Easter is such an amazing holiday and awesome Holy Day that the Church celebrates it for an octave -- eight days! We are currently smack-dab in the middle of the Octave of Easter, and so I wish happy Easter to all my readers.
I celebrated at three Masses. First, the Easter Vigil at the parish. Rather than have our own Vigil, as we did all through my undergrad, CCM caravaned at least 50 students up the road to the main church. We had four people entering the Church, their sponsors, a cadre of liturgical ministers, and some students simply excited for Easter happening. The Mass was beautiful and didn't feel like the 2h40min that it was.
The Easter Vigil is my favorite 3 hours of the year. Mass starts in darkness outside, where the Pascal candle is lit. It processes in, and the entire congregation lights tapers off of it. The priest sings a prayer called the Exultet. The song recalls God's saving work starting with the fall of Adam. Each verse begins with "This is the night..." that God performed some act of salvation. One line speaks of the Pascal candle as "a flame divided but undimmed" -- which perfectly captures the vision of the church lit by over a thousand candles. We then move into readings. There can be seven readings from the Old Testament that tell the history of the world and God's work in it -- his creation of the world and his unwavering love of humanity. We only did four this year. I understand the desire to keep Mass moving along, but I miss having the full story told. After the Old Testament readings, we sing the Gloria and the lights come on. God's salvation is fully realized in the Resurrection of his Son! It brings me so much joy that I have a huge smile just thinking about it.
After a reading from an Epistle and a Resurrection account from a Gospel, we move into the Sacraments of Initiation. People get baptized. People get confirmed. People who have been through a long, intense discernment and formation process finally profess the faith of the Church and are welcomed in. And we all get holy water sprinkled over us. From there the Mass proceeds as usual, with especial joy.
That was a rather long tangent, but my love of the Easter Vigil is pretty intense. I could go on and on. Instead, I'll fast forward to Sunday morning. After fighting an epic battle to return the cat to its indoor home, I headed out to CCM for a 7:30 Easter breakfast in fine Polish tradition, and then flew through two epic CCM Masses. In both, we had standing room only twenty minutes before the start of Mass. The first Mass ended only half an hour before the second one started, so we had people pouring in and out at the same time. Things were crowded and hectic, but so beautiful because 1) we were celebrating the Resurrection, victory, triumph, salvation, JOY! and 2) so many people came out to celebrate!
The most poignant moment came during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I was distributing the Host when the folk group started singing "How Beautiful." The song, besides being objectively beautiful, holds special meaning from my summer at Yosemite, a time of growth and healing. In addition, the refrain -- "How beautiful is the Body of Christ" -- overwhelmed me as I held the Body of my Risen Lord in my hands, days after his death, to share this experience of him with others, friends and strangers alike, all of whom are the Body of Christ.
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