurrection were not events anchored in the
sea of time, but events perpetually re-enacted in the Mystical Body. To
the extent that the life of the first Adam is destroyed in the member of
Christ, that is, to the extent that the life of the flesh and its
concupiscences has been subjugated in him, the life of grace derived
from Christ has freedom to develop: according as it does, the Christian
in his life becomes identified with Christ and re-lives the life of
Jesus. The Saints understood things thus. They did not content
themselves with admiring the life of the Savior, they aimed at living it
themselves. At times God deigns to give outward proofs of the actuality
of this mystery as when He traced the marks of the Passion on the body
of Saint Francis of Assisi. We must live the mysteries of Christ’s life,
in the due order of these mysteries. All this living should subserve in
us, and lead up to, the Resurrection.” (Archbishop James Leen, C.S.Sp.)
Thank you Archbishop Leen. You have taught us that Easter is not an event that only took place two millennia ago. Easter is present with us now, in our individual lives. It's graces, flowing so freely during this Easter Season, will allow us to grow closer to Christ, even as close as our holy saints.
And so we don't say Christ was risen. We proclaim...
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