Easter Overflow

Several years ago I suggested in a newspaper article that we could check the seasons of the year by checking the "seasonal aisle" at the local store. Well, just this week I checked at the Rite Aid and, sure enough, Easter is over and summer is on the way! Check the church, however, and our decorations and reading choices tell us Easter is far from over and just beginning.

Easter continues this week with its eight days of liturgically extending the actual Easter Sunday. Even these eight days are part of a larger sequence of liturgical celebrations and prayers. Beginning with Easter Sunday we have the Great Fifty Days of Easter, days in which the joy and peace of Easter overflow until Pentecost Sunday.

On the great days in the Church, the mysteries celebrated overflow in days, symbols, readings, and music. With the Easter event we continue to gather to celebrate the Easter Mysteries or the Paschal Mystery. Actually these mysteries are the same. They celebrate Christ passing from death to life and being the vital presence of the Lord in the Church. "Paschal Mystery" comes from the Greek nomenclature for the primitive "Pasch" or "Passover" in the Christian community.

Christian Passover
Actually, as a Church we celebrate the Paschal Mystery throughout the whole year, for each time we celebrate the Eucharist we celebrate the passing of Christ from death to life. The Lord's mandate at the Last Supper was to remember him in the breaking of the bread as symbols of his death and rising. In that remembrance the Lord is present among us and we are incorporated into the actual saving events of his life.

The Great Vigil of Easter clearly signs these mysteries in intense and wonderful ways. The Easter fire and the "Paschal Candle" speak to the Assembly of passing from darkness to light, from sin to forgiveness, and death to life. The readings of the Vigil speak of the actual Passover of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land. We heard also of how the Lord's angel "passed over" the houses marked with the blood of the Passover Lamb.

A central symbol within the Fifty Days is the

Paschal Candle, reminding us that Christ is the light which scatters death in his dying and rising. And like "the cloud in the day" and the "pillar of fire in the night" of the Jewish Passover, Christ leads his people from death to life, through water and Spirit, to his continued presence as we gather at the Eucharistic Table.

A believing community within the Assembly are those people baptized, confirmed, and brought to communion for the first time. At the Easter Vigil those chosen for these sacraments experienced washing in the baptismal water, anointed with the Spirit's oil, they came to believe in the Lord, who died and was raised up, at the communion Table.

Conversion
The story of these newly baptized or neophytes is the Christ story—together with him they passed from death to life. That same Easter story is our stories as believers in the Church. At the Easter Vigil they changed their names from "elect" or chosen for Initiation to "neophyte" or "enlightened" in Christ. They now walk in light rather in the darkness of sin and death. In fact, all of us who celebrate Easter are invited to walk in the Light of Christ.

Like the disciples who experienced Jesus after his resurrection, present day believers—newly baptized and confirmed and believers for a long time—come "to know him in the breaking of the bread." In the breaking of the bread, as mandated by the Lord, they find him present among them. Over and over after his resurrection Jesus continues to eat and drink with his followers. During the Easter Season the Eucharistic Table is the Victory Table of the Lord.

Symbols, music and readings continue to overflow in the Fifty Days of Easter.The alleluias continue to be sung. The Lord's peace and joy become a way of life for believers. Like the newly baptized and confirmed, all of us continue to explore the "mystagogia," the saving mysteries of Christ's death and rising. In exploring the mysteries what was wonderful, exciting, and emotional becomes intensely real and challenging in our life in Christ. We come to know what it means to die and rise with Christ. That is the way of discipleship and a renewed way of living life together.

CDH