Per Christum

Below is an English translation of an Easter poem of Venantius Fortunatus from the 6th century. You may recognize that that the hymn “Hail Thee Festival Day” is based on this poem. The poem uses the metaphor of spring to describe the resurrection, and is very beautiful.

The seasons blush
varied with the flowery, fair weather,
and the gate of the pole
lies open with greater light.
His path in the heaven
raises the fire-breathing sun higher,
who goes forth on his course,
and enters the waters of the ocean.
Armed with rays
traversing the liquid elements,
in this brief night
he stretches out the day in a circle.
The brilliant firmament
puts forth its clear countenance,
and the bright stars show their joy.
The fruitful earth pours forth its gifts
with varied increase,
when the year has well returned its vernal riches.
Soft beds of violets paint the purple plain;
the meadows are green with plants,
and the plant shines with its leaves.
By degrees gleaming brightness of the flowers comes forth;
all the herbs smile with their blossoms.
The seed being deposited,
the corn springs up far and wide in the fields,
promising to be able to overcome the hunger of the husbandman.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Sunday of so many, many names:

Second Sunday of Easter. Since the reforms of the 1960’s, this is the common name in all the liturgical texts such as the Sacramentary, Lectionary, etc.

Octave of Easter. Once the Church had many octaves throughout the year. The Octave of Easter can refer to either the eighth day or all eight days of the Feast of Easter which ends today.

In the Eastern Churches, this is known as Thomas Sunday as the gospel is always taken from John 20 and the story of doubting Thomas which occurred one week after the day of the Resurrection. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though most of us Westerners tend to naturally make a huge deal about Christmas (for good reason!), sometimes we can forget that Easter is a very important feast and Church season too. In fact, technically, it is Easter that is the high point of the liturgical year, not Christmas. Of course, Christmas and Easter are not in competition, and are on the same team, since both celebrate important components of the mystery of our redemption by Christ.

Have a look at what the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar says about Easter and the Easter season:

- The fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, or better as one “great Sunday.” These above all others are the days for the singing of the Alleluia.

- The Sundays of this season rank as the paschal Sundays and, after Easter Sunday itself, are called the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Sundays of Easter. The period of fifty sacred days ends on Pentecost Sunday.

- The first eight days of the Easter season make up the octave of Easter and are celebrated as solemnities of the Lord.

- On the fortieth day after Easter the Ascension is celebrated, except in places where, not being a holy day of obligation, it has been transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter

- The weekdays after the Ascension until the Saturday before Pentecost inclusive are a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

As you can see, Easter is a very important time in the liturgical year. In fact, every day of the Octave of Easter (today included) is celebrated as a solemnity. So, enjoy the Easter season. Feast. Celebrate. Yell out those “Alleluias” at Mass and during Morning and Evening Prayer with gusto, and celebrate the resurrection of Christ like…well…like it’s Christmas!

“Easter Lights” image from christmas-decorations-gifts-store.com

Ok, I grant that a number of non-Catholics go out of the way to call the holiday “Resurrection Sunday“  a few seem to have gravitated towards calling it “Pascha” like Eastern Christians do…  Some of them dislike the term “Easter” wrongly thinking it connotes paganism. (Taylor Marshall has the 411 on that with today’s entry Why is the festival of Christ’s Resurrection called Easter? - it is about as “pagan” to use the term “Easter” as it is “Thursday” or “January” or “Sunday“[!] for that matter!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Dyngus Day. Polish Easter Monday’s traditions reach back over a millenium to pre-Christian times. A rite of Spring in the old country, it was a festival which included pranks, singing, dancing, feasting, revelers throwing water on each other, and boys chasing girls with fresh spring willow switches to flirt with them by swatting them on their legs. Ah, those Poles are so romantic!

Today Dyngus continues in Poland and is a major celebration in Chicago, South Bend and Elkhart, Ind. and Buffalo. N.Y. Buffalo’s tradition is a parade with the hanging of the switches on the door. South Bend’s tradition has redefined the event in the MidWest, making it a day for politicians to mingle with the drunken who are also stuffed beyond comprehension with Polish sausage.

40 years ago Bobby Kennedy came to South Bend for the Dyngus and today Bill and Chelsea renewed South Bend’s central place in presidential politics at the old West Side Democratic Club, returning the city to its rightful place of national prominence.

Happy Dyngus Day!!

“…I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano.” Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam.

“For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom…

I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.” It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves.”

More from Zenit.

Was just curious to find out if any of our dozen readers or so out there were received into the Church this weekend. If so, welcome home! Also feel free to leave a note in the combox.

I know more than a few of our regular combox warriors as well as (a majority?) of our contributors made that journey - some in just the past several years. For them, how long have you been Catholic?

Anyone picking out swim apparel and eyeing the Tiber for next year out there?

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing Life! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

- Byzantine Kontakion for Easter

Christ is risen! Al-Masih qam! Ha-Mashiach qam! Khristos voskrese! Christus resurrexit! Christus ist auferstanden! Christos aneste!

(Resurrection by Piero della Francesca)

Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

And this will be the last of my Holy Week/Easter reflections, so for those of you who may have been annoyed by them, that’s one more reason to rejoice!

At the Easter Vigil last night I thought back over the accounts of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, his passion and his resurrection. I thought about the different people I identified with: the crowds whose shouts of “hosanna” soon turn to cries of “crucify him”, the spineless Pilate who has an innocent man beaten and crucified out of fear of those above and below him, the despairing traitor Judas, the repentant denier Peter, the awed solider who proclaims “surely, this was the Son of God, the hopeless disciples hiding behind locked doors while the Lord is in the tomb and the joyful women who hear the angel say “he is not here for his is risen.”

Placing myself in those scenes, I identify with all of the above. I realized, however, that it’s not any of those people that the Scriptures invite us to walk the road of Holy Week with. We, by grace, are invited to walk this path with Christ himself.

Those of us who are Christians know, as Christ did, that when he enters Jerusalem he is headed for a cross not an earthly throne. With Christ we know which diners at the table in the upper room will deny and betray him. We know the contents of the cup he is about to drink as he enters the garden to pray. We know that he will not receive justice from his own people or from Pilate. We know as he cries “it is finished” that this is not the end. We know what those who come to the tomb on Easter morning will find.

This is what it means to be a Christan: to be made an heir with Christ and to be adopted as sons and daughters of God receiving by grace what Christ has by nature. The first Adam fell into a grave and took us with him, but the second Adam descended into that grave and rose again, bringing us out.

Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Happy Easter to all contributors and readers. May God richly bless all of you during this Eastertide.

Christ is Risen!!

H/T: A Conservative Blog for Peace where it is written:

Fascinating

Can we be as precise as to say [the Crucifixion happened at] 3pm, the Jewish “ninth hour”? Four years ago, a pair of astronomers claimed to have scientifically verified this. Their computer programme looking at star activity between 26AD and 35AD found the first full moon after the vernal equinox was registered on Friday 7 April AD 30 and Friday 3 April at 3pm on 33AD. The solar eclipse, described in the Bible, was only visible in Jerusalem on the latter date.

From The Spectator.

For Eastern Catholics (and those in the Orthodox Church of Finland!) who use the same reckoning for Easter as the Roman church, Lent (or the Great Fast) begins today. Every few years, Eastern and Western reckoning for the date of Easter coincides (like last year). Most years it does not. Easter will next occur on March 23 in the year 2160 for the western churches… Frankly, I hope to not be around to see it!

Some have asked why the Eastern Great Fast doesn’t start on Wednesday. It is a simple matter of reckoning what days count for Lent. In the Latin Church Lent starts Ash Wednesday and ends Holy Saturday. Not counting Sundays that gives 40 days.

For the Eastern Churches Lent starts the Monday before the Latin Ash Wednesday and ends Holy Thursday. Not counting Sundays that gives 40 days.

By and large, we don’t do ashes. Although the Maronite Catholics do celebrate “Ash Monday.”

A venerable bishop who came to our parish to give a mission made an excellent observation worth passing on. 40 days represents a tithe of the year - rounding up, it is a little more than 10% of 365 (or 366!) days for the year. In a special way, we are offering a tithe of our year during this season.

For you Roman types, don’t eat too many pączki tomorrow!

Hail thee, festival day!
Blessed day to be hallowed forever;
Day when our Lord was raised,
Breaking the kingdom of death.

Lo, the fair beauty of the earth,
From the death of the winter arising!
Every good gift of the year
Now with its Master returns.

Hail thee, festival day!
Blessed day to be hallowed forever;
Day when our Lord was raised,
Breaking the kingdom of death.

Rise from the grave now, O Lord,
The author of life and creation.
Treading the pathway of death,
New life You give to us all.

“Hail Thee Festival Day”:
words by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609)

In the West, yesterday (Palm Sunday) began Holy Week. Holy Week is the final week of Lent leading up to Easter, and recalls the final events of the life of Jesus, including his death on a cross. Holy Week is a busy time for most Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Lutherans, and others.

I wish everyone a blessed and meaningful Holy Week. May we truly experience in symbol the crucifixion and death of Christ as we prepare for the Easter season, when we celebrate his resurrection and victory over death.