Easter Sunday
Today. We use the word so often that it can sound like a small, insignificant part of conversation: how are you today? what are you doing today? what is the weather supposed to be like today? But for the Church, the word “today” or the phrase “this day” has power with it, a power that helps us understand what is happening today.
Our opening prayer today, the Collect, said, “O God, who on this day, through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity….” The preface, the prayer that anticipates the Eucharistic Prayer, begins, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, at all times to acclaim you, O Lord, but on this day above all to laud you yet more gloriously when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” There is something about this day. But what is it?
Of course, the easiest and most common answer is that today, this day, is Easter, when we celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection. But this is more than the annual commemoration of a past event. When the Church prays using the phrase “this day,” she means to remind us, as a loving Mother, that the redemption achieved by Christ in the Resurrection, is not removed from our present, but is, or should be, a part of our lives today. Today, in our midst, eternity breaks into time, and the power of the Resurrection is given to us for new life. This day, 27 March 2016, is the day that the Lord has made, the day that we rejoice and are glad in it. This day Christ has risen from the dead, hell and Satan and death are defeated, and Christ appears in our midst to offer us His peace.
We have forgotten about today, so often because we are plagued by what happened yesterday, or anxious about what will happen tomorrow. We do not live in the present, but constantly oscillate between the past and the future. But the Church invites us to live in today, because it is the day of the Resurrection, and Jesus Christ wants to offer us new life.
That new life is accessible, because the resurrection is today; it is this day. The resurrection was not only accessible almost 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem; it is accessible today. And you can take hold of it and make it your own. And, as Christians, those who follow Jesus who is not dead, but alive, we recall each eighth day of the week, each Sunday, to grab ahold of the resurrection and bask in the glow of new life, a new life which transforms us into the people God has called us to be. From the very beginning of the Church, those who followed Jesus gathered on the eighth day, the Lord’s Day, the dies Dominica, because they realized that the Resurrection made everything different, and was a chance to recall and receive the new life Jesus had given them. It wasn’t Saturday (that was the Jewish Sabbath); it wasn’t Wednesday. The day for Christians was Sunday, and it was a day that they put on the back burner all other commitments, even sports, and all assembled to worship God, to give Him their death (their sins) so that they might receive back their resurrection.
If we truly want to be great again, then it starts with going to Mass every Sunday, except in cases of ill health, extreme distance from a church, or dangerous weather conditions, and being renewed in mind, body, and spirit by the power of Jesus’ Resurrection. Only by taking hold of the gift of new life that Jesus offers us and putting aside the old self, the old leaven, will this world be transformed into the place that God has created it to be. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Today Christ Jesus has risen from the dead; may His Resurrection transform us into the saints we are called to be by our baptism.
