Easter
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Easter is not simply one feast among others, but the “Feast of feasts,” the “Solemnity of solemnities,” just as the Eucharist is the “Sacrament of sacraments” (the Great Sacrament). St. Athanasius calls Easter “the Great Sunday” and the Eastern Churches call Holy Week “the Great Week.” The mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time, until all is subjected to him. [CCC 1169]
Easter is the greatest feast in the Christian calendar. On this Sunday, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. For Catholics, Easter Sunday comes at the end of 40 days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving known as Lent. Through spiritual struggle and self-denial, we have prepared ourselves to die spiritually with Christ on Good Friday, the day of His Crucifixion, so that we can rise again with Him in new life on Easter. Easter is a day of celebration because it represents the fulfillment of our faith as Christians. St. Paul wrote that, unless Christ rose from the dead, our faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:17). Through his death, Christ saved mankind from bondage to sin, and He destroyed the hold that death has on all of us; but it is His Resurrection that gives us the promise of new life, both in this world and the next. That new life began on Easter Sunday. In the Our Father, we pray that "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." And Christ told His disciples that some of them would not die until they saw the Kingdom of God "coming in power" (Mark 9:1). The early Christian Fathers saw Easter as the fulfillment of that promise. With the resurrection of Christ, God's Kingdom is established on earth, in the form of the Church.
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DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY is a very special Sunday when the Divine Floodgates from Heaven are wide-opened and Jesus offers us the total forgiveness of all sins and punishment to any soul, who goes to Confession and receives Him in Holy Communion, on that day.
Divine Mercy Sunday was instituted in the Catholic Church on the Second Sunday of Easter on April 30, 2000 and decreed on May 5th of that year by Pope Saint John Paul II.+++
THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD, as of 2001, has been transferred from the Fortieth Day after Easter, a Thursday, to the following Sunday, the Seventh Sunday of Easter. This was done by most bishops of the United States with permission of Pope John Paul II to highlight the meaning of the mystery of the Ascension, a meaning that might be eclipsed by the unfortunate tendency of a growing number of our people who fail to come and celebrate the Liturgy on Thursday, a weekday and a workday in our secular calendar.
The Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter has traditionally been celebrated as the Feast of the Ascension. Presently many dioceses have transferred this feast to the Seventh Sunday of Easter so that it can more easily be celebrated by all. When celebrated on that Thursday, it marks the beginning of a novena that concludes with the feast of Pentecost. During this time we emphasize preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus" can be used each day. In former times some parishes extinguished the Paschal Candle with great solemnity to symbolize the departure of the Lord to the right hand of the Father. Now, it remains near the altar and ambo until the conclusion of the feast of Pentecost, when it returns to its place near the Baptistery.
Regarding the Ascension of the Lord, the ecclesiastical provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, and Philadelphia have retained its celebration on the proper Thursday, while all other provinces have transferred this Solemnity to the Seventh Sunday of Easter.+++
PENTECOST means “fiftieth” and in early Christianity it referred to the whole Fifty Days of Easter. In Judaism it referred to the Feast of Weeks, a harvest festival, and then a celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments fifty days after the Exodus. Pentecost celebrates the foundational event in Christian history: the transforming gift of the Spirit.
PENTECOST celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church, as Jesus had promised. The frightened disciples, gathered in their upper room, experience the presence of the Spirit in such a profound way that it drives them out into the world to proclaim and preach the gospel with a courage they did not have before.
Pentecost derives its name from the Feast of Weeks, a Jewish festival of the early harvest celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Passover (Exodus 23:16), on which the first fruits were offered in gratitude to God. It eventually became associated with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Pentecost was the Greek word for the same festival; the word Pentecost means “fiftieth.” Early Christians reinterpreted the Jewish festival as a commemoration of the coming of the Spirit; in Acts (2:1-11) the Spirit descends “when the time for Pentecost was fulfilled.” In early Christianity, Pentecost came to refer to the whole Fifty days of Easter.