As we celebrate the coming Easter week, the Church makes each day during the week after to be a mini-Easter. On those weekdays, the Mass requires the inclusion of the Gloria, continuing the explosion of joy from the Easter Vigil. The preface before the Eucharistic Prayer is the same as was used on Easter Sunday. Throughout the week, the special inclusions to the solemn First Eucharistic Prayer from Easter Day are to be used if that option is part of the Mass. And a double Alleluia is used at the dismissal from the Mass.
These indications of the extension of Easter joy will, of course, only be apparent to those who attend the weekday Masses. Nevertheless, they are important guides to faith for two reasons.
First, our faith is expressed by the Church’s prayer in her liturgy, and especially in the Mass. As Christians and Catholics we do not simply celebrate our faith privately. Faith and its public expression in prayer go together. Through the Mass and liturgy, we join ourselves to the faith and its expression that has been used by the faithful of all centuries who have gone before us, as well as those who will come after. It is part of the unity in time and space of our faith that is the reason we are called Catholic which means, precisely, universal.
Second, the promises of faith are validated by the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. That includes the promise that we shall also share in that Resurrection. “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him [on] the last day.” (Jn 6, 40).
For this reason, as St. Paul tells us, our faith rises or falls on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” (1 Cor, 15: 17-19).
Faith in the resurrection of Jesus is inherently linked also to our belief in the possibility of the forgiveness of sins. God not only can forgive our sins, but He also wishes to do so. For this reason, Easter Sunday, the following Easter week and indeed the whole Easter Season concluding with Pentecost Sunday is a reason for hope for all who believe.
In this Jubilee Year 2025, dedicated to hope, Easter has a special importance. Even in the Gospels, we see a lack of hope among Jesus’s followers following the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene weeps and pleads with the gardener because she believes the reality of death is so strong that the only question is, where is the body of Jesus? The holy women go to the tomb to anoint the dead body of the Jesus whom they loved. The Apostles are gathered in the upper room with doors locked, cowering in fear. What they all share is a lack of hope.
So too, for many, is the fear that our sins, the evil moments that we have consented to and participated in in life, make us unworthy forever of God’s love. For others, the lack of belief in God gives nowhere to turn to rectify the evil they know they have committed.
It is the Church’s tradition that Mary kept the faith and hope of the Church on Holy Saturday. The world and the Church in that sense never lost hope. The story of Jesus’s appearances, recounted especially during Easter week, is the story of hope restored to those who had lost it on Good Friday. Our share in the Resurrection and the accompanying forgiveness of sins overcomes the human temptation to despair, to think that this promise is simply too good to be true.
The inevitability of death and the despair of not being forgiven are as alive now as they were 2,000 years ago. For that reason, our celebration of Easter, which gives hope and peace of heart, is as important as it has ever been.
