Preparing for Easter Now

 

Easter is a little more than a month away.  For some, a month may seem like a long time, and it is when you consider that a year is made up of twelve months.  But, it is also a relatively short amount of time.  Every day brings us closer to the holiest time of our Church Year – Holy Week, the Paschal Triduum, and the Easter season.  We would do well to prepare now for what lies ahead.

For our catechumens, who became Elect on the First Sunday of Lent, this is a time of intense preparation for receiving their sacraments at the Easter Vigil.  Our students preparing to receive their First Communion went to their first Confessions this week.  Yes, for those who are preparing to receive sacraments for the first time, this is a very exciting time.  For those of us who are cradle Catholics, or who have been Catholic for years, however, we might find ourselves slipping into the doldrums of Lent – slogging through these weeks of prayer, fasting, and abstinence to arrive at the final “reward” of lifted restrictions that Easter brings.  We may be eager for Easter, but for entirely different reasons.

How can we prepare for Easter now?  Lent is, after all, the season that the Church gives us to prepare ourselves – minds, bodies, and souls – for Easter itself and the season that follows.  Here are a few suggestions:

•        Go to Stations of the Cross.  If you aren’t comfortable going in-person, several parishes in the diocese are livestreaming them, or you can pray them privately at home.
•          Go to Confession.  Confession times at St. Ambrose are 3:00 to 5:00 pm on Wednesdays, 3:00 to 4:40 pm on Saturdays, or Fridays during Stations of the Cross (approximately 6:30 to 7:00 pm).
•          Take some extra time to pray each day.
•          Make an extra sacrifice – fast or abstain on a day other than Friday.
•          Give to the CRS Rice Bowl – either through a Rice Bowl throughout Lent, or make a one-time donation during Holy Week.

Whatever you do in these weeks of Lent, prepare your heart to receive the risen Jesus at Easter and to rejoice fully in the ultimate sacrifice he made for us through his death on the cross.

Aftershocks of Scripture

Happy, Blessed Easter!  Keep saying it, because the Easter season lasts all the way until June, and as Catholics, we are an Easter people.

I was struck by a thought as I listened to our Easter Triduum scripture readings this year, and I wonder how many others had the same thought.  I had always registered the verse, “There was a great earthquake” at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, but this year, that verse stood out to me.  Yes, it is due to our recent events here in Utah (and even more so with the aftershocks in the last few days), but it also brings to mind a reality of what scripture is meant to do for us.

God speaks to us through scripture.  Hopefully, He moves us through His Word.  In the practice of Lectio Divina, we are encouraged to spend time in silence, contemplating the passage we have read and/or heard.  We are encouraged to listen for what God is saying to us in our current circumstances through the passage.  We then reflect on why He is saying this to us here and now, and we respond to Him in prayer.

Prayer is a dialogue.  It can’t just be us talking all the time.  If it is, how would we know when God responds to our prayers?  This year, the earthquake verse shook me out of my routine (pun intended).  Just as we continue to experience aftershocks from our recent quake, allow God to move you with the aftershocks of His Word.

Easter Joy

My reflection on this Easter Day is about my conversation with a man who happened to be a war veteran in Vietnam.

One day, I received an email from one of our parishioners, who requested spiritual guidance.  He asked me if I could help him in his war trauma.  He has been struggling with his life and with his faith for a long time now; he hasn’t shared his dark past with anyone and it has been eating him up.  He felt that our regular weekly hours of confessions would not allow him to confess all his sins, because he had sinned greatly and seeks desperately for guidance.  It has been over 50 years since his last confession.  After he enumerated all his sins, we both took a deep breath and I told him:  If only God had a voice right now, He would wish to tell you; “Finally you are here, welcome back home.”  When he heard that, he wept bitterly and I could not talk anymore.  I had to wait for him to calm down so that I could continue.  After our long and meaningful conversation, I asked him:  “Why did you weep?”  He told me:  “Father, I just couldn’t imagine how God can still forgive me with all the sins I committed.  I just felt I am loved deeply, a very special way that I could not understand.”  He hugged me tight, eyes filled with tears.  He thanked me and left with a great smile on his face.  Since then, he started going to church every Sunday and prays together with his family.

Every war veteran carries with them the scars of trauma.  Men who are emotionally wounded are not good at expressing their vulnerability because of shame or fear of being branded as weak or effeminate.  This parishioner took over 50 long years before having the courage to confront and speak about his past.

The story also reminds me of Jesus’ parable or the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).  This story is quite familiar to us all, but having a conversation with this parishioner, created in me a new and profound experience.  This parable does not focus on the immensity of sin but on God’s boundless mercy for us.  Seeing his joyful eyes reminded me how happy heaven is for his return.  “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10).  It is the boundless mercy of God that heals this broken and troubled man!

Every Easter is a celebration of life.  Life cannot be fully celebrated without God.  The man in my story experienced new life and new light after over 50 years of darkness.  I’m sure wherever he may be at this point in his life, he is now enjoying a peaceful and love-filled life with God and his family.

May you and your loved ones experience that genuine kind of Easter Joy!

Easter Raised an Octave

An excerpt from an article by Peter Leithart on the Octave of Easter:

....Peter and the Beloved Disciple see the grave clothes neatly arranged, like a priest’s after the day of atonement. They enter the tomb, but neither speaks to or of Jesus until he joins them later for a seaside breakfast. Throughout John’s resurrection story, the leading disciples remain utterly, ambiguously silent. Even after they hear Mary’s “I have seen the Lord,” the disciples stay locked in a room, hiding from theJews. All the disciples, not just Thomas, struggle to believe news too glad to be true.

What makes Thomas unique is not his sluggishness but the fact that he doesn’t see Jesus on Easter, the first eighth day. When Jesus breathes fresh Pentecostal Spirit into the disciples (making them new Adams), sends them to continue his mission, and gives them authority to forgive sins, Thomas isn’t there.

Thomas listens with sarcastic skepticism. He wants the others to produce Jesus so he can touch the nail prints and handle the scar in Jesus’s side where the rib was removed to form the new Eve. It’s an inauspicious beginning to the apostolic mission: Their first evangelistic contact is one of the twelve, and they can’t even convince him.

When he appears on the eighth day, Jesus offers himself to Thomas’s inspection. John says in his first letter that the apostles “handled” the word of life, but the Gospel doesn’t tell us if Thomas took Jesus up on his offer. John doesn’t record any Caravaggio-esque finger probe. Jesus’s presence convinces, and Thomas becomes a son of God not by the will of flesh or man but by an utterance from the risen Word.

Criticize Thomas if you must, but he confesses Jesus before Peter or John does. Mary sees “the Lord,” and the ten apostles tell Thomas they “saw the Lord.” Thomas sees Jesus’s wounds and worships, for the wounds prove that Jesus is “my Lord and my God,” the same Yahweh-Elohim who planted a garden for the first man. It’s the climactic confession of John’s Gospel; canonically, it’s also the high point of the fourfold Gospel. Thomas’s confession is the confession of Mary and the apostles, raised an octave. . . .

The Tree of Life

From a sermon by Saint Theodore the Studite

The precious and life-giving cross of Christ

How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return.

  This was the tree on which Christ, like a king on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in his hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature. A tree once caused our death, but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality, that shame should become glory! Well might the holy Apostle exclaim: Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world! The supreme wisdom that flowered on the cross has shown the folly of worldly wisdom’s pride. The knowledge of all good, which is the fruit of the cross, has cut away the shoots of wickedness.

The Triduum

The Triduum is an excellent example that the law of belief and doctrine is founded upon the law of prayer and worship (lex orandi, lex credendi). Let me explain. The Catholic Church teaches that the services of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Saturday's Easter Vigil are not to be considered as three different Masses but rather as one Mass.

Note that, in honor of ancient Israel where a day begins and ends at sunset, we start the Mass before sunset on Thursday.

Thursday's service includes the foot-washing ceremony, signifying the basis of leadership within the Church, and concludes with Eucharistic adoration in remembrance of our Lord's prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.

On Friday, we remember the actual cruxifixion with the Stations of the Cross at 3pm and then at the Good Friday service at 7pm we venerate the cross, celebrating the glorious work of God for our salvation. As Saint Paul says, "Christ, and Him crucified".

On Saturday, we begin the Easter Vigil at 8:30pm so that it will not conclude until after sunset, i.e. on Sunday morning according to traditional timekeeping, as we celebrate our Lord's resurrection 'on the third day' and welcome new catechumens into the Church.

Thus the Church keeps together in one celebration, in one Mass, the interrelated events which various groups outside the fullness of the Catholic Church sometimes have a tendency to separate, giving undue significance to one component or another.

The Triduum is the highpoint of our liturgical year and so the several Masses on Easter Sunday are a reflection of this, not so much anticlimactic as an aesthetically proper easing at the conclusion of the drama of the work of God for us.

Easter and Holy Week Activities

With Easter just a week away, many of us are looking for great ideas on how to incorporate Easter activities into our daily lives. Catholic Icing is a resource for Easter and many other religious holidays. Not only that, it’s a resource for fun faith filled activities for any day of the week.  Holidays, sacraments, liturgical year, saints, and the Rosary are all highlighted. At Catholic Icing you'll find great crafts and ideas to help us to incorporate our Catholic faith into our daily lives. 

Here are some of the Easter highlights:

Make a Resurrection Set (Free to Print!)

How to Make Resurrection Rolls

Make Empty Tomb Treats from a Doughnut!

Have a meaningful Easter dinner with these Resurrectionstory napkin rings. (Free to Print!)

Craft a Paschal Candle for Easter

Printable Lenten Calendar

Stations of the Cross Eggs

"Almsgiving Countdown for Kids"

Catholic Resurrection Eggs or "Holy Week Eggs"

Easy Crown of Thorns Craft to Keep Track of Sacrifices


About the author of Catholic Icing 

Lacy:

I love the Catholic faith and want nothing more than for my children to share this passion. I hope you find some ideas here for your own Catholic family or students to grow with their love for the faith as well!

More about Lacy

Easter Blessing

 May every blessing, gift and grace of this Holy Season of Easter be yours.
~Father Andrzej  Skrzypiec~