From: Dom
Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year: Paschal Time
(1870), translated from the French by Dom Laurence Shepherd, monk of the
English Benedictine Congregation.
The
History of Paschal Time
We give the name of Paschal Time to the period
between Easter Sunday and the Saturday following Whit Sunday, It is
the most sacred portion of the Liturgical Year, and the one towards
which the whole Cycle converges. We will easily understand how this
is if we reflect on the greatness of the Easter Feast, which is
called the Feast of Feasts and the Solemnity of Solemnities, in the
same manner, says Saint. Gregory, as the most sacred part of the
Temple was called the Holy of holies, and the Book of Sacred
Scripture in which are described the espousals between Christ and the
Church, is called the Canticle of canticles. It is on this day that
the mission of the Word Incarnate attains the object, towards which
it has hitherto been unceasingly tending: mankind is raised up from
his fall, and regains what he had lost by Adam’s
sin.
Christmas gave us a Man-God. Three days have
scarcely passed since we witnessed His infinitely Precious Blood shed
for our ransom. But now, on the day of Easter, our Jesus is no longer
the Victim of death. he is a Conqueror that destroys death, the child
of sin, and proclaims Life, that undying life, which He has purchased
for us. The humiliation of His Swathing-bands, the sufferings of His
Agony and Cross — these are past. All is now glory — glory for
Himself, and glory also for us. On the Day of Easter God regains, by
the Resurrection of the Man-God, His creation such as He made it at
the beginning: the only vestige now left of death is that likeness to
sin which the Lamb of God deigned to take upon Himself. Neither is it
Jesus alone that returns to eternal life: the whole human race also
has risen to immortality together with our Jesus. By a man came
death, says the Apostle, and by a man the resurrection of the dead:
and, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1
Corinthians xv. 21, 22).
The anniversary of this resurrection is therefore
the Great Day, the Day of Joy, the Day by excellence: the Day to
which the whole year looks forward in expectation, and on which its
whole economy is formed. But as it is the holiest of days, since it
opens to us the gate of Heaven into which we will enter because we
have risen together with Christ — the Church would have us come to
it well prepared by bodily mortification and by compunction of heart.
It was for this that she instituted the Fast of Lent and that she
bade us, during Septuagesima, look forward to the joy of her Easter,
and be filled with sentiments suitable to the approach of so grand a
solemnity. We obeyed. We have gone through the period of our
preparation, and now the Easter sun has risen on us.
But it was not enough to solemnise the great Day
when Jesus, our Light, rose from the darkness of the tomb: there was
another anniversary which claimed our grateful celebration. The
Incarnate Word rose on the first day of the week — that same day on
He, the Uncreated Word of the Father, had begun the work of the
Creation by calling forth Light, and separating it from Darkness. The
first day was thus ennobled by the creation of Light. It received a
second consecration by the Resurrection of Jesus, and from that time
forward Sunday, and not Saturday, was to be the Lord’s
Day. Yes, our resurrection in Jesus which took place on the Sunday
gave this first day a pre-eminence above the others of the week: the
divine precept of the Sabbath was abrogated, together with the other
ordinances of the Mosaic Law, and the Apostles instructed the
faithful to keep holy the first Day of the week which God had
dignified with that twofold glory — the Creation and the
Regeneration of the world.
Sunday, then, being the day of Jesus’
Resurrection, the Church chose that in preference to every other for
its yearly commemoration. The Pasch of the Jews, which, in
consequence of its being fixed on the fourteenth of the moon of March
(the anniversary of the going out of Egypt), fell, by turns, on each
of the days of the week. The Jewish Pasch was but a figure: ours is
the reality, and puts an end to the figure. The Church, therefore,
broke this her last tie with the Synagogue, and proclaimed her
emancipation by fixing the most solemn of her Feasts on a day which
should never agree with that on which Jews keep their now unmeaning
Pasch. The Apostles decreed that the Christian Pasch should never be
celebrated on the fourteenth of the moon of March, even were that day
to be a Sunday, but that it should be everywhere kept on the Sunday
following the day on which the obsolete calendar of the Synagogue
still marks it.
Nevertheless, out of consideration for the many
Jews who had received Baptism and who formed the nucleus of the early
Christian Church, it was resolved that the law regarding the day for
keeping the new Pasch, should be applied prudently and gradually.
Jerusalem was soon to be destroyed by the Romans according to our
Saviour’s prediction,
and the new city, which was to rise up from its ruins and receive the
Christian colony would also have its Church, but a Church totally
free from the Jewish element which God had so visibly rejected. In
preaching the Gospel and founding Churches even far beyond the limits
of the Roman Empire, the majority of the Apostles had not to contend
with Jewish customs. most of their converts were from among the
Gentiles. Saint Peter, who, in the Council of Jerusalem, had
proclaimed the cessation of the Jewish Law, set up the standard of
emancipation in the city of Rome, so that the Church, which through
him, was made the Mother and Mistress of all Churches, never had any
other discipline regarding the observance of Easter than that laid
down by the Apostles, namely, the keeping it on a Sunday.
There was, however, one province of the Church,
which for a long time stood out against the universal practice: it
was Asia Minor. The Apostle Saint John, who lived for many years at
Ephesus where, indeed, he died — had thought it prudent to
tolerate in those parts the Jewish custom of celebrating the Pasch,
for many of the converts had been members of the Synagogue. But the
Gentiles themselves who later on formed the mass of the faithful were
strenuous upholders of this custom which dated from the very
foundation of the Church of Asia Minor. In the course of time,
however, this anomaly became a source of scandal: it savoured of
Judaism, and it prevented unity of religious observance which is
always desirable, but particularly so in what regards Lent and
Easter. Pope Saint Victor who governed the Church from the year 193
endeavoured to put a stop to this abuse. He thought the time had come
for establishing unity in so essential a point of Christian worship.
Already, that is, in the year 160, under Pope Saint Anicetus, the
Apostolic See had sought by friendly negociations, to induce the
Churches of Asia Minor to conform to the universal practice, but it
was difficult to triumph over a prejudice which rested on a tradition
held sacred in that country. Saint Victor, however, resolved to make
another attempt. He would put before them the unanimous agreement
which reigned throughout the rest of the Church. Accordingly, he gave
orders that Councils should be convened in the several countries
where the Gospel had been preached, and that the question of Easter
should be examined. Everywhere there was perfect uniformity of
practice, and the historian Eusebius who lived a hundred and fifty
years later assures us that the people of his day used to quote the
decisions of the Councils of Rome, of Gaul, of Achaia, of Pontus, of
Palestine, and of Osrhoena in Mesopotamia. The Council of Ephesus at
which Polycrates, the Bishop of that City, presided, was the only
one that opposed the Pontiff, and disregarded the practice of the
universal Church. Deeming it unwise to give further toleration to the
opposition, Victor separated from communion with the Holy See the
refractory Churches of Asia Minor. This severe penalty, which was not
inflicted until Rome had exhausted every other means of removing the
evil, excited the commiseration of several Bishops. Saint Ireneus,
who was then governing the See of Lyons, pleaded for these Churches,
which, so it seemed to him, had sinned only through a want of light,
and he obtained from the Pope the revocation of a measure which
seemed too severe.
This indulgence produced the desired effect. In
the following century, Saint Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, in his
Book on the Pasch written in 276, tells us that the Churches of Asia
Minor had then, for some time past, conformed to the Roman practice.
About the same time, and by a strange co-incidence, the Churches of
Syria, Cilicia and Mesopotamia gave scandal by again leaving the
Christian and Apostolic observance of Easter, and returning to the
Jewish rite of the fourteenth of the March Moon. This schism in the
Liturgy grieved the Church, and one of the points to which the
Council of Nicaea directed its first attention was the promulgating
the universal obligation of celebrating Easter on the Sunday. The
Decree was unanimously passed and the Fathers of the Council
ordained, that “all controversy being laid aside, the Brethren in
the East should solemnise the Pasch on the same day as the Romans,
the Alexandrians, and the rest of the Faithful.”
So important seemed this question, inasmuch as it
affected the very essence of the Christian Liturgy, that Saint
Athanasius, assigning the reasons which had led to the calling of the
Council of Nicaea, mentions these two — the condemnation of the
Arian heresy, and the establishing uniformity in the observance of
Easter. The Bishop of Alexandria was commissioned by the Council to
see to the drawing up of astronomical tables, by which the precise
day of Easter might be fixed for each future year. The reason of this
choice was because the astronomers of Alexandria were looked upon as
the most exact in their calculations. These tables were to be sent to
the Pope, and he would address letters to the several Churches,
instructing them as to the uniform celebration of the great Festival
of Christendom. Thus was the unity of the Church made manifest by the
unity of the holy liturgy and the Apostolic See, which is the
foundation of the first, was likewise the source of the second. But,
even previous to the Council of Nicaea, the Roman Pontiff had
addressed to all the Churches, every year, a Paschal Encyclical
instructing them as to the day on which the solemnity of the
Resurrection was to be kept. This we learn from the synodical Letter
of the Fathers of the great Council held at Aries, in 314. The Letter
is addressed to Pope Saint Sylvester, and contains the following
passage: “In the first place, we beg that the observance of the
Pasch of the Lord may be uniform, both as to time and day, in the
whole worlds and that You would, according to the custom, address
Letters to all concerning this matter.”
This custom, however, was not kept up for any
length of time, after the Council of Nicaea. The want of precision in
astronomical calculations occasioned confusion in the method of
fixing the day of Easter. It is true, this great Festival was always
kept on a Sunday, nor did any Church think of celebrating it on the
same day as the Jews, but owing to therebeing no uniform
understanding as to the exact time of the VYernal Equinox, it
happened, some years, that the feast of Easter was not kept in all
places on the same day. By degrees there crept in a deviation from
the rule laid down by the Council, of taking the 21st of March as the
day of the Equinox. There was needed a reform in the calendar, and no
one seemed competent to bring it about. Cycles were drawn up
contradictory to one another. Rome and Alexandria had each their own
system of calculation. So that, some years, Easter was not kept with
that perfect uniformity which the Nicene Fathers had so strenuously
laboured for: and yet, this variation was not the result of anything
like party-spirit.
The West followed Rome. The Churches of Ireland
and Scotland, which had been misled by faulty cycles, were, at
length, brought into uniformity. Finally, science was sufficiently
advanced in the sixteenth century for Pope Gregory XIII to undertake
a reform of the calendar. The Equinox had to be restored to the 21st
of March as the Council of Nicaea had prescribed. The Pope effected
this by publishing a Bull, dated February 24, 1581, and in which he
ordered that ten days of the following year, namely from the 4th to
the 15th of October, should be suppressed. He thus restored the work
of Julius Caesar, who had, in his day, turned his attention to the
rectification of the year. Easter was the great object of the reform,
or, as it is called, the New Style, achieved by Gregory XIII. The
principles and regulations of the Nicene Council were again brought
to bear on this the capital question of the liturgical year, and the
Roman Pontiff thus gave to the whole world the intimation of Easter,
not for one year only, but for centuries. Heretical nations were
forced to acknowledge the divine power of the Church in this solemn
act which interested both religion and society. They protested
against the calendar, as they had protested against the rule of
faith. England and the Lutheran States of Germany preferred following
for many years a calendar which was evidently at fault, rather than
accept the new style, which they acknowledged to be indispensable,
but it was the work of a Pope!
The only nation in Europe that keeps up the old
style is Russia. All this shows us how important it was to fix the
precise day of Easter, and God has several times shown by miracles
that the date of so sacred a feast was not a matter of indifference,
During the ages when the confusion of the cycles and the want of
correct astronomical computations occasioned great uncertainty as to
the Vernal Equinox, miraculous events more than once supplied the
deficiencies of science and authority. In a Letter to Saint Leo the
Great in 444, Paschasinus, Bishop of Lilybea in Sicily, relates that
under the Pontificate of Saint Zozimus — Honorius being Consul for
the eleventh, and Constantius for the second time — the real day of
Easter was miraculously revealed to the people of one of the Churches
there. In the midst of a mountainous and thickly wooded district of
the Island was a village called Meltinas. Its church was of the
poorest, but it was dear to God. Every year on the night preceding
Easter Sunday, as the Priest went to the Baptistery to bless the
font, it was found to be miraculously filled with water, for there
were no human means with which it could be supplied. As soon as
Baptism was administered the water disappeared of itself and left the
font perfectly dry. In the year just mentioned, the people, misled by
a wrong calculation, assembled for the ceremonies of Easter Eve. The
Prophecies having been read, the priest and his flock repaired to the
baptistery, but the font was empty. They waited, expecting the
miraculous flowing of the water with which the catechumens were to
receive the grace of regeneration. But they waited in vain, and no
Baptism was administered. On the following 22nd of April, (the tenth
of the Kalends of May), the font was found to be filled to the brim,
and thereby the people understood that that was the true Easter for
that year.
Cassiodorus writing in the name of king Athalaric
to a certain Severus, relates a similar miracle which happened every
year on Easter Eve in Lucania, near the small Island of Leucothea, at
a place called Marcilianum. There was a large fountain there whose
water was so clear that the air itself was not more transparent. It
was used as the font for the administration of Baptism on Easter
Night. As soon as the priest, standing under the rock with which
nature had canopied the fountain, began the prayers of the Blessing,
the water, as though taking part in the transports of the Easter joy,
arose in the font so that, if previously it was to the level of the
fifth step, it was seen to rise up to the seventh, impatient, as it
were, to effect those wonders of grace of which it was the chosen
instrument. God would show by this that even inanimate creatures can
share, when He so wills it, in the holy gladness of the greatest of
all Days.
Saint Gregory of Tours tells us of a font which
existed even then in a church of Andalusia, in a place called Osen,
and by which God miraculously certified to his people the true day of
Easter. On the Maundy Thursday of each year, the Bishop, accompanied
by the faithful, repaired to this church. The bed of the font was
built in the form of a cross and was paved with mosaics. It was
carefully examined to see that it was perfectly dry, and after
several prayers had been recited, every one left the church and the
Bishop sealed the door with his seal. On Holy Saturday the Pontiff
returned, accompanied by his flock. The seal was examined and the
door was opened. The font was found to be filled, even above the
level of the floor, and yet the water did not overflow. The Bishop
pronounced the exorcisms over the miraculous water, and poured the
Chrism into it. The catechumens were then baptised and as soon as the
sacrament had been administered, the water immediately disappeared
and no-one could tell what became of it. Similar miracles were
witnessed in several churches in the East. John Moschus, a writer in
the seventh century, speaks of a baptismal font in Lycia which was
thus filled every Easter Eve, but the water remained in the font
during the whole fifty days, and suddenly disappeared after the
Festival of Pentecost.
We alluded in our History of Passiontide to the
decrees passed by the Christian Emperors which forbade all law
proceedings during the fortnight of Easter, that is, from Palm Sunday
to the Octave Day of the Resurrection. Saint Augustine, in a sermon
he preached on this Octave, exhorts the faithful to extend to the
whole year this suspension of law-suits, disputes and enmities, which
the civil law interdicted during these fifteen days. The Church puts
upon all her children the obligation of receiving Holy Communion at
Easter. This precept is based upon the words of our Redeemer, who
left it to His Church to determine the time of the year when
Christians should receive the Blessed Sacrament. In the early Ages,
Communion was frequent, and in some places even daily. By degrees,
the fervour of the faithful grew cold towards this august Mystery, as
we gather from a decree of the Council of Agatha (Agde) held in 506,
where it is defined that those of the laity who will not approach
Communion at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are to be considered as
having ceased to be Catholics. This Decree of the Council of Agatha
was accepted as the law of almost the entire Western Church. We find
it quoted among the regulations drawn up by Egbert, Archbishop of
York, as also in the third Council of Tours. In many places, however,
Communion was obligatory for the Sundays of Lent, and for the last
three Days of Holy Week, independently of that which was to be made
on the Easter Festival.
It was in the year 1215, in the fourth General
Council of Lateran, that the Church, seeing the ever growing
indifference of her children, decreed with regret that Christians
should be strictly bound to Communion only once in the year, and that
that Communion of obligation should be made at Easter. In order to
show the faithful that this is the uttermost limit of her
condescension to lukewarmness, she declares, in the same Council,
that he that will presume to break this law may be forbidden to enter
a church during life, and be deprived of Christian burial after
death, as he would be if he had, of his own accord, separated himself
from the exterior link of Catholic unity. [Two centuries after this
Pope Eugenius IV, in the Constitution Digna Fide given in the year
1440, allowed this annual Communion to be made on any day between
Palm Sunday and Low Sunday inclusively. In England, by permission of
the Holy See, the time for making the Easter Communion extends from
Ash Wednesday to Low Sunday.] These regulations of a General Council
show how important is the duty of the Easter Communion but, at the
same time, they make us shudder at the thought of the millions,
throughout the Catholic world, who brave each year the threats of the
Church by refusing to comply with a duty which would both bring life
to their souls, and serve as a profession of their faith. And when we
again reflect on how many even of those who make their Easter
Communion, have paid no more attention to the Lenten Penance than if
there were no such obligation in existence, we cannot help feeling
sad, and we wonder within ourselves, how long God will bear with such
infringements of the Christian Law?
The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost have
ever been considered by the Church as most holy. The first week,
which is more expressly devoted to celebrating our Lord’s
Resurrection, is kept up as one continued feast, but the remainder of
the fifty days is also marked with special honours. To say nothing of
the joy which is the characteristic of this period of the year, and
of which the Alleluia is the expression — Christian tradition has
assigned to Eastertide two practices which distinguish it from every
other Season. The first is that fasting is not permitted during the
entire interval: it is an extension of the ancient precept of never
fasting on a Sunday, and the whole of Eastertide is considered as one
long Sunday. This practice, which would seem to have come down from
the time of the Apostles, was accepted by the Religious Rules of both
East and West, even by the severest. The second consists in not
kneeling at the Divine Office from Easter to Pentecost. The Eastern
Churches have faithfully kept up the practice, even to this day. It
was observed for many ages by the Western Churches also, but now it
is little more than a remnant. The Latin Church has long since
admitted genuflections in the Mass during Easter time. The few
vestiges of the ancient discipline in this regard, which still exist,
are not noticed by the faithful, inasmuch as they seldom assist at
the Canonical Hours.
Eastertide, then, is like one continued feast. It
is the remark made by Tertullian in the third century. He is
reproaching those Christians who regretted having renounced, by their
Baptism, the festivities of the pagan year, and he thus addresses
them: “If you love feasts, you will find plenty among us
Christians, not merely feasts that last only for a day, but such as
continue for several days together. The pagans keep each of their
feasts once in the year, but you have to keep each of yours many
times over, for you have the eight days of its celebration. Put all
the feasts of the Gentiles together, and they do not amount to our
fifty days of Pentecost.” Saint Ambrose speaking on the same
subject, says: “If the Jews are not satisfied with the Sabbath of
each week, but keep also one which lasts a whole month, and another
which lasts a whole year, how much more ought not we to honour our
Lord’s Resurrection?
Hence our ancestors have taught us to celebrate the fifty days of
Pentecost as a continuation of Easter. They are seven weeks, and the
Feast of Pentecost commences the eighth. * * * * During these fifty
days, the Church observes no fast, as neither does she on any Sunday,
for it is the Day on which our Lord rose: and all these fifty Days
are like so many Sundays.”
The Mystery of Paschal Time
Of all the Seasons of the liturgical year,
Eastertide is by far the richest in mystery. We might even say that
Easter is the summit of the mystery of the sacred liturgy. The
Christian who is happy enough to enter, with his whole mind and
heart, into the knowledge and the love of the Paschal Mystery, has
reached the very centre of the supernatural life. Hence it is that
the Church uses every effort in order to effect this: what she has
hitherto done was all intended as a preparation for Easter. The holy
longings of Advent, the sweet joys of Christmas, the severe truths of
Septuagesima, the contrition and penance of Lent, the heart-rending
sight of the Passion — all were given us as preliminaries, as
paths, to the sublime and glorious Pasch, which is now ours. And that
we might be convinced of the supreme importance of this Solemnity,
God willed that the Christian Easter and Pentecost should be prepared
by those of the Jewish Law: a thousand five hundred years of typical
beauty prefigured the reality: and that reality is ours!
During these days, then, we have brought before us
the two great manifestations of God’s
goodness towards mankind — the Pasch of Israel, and the Christian
Pasch. The Pentecost of Sinai, and the Pentecost of the Church. We
will have occasion to show how the ancient figures were fulfilled in
the realities of the new Easter and Pentecost, and how the twilight
of the Mosaic Law made way for the full day of the Gospel: but we
cannot resist the feeling of holy reverence at the bare thought that
the solemnities we have now to celebrate are more than three thousand
years old, and that they are to be renewed every year from this till
the voice of the Angel will be heard proclaiming: “Time will be no
more! (Apocalype x. 6) The gates of eternity will then be thrown
open.
Eternity in Heaven is the true Pasch: hence our
Pasch here on earth is the Feast of feasts, the Solemnity of
solemnities. The human race was dead. It was the victim of that
sentence by which it was condemned to lie mere dust in the tomb. The
gates of life were shut against it. But see the Son of God rises from
His grave and takes possession of eternal life. Nor is He the only
one that is to die no more, for, as the Apostle teaches us, He is the
first-born from the dead (Colossians i. 18). The Church would
therefore have us consider ourselves as having already risen with our
Jesus, and as having already got possession of eternal life. The holy
Fathers bid us look on these fifty days of Easter as the image of our
eternal happiness. They are days that are devoted exclusively to joy.
Every sort of sadness is forbidden, and the Church cannot speak to
her Divine Spouse without joining to her words that glorious cry of
heaven, the Alleluia with which, as the holy liturgy says, the
streets and squares of the heavenly Jerusalem resound without
ceasing. We have been forbidden the use of this joyous word during
the past nine weeks. It behoved us to die with Christ: but now that
we have risen together with Him from the tomb, and that we are
resolved to die no more that death which kills the soul and caused
our Redeemer to die on the Cross, we have a right to our Alleluia.
The Providence of God, who has established harmony
between the visible world and the supernatural work of grace, willed
that the Resurrection of our Lord should take place at that
particular season of the year when even nature herself seems to rise
from the grave. The meadows give forth their verdure, the trees
resume their foliage, the birds fill the air with their songs, and
the sun, the type of our Triumphant Jesus pours out His floods of
light on our earth made new by lovely Spring. At Christmas, the sun
had little power, and His stay with us was short. It harmonised with
the humble birth of our Emmanuel who came among us in the midst of
night, and shrouded in swaddling clothes: but now He is as a giant
that runs his way, and there is no-one that can hide himself from his
heat (Psalm xviii. 6, 7). Speaking in the Canticle to the faithful
soul, and inviting her to take her part in this new life which He is
now imparting to every creature, our Lord Himself says: “Arise, my
dove, and come! Winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The
flowers have appeared in our land. The voice of the turtle is heard.
The fig-tree has put forth her green figs. The vines, in flower,
yield their sweet smell. Arise thou, and come!” (Canticles ii. 10,
13).
In the preceding chapter we explained why our
Saviour chose the Sunday for His Resurrection by which He conquered
death and proclaimed life to the world. It was on this favoured day
of the week that He had created the light: by selecting it now for
the commencement of the new life He graciously imparts to man, He
would show us that Easter is the renewal of the entire creation. Not
only is the anniversary of His glorious Resurrection to be,
henceforward, the greatest of days, but every Sunday throughout the
year is to be a sort of Easter, a holy and sacred day. The Synagogue,
by God’s command, kept
holy the Saturday, or the Sabbath, and this in honour of God’s
resting after the six days of the creation, but the Church, the
Spouse, is commanded to honour the work of her Lord. She allows the
Saturday to pass — it is the day her Jesus rested in the sepulchre:
but now that she is illumined with the brightness of the
Resurrection, she devotes to the contemplation of his work the first
day of the week. It is the day of Light, for on it He called forth
material Light (which was the first manifestation of life upon
chaos), and on the same, He that is the Brightness of the Father
(Hebrews i. 3), and the Light of the World (John viii. 12), rose from
the darkness of the tomb.
Let then the week with its Sabbath pass by. What
we Christians want, is the Eighth Day, the Day that is beyond the
measure of time, the Day of eternity, the Day whose Light is not
intermittent or partial, but endless and unlimited. Thus speak the
holy Fathers when explaining the substitution ofthe Sunday for the
Saturday. It was, indeed right that man should keep, as the Day of
his weekly and spiritual repose, that on which the Creator of the
visible world had taken His divine rest, but it was a commemoration
of the material Creation only. The Eternal Word comes down in the
world that He had created. He comes with the rays of His divinity
clouded beneath the humble veil of our flesh. He comes to fulfil the
figures of the first Covenant. Before abrogating the Sabbath He would
observe it, as He did every tittle of the Law. He would spend it as
the Day of Rest, after the work of His Passion, in the silence of the
sepulchre: but early on the Eighth Day He rises to life, and the life
is one of Glory. “Let us,” says the learned and pious Abbot
Rupert, “leave the Jews to enjoy the ancient Sabbath, which is a
memorial of the visible Creation. They know not how to love or desire
or merit aught but earthly things. * * * They would not recognise
this world’s Creator as
their King, because he said Blessed are the Poor! and Woe to the
Rich! But our Sabbath has been transferred from the Seventh to the
Eighth Day, and the Eighth is the First. And rightly was the Seventh
changed into the Eighth, because we Christians put our joy in a
better work than the Creation of the world. * * * Let the lovers of
the world keep a Sabbath for its Creation: but our joy is in the
Salvation of the world, for our life, yea and our Rest, is hidden
with Christ in God.”
The mystery of the Seventh followed by an Eighth
Day, as the holy one, is again brought before us by the number of
weeks which form Eastertide. These Weeks are seven: they form a week
of weeks, and their morrow is again a Sunday, the Feast of the
glorious Pentecost. These mysterious numbers which God Himself fixed
when He instituted the first Pentecost after the first Pasch were
followed by the Apostles when they regulated the Christian Easter, as
we learn from Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Saint Isidore, Amalarius,
Rabanus Maurus, and from all the ancient interpreters of the
mysteries of the holy Liturgy. “If we multiply seven by seven,”
says Saint Hilary, “we will find that this holy Season is truly the
Sabbath of Sabbaths. But what completes it, and raises it to the
plenitude of the Gospel, is the Eighth day which follows. Eighth and
First both together in itself. The Apostles have given so sacred an
institution to these seven weeks that during them no-one should kneel
or mar by fasting the spiritual joy of this long Feast. The same
institution has been extended to each Sunday, for this day which
follows the Saturday has become, by the application of the progress
of the Gospel, the completion of the Saturday, and the day of feast
and joy.”
Thus, then, the whole Season of Easter is marked
with the mystery expressed by each Sunday of the tear. Sunday is to
us the great day of our week because beautified with the splendour of
our Lord’s Resurrection,
of which the creation of material light was but a type. We have
already said that this institution was prefigured in the Old Law,
although the Jewish people were not in any way aware of it. Their
Pentecost fell on the fiftieth day after the Pasch: it was the morrow
of the seven weeks. Another figure of our Eastertide was the year of
Jubilee which God bade Moses prescribe to his people. Each fiftieth
year the houses and lands that had been alienated during the
preceding forty-nine returned to their original owners, and those
Israelites who had been compelled by poverty to sell themselves as
slaves, recovered their liberty. This year, which was properly called
the Sabbatical year was the sequel of the preceding seven weeks of
years, and was thus the image of our Eighth Day on which the Son of
Mary, by His Resurrection, redeemed us from the slavery of the tomb,
and restored us to the inheritance of our immortality.
The rites peculiar to Eastertide in the present
discipline of the Church, are two: the unceasing repetition of the
Alleluia of which we have already spoken, and the colour of the
vestments used for its two great solemnities — white for the first,
and red for the second. White is appropriate to the Resurrection: it
is the mystery of eternal Light, which knows neither spot nor shadow.
it is the mystery that produces in a faithful soul the sentiment of
purity and joy. Pentecost, which gives us the Holy Spirit, the
consuming Fire (Hebrews xii. 29) — is symbolised by the red
vestments which express the mystery of the Divine Paraclete coming
down in the form of fiery tongues upon them that were assembled in
the Cenacle. With regard to the ancient usage of not kneeling during
Paschal Time we have already said that there is a mere vestige of it
now left in the Latin Liturgy. The saints’
feasts, which were interrupted during Holy Week, are likewise
excluded from the first eight days of Eastertide, but these ended, we
will have them in rich abundance, as a bright constellation of stars
round the divine Sun of Justice, our Jesus. They will accompany us in
our celebration of His admirable Ascension, but such is the grandeur
of the mystery of Pentecost that from the Eve of that Day they will
be again interrupted until the expiration of Paschal Time.
The rites of the primitive Church with reference
to the Neophytes, who were regenerated by Baptism on the Night of
Easter, are extremely interesting and instructive. But as they are
peculiar to the two Octaves of Easter and Pentecost, we will explain
them as they are brought before us by the Liturgy of those days.
Practice during Paschal Time
The practice for this holy Season mainly consists
in the spiritual joy which it should produce in every soul that is
risen with Jesus. This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and
the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him,
by ardently seeking after that life which is in our Divine Head, and
by carefully shunning sin which causes death.
During the last nine weeks, we have mourned for
our sins and done penance for them. We have followed Jesus to
Calvary. But now our holy Mother the Church is urgent in bidding us
rejoice. She herself has laid aside all sorrow. The voice of her
weeping is changed into the song of a delighted Spouse. In order that
she might impart this joy to all her children, she has taken their
weakness into account. After reminding them of the necessity of
expiation, she gave them forty days in which to do penance, and then,
taking off all the restraint of Lenten mortification, she brings us
to Easter as to a land where there is nothing but gladness, light,
life, joy, calm and the sweet hope of immortality. Thus does she
produce in those of her children who have no elevation of soul
sentiments in harmony with the great Feast, such as the most perfect
feel, and by this means, all, both fervent and tepid, unite their
voices in one same hymn of praise to our Risen Jesus.
The great Liturgist of the twelfth century,
Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, thus speaks of the pious artifice used by the
Church to infuse the spirit of Easter into all: “There are certain
carnal minds that seem unable to open their eyes to spiritual things,
unless roused by some unusual excitement, and for this reason, the
Church makes use of such means. Thus, the Lenten Fast, which we offer
up to God as our yearly tithe, goes on till the most sacred Night of
Easter. Then follow fifty days without so much as one single fast.
Hence it happens that while the body is being mortified and is to
continue to be so till Easter Night — that holy night is eagerly
looked forward to even by the carnal-minded. They long for it to come
and, meanwhile, they carefully count each of the Forty Days as a
wearied traveller does the miles. Thus, the sacred Solemnity is sweet
to all, and dear to all, and desired by all, as light is to them that
walk in darkness, as a fount of living water is to them that thirst,
and as a tent which the Lord has pitched for wearied wayfarers.”
What a happy time was that, when, as Saint Bernard
expresses it, there was not one in the whole Christian army that
neglected his Easter duty, and when all, both just and sinners,
walked together in the path of the Lenten observances! Alas, those
days are gone, and Easter has not the same effect on the people of
our generation! The reason is, that a love of ease and a false
conscience lead so many Christians to treat the law of Lent with as
much indifference as though there were no such law existing. Hence
Easter comes upon them as a feast —it may be as a great feast, but
that is all. They experience little of that thrilling joy which fills
the heart of the Church during this Season, and which she evinces in
every thing she does. And if this be their case even on the glorious
day itself, how can it be expected that they should keep up, for the
whole Fifty, the spirit of Gladness, which is the very essence of
Easter? They have not observed the fast or the abstinence of Lent:
the mitigated form in which the Church now presents them to her
children in consideration of their weakness was too severe for them!
They sought, or they took, a total dispensation from this law of
Lenten mortification, and without regret or remorse. The Alleluia
returns, and it finds no response in their souls: how could it ?
Penance has not done its work of purification. It has not
spiritualised them. How then could they follow their Risen Jesus
whose life is henceforth more of heaven than of earth?
But these reflections are too sad for such a
Season as this: let us beseech our Risen Jesus to enlighten these
souls with the rays of His victory over the world and the flesh, and
to raise them up to Himself. No, nothing must now distract us from
joy. Can the children of the bridegroom mourn as long as the
bridegroom is with them? (Matthew ix. 15) Jesus is to be with us for
forty days. He is to suffer no more, and die no more. Let our
feelings be in keeping with His now endless glory and bliss. True, He
is to leave us, He is to ascend to the right hand of His Father, but
He will not leave us orphans. He will send us the Divine Comforter
who will abide with us forever (John xiv. 16‒18).
These sweet and consoling words must be our Easter text: The children
of the Bridegroom cannot mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with us.
They are the key to the whole liturgy of this holy Season. We must
have them ever before us, and we will find by experience that the joy
of Easter is as salutary as the contrition and penance of Lent. Jesus
on the Cross, and Jesus in the Resurrection,— it is ever the same
Jesus, but what He wants from us now is that we should keep near Him,
in company with His Blessed Mother, His disciples and Magdalene, who
are in ecstasies of delight at His Triumph, and have forgotten the
sad days of His Passion.
But this Easter of ours will have an end. The
bright vision of our Risen Jesus will pass away and all that will be
left to us, will be the recollection of His ineffable glory, and of
the wonderful familiarity with which He treated us. What will we do,
when He who was our very Life and Light leaves us and ascends to
heaven? Be of good heart, Christians! You must look forward to
another Easter. Each year will give you a repetition of what you now
enjoy. Easter will follow Easter, and bring you, at last, to that
Easter in Heaven, which is never to have an end, and of which these
happy ones of earth are a mere foretaste. Nor is this all. Listen to
the Church. In one of her prayers she reveals to us the great secret,
how we may perpetuate our Easters, even here in our banishment:
“Grant to your servants, God, that they may keep up, by their
manner of living, the Mystery they have received by their believing”
(Romans vi. 6). So, then, the mystery of Easter is to be ever visible
on this earth: our Risen Jesus ascends to heaven, but He leaves upon
us the impress of His Resurrection, and we must retain it within us
until He again visits us.
And how could it be that we should not retain this
divine impress within us? Are not all the mysteries of our Divine
Master ours also? From His very first coming in the Flesh He has made
us sharers in everything He has done. He was born in Bethlehem: we
were born together with Him. He was crucified: our old man was
crucified with Him (Romans vi. 4). He was buried: we were buried with
Him. And, therefore, when He rose from the grave, we also received
the grace that we should walk in the newness of life.
Such is the teaching of the Apostle, who thus
continues: “We know that Christ rising again from the dead, dies
now no more; death will no more have dominion over him: for in that
he died to sin, (that is, for sin), he died once; but in that he
lives, he lives unto God (Romans vi. 9, 10). He is our Head, and we
are His members: we share in what is His. To die again by sin would
be to renounce Him, to separate ourselves from Him, to forfeit that
Death and Resurrection of His which He mercifully willed should be
ours. Let us, therefore, preserve within us that life, which is the
life of our Jesus, and, yet, which belongs to us as our own
treasure; for He won it by conquering death, and then gave it to us
with all His other merits. You, then, who, before Easter, were
sinners, but have now returned to the life of grace — see that you
die no more: let your actions bespeak your Resurrection. And you, to
whom the Paschal Solemnity has brought growth in grace, show this
increase of more abundant life by your principles and your conduct.
’Tis thus all will walk
in the newness of life.
With this for the present we take leave of the
lessons taught us by the Resurrection of Jesus: the rest we reserve
for the humble commentary we shall have to make on the Liturgy of
this holy season. We will then see, more and more clearly, not only
our duty of imitating our Divine Master’s
Resurrection, but the magnificence of this grandest Mystery of the
Man-God. Easter, with its three admirable manifestations of divine
love and power, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Descent of
the Holy Ghost, yes, Easter is the perfection of the work of our
redemption.
Everything, both in the order of time and in the
workings of the liturgy has been a preparation for Easter. The
thousands of years that followed the promise made by God to our First
Parents were crowned by the event that we are now to celebrate. All
that the Church has been doing for us from the very commencement of
Advent had this same glorious event in view, and now that we have
come to it, our expectations are more than realised, and the power
and wisdom of God are brought before us so vividly, that our former
knowledge of them seems nothing in comparison with our present
appreciation and love of them. The Angels themselves are dazzled by
the grand Mystery as the Church tells us in one of her Easter Hymns,
where she says: “The Angels gaze with wonder on the change wrought
in mankind: it was flesh that sinned, and now Flesh takes all sin
away, and the God that reigns is the God made Flesh.”
Eastertide, too, belongs to what is called the
Illuminative Life. Nay, it is the most important part of that life
for it not only manifests, as the last four seasons of the liturgical
year have done, the humiliations and the sufferings of the Man-God:
it shows Him to us in all His grand glory. It gives us to see Him
expressing, in His own sacred Humanity, the highest degree of the
creature’s
transformation into His God.
The coming of the Holy Ghost will bring additional
brightness to this Illumination. It shows us the relations that exist
between the soul and the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And
here we see the way and the progress of a faithful soul. She was made
an adopted child of the Heavenly Father. She was initiated into all
the duties and mysteries of her high vocation by the lessons and
examples of the Incarnate Word. She was perfected, by the visit and
indwelling of the Holy Ghost. From this there result those several
Christian exercises which produce within her an imitation of her
divine model, and prepare her for that union to which she is invited
by Him, who gave to them that received Him power to be made sons of
God, by a birth that is not of blood, nor of the flesh, but of God
(John i. 12, 13).
