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Washington D.C., Apr 18, 2017 / 03:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps have graced the shelves of U.S. stores for weeks in anticipation of Easter, but now that the actual Easter Season has begun, how should Catholics observe it?
“We cannot, as Christians, walk out of Easter liturgy and wash our hands of the business. Our life is forever changed, and it can never be what it was, if we believe that a man has walked out of the tomb,” said Fr. Hezekias Carnazzo, director of the Institute of Catholic Culture.
Easter Sunday begins the liturgical season of Easter, which continues through the celebration of the Ascension to Pentecost Sunday, 50 days in all. Each day of the Octave of Easter, the first eight days of the season, is a solemnity and ends on the Second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday.
The Easter Triduum follows the 40-day penitential season of Lent, which is marked by penance, prayer, and almsgiving.
However, once the Triduum is over and Catholics cast off their Lenten penances, what comes next? Was Lent just one big detox program, and is the Easter Season a marathon of steak dinners, chocolate eggs, Netflix binges and bigger bar tabs, while practices of daily Mass and prayer are neglected?
Not so, said liturgical experts, who stressed that Catholics can both celebrate Easter and also grow in their spiritual life.
How do we do that? First, Catholics must remember the spiritual focus of the season, which is on Christ’s Resurrection and the evangelization that immediately follows from it, Fr. Chrysostom Baer of the Norbertines of St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, Calif., told CNA.
“The apostles were trying to convert the world because Jesus rose from the dead. And they really got the impulse to go at Pentecost, but the message is ‘Jesus died and rose’,” he said.
This evangelization was powered by a type of “evangelical poverty,” he said, pointing to the Acts of the Apostles: “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all.”
While Easter is not a time for hairshirts and fasting, he clarified, Catholics shouldn’t feel like they must abandon good Lenten practices during Easter, if those practices help them be better Catholics – especially if they gave up things that were occasions of sin for them.
The Resurrection should change everything about our lives, Fr. Hezekias insisted, because in the words of St. Paul, since Jesus rose from the dead, “death no longer has dominion over Him.”
“It’s no great mystery that God is not able to be controlled by death. The great mystery is that a man walked out of the tomb that day. He was filled with Divine life. He’s the God-man. His divinity destroyed the power of death, but destroyed the power of death over us,” he said.
“We can say now, we who have been baptized in Him, death no longer has dominion over us,” he said. “Easter, Pascha, is the Christian life. Death no longer has dominion over us.”
This means that the created world has been brought back “into communion with God,” he said, and that realization should change how we see everything.
“I would think the first best way to celebrate the season is to go to daily Mass. That is bar none, the best,” Fr. Chrysostom said. “Because it really puts you in the mind of the Church, with regard to the season. The prayers change every day, but they’re all focused on the Resurrection.”
Catholics should also continue any good practices they fostered during Lent like prayer or almsgiving, he insisted, and should give attention to virtues they cultivated from Lenten penance.
“The Easter Season is for fostering those virtues that you’ve planted during Lent, and allowing them to grow,” he said. This requires taking “concrete steps” and not just vague promises to ensure that good habits are maintained, he added.
For instance, if someone gave alms during Lent, they could resolve to give money to the poor a certain number of times per week, he said.
However, Easter shouldn’t just be lived at church, but “it’s got to live out in our everyday lives,” Fr. Hezekias told CNA. There must be a “more intense realization that every aspect of my life has come into communion with God.”
“What about reading the Gospel in our homes or singing the Gospel in our homes before we bless the food at the dinner of that Sunday?” he suggested.
Another way to do this is for Catholics throw a party, he said, which we can enjoy in a new way having first fasted during Lent.
“The reason the Church has us set aside meat [during Lent] is because we’ve become dependent on those things,” Fr. Hezekias explained. “The key to the celebration of Easter and Pascha is the re-ordering in our life, that now I eat meat as a gift from God,” he said.
If someone has given up meat for 40 days, he explained, they will appreciate its goodness all the more: “Suddenly they take a bite of meat, and what do you say? ‘Thank you, God!’”
And Catholics should party together.
“I think what makes a feast really a feast is that it’s shared, with friends,” Fr. Chrysostom said, and where drinks served “heightens the conviviality and the joy.”
“Everyone should be asking themselves right now, who should I invite to my home [during the Easter Season]?” Fr. Hezekias said. They should also consider inviting the newly baptized at their parish over to their homes.
“We’ve forgotten our ability as Christians to go out and really have a party,” he said. “Our society is starving because of that. We’re the ones who are supposed to be showing everyone else what true joy is, but unfortunately we’ve forgotten it ourselves.”
“We’ve got to re-discover that for the sake of society.”
Vatican City, Apr 18, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Sunday thanked Assisi’s bishop for creating a shrine dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi’s divestiture, when he renounced his family’s wealth, embracing poverty as he stripped himself of his fine clothes.
Recalling his October 2013 to Assisi and the Room of Renunciation in the archbishop’s residence, the Pope said that “in that room were so many eloquent testimonies to the scandalous reality of a world still so marked by the gap between an immense number of indigents, often deprived of basic necessities, and the miniscule portion of the rich who hold the greatest part of wealth and who think they can determine the destiny of humanity.”
Pope Francis’ Oct. 16 letter to Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino commended him for his decision to establish a shrine to St. Francis’ renunciation, which will be inaugurated May 20. It will be in Santa Maria Maggiore, the city’s original cathedral, and include access to the Room of Renunciation in the archbishop’s residence.
In his renunciation, St. Francis “stripped himself, to the point of nudity, of all earthly goods, to give himself entirely to God and to the brethren,” the Pope recalled. “Renouncing all earthly goods, he unchained himself from the enchantment of the god-money which had ensnared his family.”
“Certainly the young convert did not intend to disrespect his father, but he remembered that one who is baptized must put love for Christ above all other affections,” Pope Francis wrote.
“Unfortunately, 2,000 years after the announcement of the gospel and eight centuries from the testimony of Francis, we face a phenomenon of ‘global inequality’ and an ‘economy that kills’.”
He said, “the new Assisiani sanctuary was born as a prophecy of a society more just and in solidarity, and reminds the Church of its duty to live, in the footsteps of Francis, stripping itself of worldliness and investing itself with the values of the Gospel.”
For Pope Francis “today it is more necessary than ever that the words of Christ characterize the way and the style of the Church. If in so many traditionally Christian regions of the world there is a shift away from the faith, and we are therefore called to a new evangelization, the secret of our preaching is not so much in the force of our words, but in the charm of our testimony, sustained by grace.”
Recalling that St. Francis was told by Christ to repair his house, and that the Church is always in need of such repair – for “it is holy in the gifts it receives from above, but is formed by sinners, and therefore is always in need of penitence and renewal” – Pope Francis asked, “how can it renew itself, if not by looking to its ‘naked’ Lord?”
“Christ is the original model of ‘renunciation’,” he said. “In the Child of Bethlehem the divine glory is concealed, as it were. It will be even more veiled on Golgotha.”
“From Christmas to Easter, the way of Christ is entirely a mystery of ‘renunciation’. Omnipotence, in some way, is eclipsed, so that the glory of the Word made flesh is expressed above all in love and in mercy. Renunciation is a mystery of love! It does not mean disdain for the realities of the world. And how could it? The world is entirely from the hands of God … The renunciation teaches us to make use of them in a way marked by sobriety and solidarity, within a hierarchy of values which give to love the first place. One has to renounce, in substance, not so much things in themselves, but rather the egoism which encases us in our interests and our own goods, which prevents us from discovering the beauty of the other and the joy opening our heart.”
The Pope said that “an authentic Christian path leads not to sadness, but to joy. In a world marked by so much ‘individualistic sadness’, the Sanctuary of the Renunciation is meant to nourish in the Church and in society evangelical joy, simplicity, and solidarity.”
Washington D.C., Apr 17, 2017 / 08:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).-
Easter is a joyous reminder that Jesus’ Resurrection overcomes fear and doubt, the U.S. bishops said in their 2017 Easter message.
“Through Christ’s passion, His burial in the tomb and His glorious resurrection, we come to realize the enormity of the Lord’s sacrifice for us,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said April 17.
While we may feel unworthy of this love, he said, “Let us not be afraid. Let’s allow ourselves to be taken – even seized – with Easter joy.”
Cardinal DiNardo, who heads the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, reflected on Mary Magdalene’s fear and doubt as she stood by the Tomb of Jesus Christ.
“There, it was Jesus who rescued Mary from her fears and darkness by calling her name,” the cardinal said. “Jesus calls out to each of us by name today as He did the very first Easter Sunday. His promise fulfilled. His word brings life, ‘I am the Good Shepherd and I know mine’.”
“Jesus waits for you and me, embracing us in our moments of greatest need and desire,” Cardinal DiNardo said. “Welcome the love of God into your life. Share it those around you, especially the most vulnerable of our sisters and brothers.”
Cardinal DiNardo’s message was recorded in a video posted to the Facebook page of the U.S. bishops’ conference.
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