Rejoice, Christ is Risen! Alleluia, Alleluia

We have again made it to the most wonderous season of Easter. I always marvel at the fact, that on Ash Wednesday I think how far Easter is away, and when I get to Easter, I think, how fast the Lenten season goes. It is a busy time around the parish and school. We have lots of extra Confession times during Lent, and usually we have other events going on as well. So, how did the Lenten fasting go? Hopefully it went well and helped us to refocus ourselves.

For the last six weeks during the Lenten season, we have also fasted from using the word Alleluia. It is a word of rejoicing and praise and it is one of the few words that we do not translate. If it were translated it would roughly mean, “All hail to him who is.” Easter is the season of rejoicing; we have come from a season of fasting and penance to the season of joy. It is joyful because Jesus Christ who once was dead, is now alive, He has Risen. In fact, that was one of the greetings that ancient Christians gave to each other. They would say, “The Lord is risen” and the reply would be “He has risen indeed.” This time of year, we go from the dark violet color in the Church to the red that symbolizes the blood of Christ pouring out onto the ground, to the white of new life in the resurrection. During the spring time we have new life all around us, we have baby livestock being born, we have the grass and trees turning greener, and we have the trees blooming soon. This cycle of life on earth is an important one, but the most important one is that new life of the resurrection. That is what we celebrate in this wonderful Easter Season. In this Easter season, we celebrate not just the beginning of life, we celebrate the end of a life on this earth, and the beginning of a new and eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, Jesus really did die on the cross, but he also raised himself from the tomb, and that is that incredible event that we celebrate today. Easter, like Christmas, is not just a single day that we celebrate, we celebrate for an entire week, called the octave. We celebrate the wonderful gift that God has given us and that is the path that he shows us to eternal life with him.

In this Easter week, take some time to reread the passion, death, and resurrection story of our Lord and savior and then say a prayer in thanksgiving for the wonderful gift that God has given us. He sent His own Son into the world to live our life and to die our death so that we can be shown the path back to the Father.

God bless,
Fr. Ken