Easter Sunday by Leo Carty

Lenten Season/Easter Season

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the last hurrah before the Catholic season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It also has links to the Christmas season through the period known as Carnival.

Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras, literally “Fat Tuesday,” has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the “last hurrah” before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That’s why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of street-sweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.

What is less known about Mardi Gras is its relation to the Christmas season, through the ordinary-time interlude known in many Catholic cultures as Carnival. (Ordinary time, in the Christian calendar, refers to the normal “ordering” of time outside of the Advent/Christmas or Lent/Easter seasons.

Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning “farewell to the flesh.” Like many Catholic holidays and seasonal celebrations, it likely has its roots in pre-Christian traditions based on the seasons. Some believe the festival represented the few days added to the lunar calendar to make it coincide with the solar calendar; since these days were outside the calendar, rules and customs were not obeyed. Others see it as a late-winter celebration designed to welcome the coming spring. As early as the middle of the second century, the Romans observed a Fast of 40 Days, which was preceded by a brief season of feasting, costumes and merrymaking.
From: American Catholic. org

Celebrating Christ in Our Midst

Christmas is both the beginning and the end of the Church year. At Christmas we celebrate Christ coming among us in human form at Bethlehem and we turn our attention to the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time. During Advent, the four weeks of joyful and spiritual expectation preceding the feast, the readings from the Bible are selected in the light of this two-fold theme. The readings of the first Sunday concern Christ’s second coming at the end of time. On the second and third Sundays of Advent we read of John the Baptist. During the final days of Advent we read about those events that immediately prepared for the Lord’s birth (the first chapters of Matthew and Luke).

During this season the Old Testament readings are prophecies about the Messiah and messianic times, especially those wonderful and hope-filled passages from the Book of Isaiah: “One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again….” (2:4b); “The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them…” (11:6b).

Sunday is the original and oldest Christian feast. The early Christian communities began to celebrate the Sunday that fell closest to the Jewish Passover with special solemnity. This “Christian Passover” became what we now call Easter. As Easter celebrates Christ’s passage from death to life, the feast soon became the community’s special time for the Sacrament of Baptism, the Christian’s passage from death to life in Christ.

In the fourth and fifth centuries the Church developed a system of rites to accompany the faith journey of those who wished to become Christians. Today these rites have been revived as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). The final 40 days of this journey became what we now call Lent.

Baptism is the key to understanding the selection of Scripture passages read during Lent. For example, the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. Lent is a retreat before baptism. In the Gospel Jesus retreats into the desert to pray. The principal symbol of Baptism is water; the desert causes us to yearn for water. In all four Gospels the temptation stories follow immediately upon the account of Jesus’ baptism.

On the second Sunday we hear of the transfiguration and we see Jesus in his Easter clothes. We can imagine those elected for baptism receiving their white garment as they come up from the baptismal pool on Easter.
The readings for Cycle A express the baptism themes particularly well and may be used every year on the third, fourth and fifth Sundays of Lent. On the third Sunday in Cycle A, for example, we find Jesus at a well in Samaria where a woman asks for living water. We cannot help but think of the living waters of our baptism.
On the fourth Sunday we read the story of the man who was born blind. As Jesus tells him “Go wash in the pool of Siloam (which means Sent)” (John 9:7); we remember how we went and washed in Christ; the “one who was sent into this world” for our salvation. We came up from that pool illumined and able to see in a new way.
And on the fifth Sunday, when we hear the story of Lazarus coming forth from the tomb, we think of the newly baptized coming forth from the baptismal tomb released from the bondage of sin.

Our radical transformation by being baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ is the focus of the Easter celebration. The Resurrection is the central mystery of our faith. Easter is so important that we cannot even begin to celebrate it adequately in one day—it takes a week, the Easter Octave. And even more, it takes a week of weeks (7 x 7)—50 days, a Pentecost (pent ekonta, Greek for 50). Each day of these Fifty Days is Easter. Notice that we speak of the Sundays of Easter, not the Sundays after Easter. Pentecost is the final day of our celebration of Easter.

During these Fifty Days we look at our Christian roots. Each day at Mass, both Sundays and weekdays, we read from the Acts of the Apostles. The newly baptized have not only “put on Christ,” they have put on his Body, the Church, and they (and we) take time during these Fifty Days to remember who that family, that From: The American Catholic .org. “CThomas Richstatter, O.F.M., S.T.D., has a doctorate in liturgy and sacramental theology from the Institut Catholique of Paris. A popular writer and lecturer, Father Richstatter teaches at St. Meinrad (Indiana) School of Theology.

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS
JOHN PAUL II
FOR LENT 2005

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

1. Each year, the Lenten Season is set before us as a good opportunity for the intensification of prayer and penance, opening hearts to the docile welcoming of the divine will. During Lent, a spiritual journey is outlined for us that prepares us to relive the Great Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. This is done primarily by listening to the Word of God more devoutly and by practising mortification more generously, thanks to which it is possible to render greater assistance to those in need.

This year, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to bring to your attention a theme which is rather current, well-illustrated by the following verse from Deuteronomy: “Loving the Lord…means life to you, and length of days…” (30:20). These are the words that Moses directs to the people, inviting them to embrace the Covenant with Yahweh in the country of Moab, “that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him.” (30:19-20). The fidelity to this divine Covenant is for Israel a guarantee of the future: “that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.” (30:20). According to the Biblical understanding, reaching old age is a sign of the Most High’s gracious benevolence. Longevity appears, therefore, as a special divine gift.
It is upon this theme that I would like to ask you to reflect during this Lent, in order to deepen the awareness of the role that the elderly are called to play in society and in the Church, and thus to prepare your hearts for the loving welcome that should always be reserved for them. Thanks to the contribution of science and medicine, one sees in society today a lengthening of the human life span and a subsequent increase in the number of elderly. This demands a more specific attention to the world of so-called “old” age, in order to help its members to live their full potential by placing them at the service of the entire community. The care of the elderly, above all when they pass through difficult moments, must be of great concern to all the faithful, especially in the ecclesial communities of Western societies, where the problem is particularly present.
2. Human life is a precious gift to be loved and defended in each of its stages. The Commandment, “You shall not kill!”, always requires respecting and promoting human life, from its beginning to its natural end. It is a command that applies even in the presence of illness and when physical weakness reduces the person’s ability to be self-reliant. If growing old, with its inevitable conditions, is accepted serenely in the light of faith, it can become an invaluable opportunity for better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence.

The elderly need to be understood and helped in this perspective. I wish, here, to express my appreciation to those who dedicate themselves to fulfilling these needs, and I also call upon other people of good will to take advantage of Lent for making their own personal contribution. This will allow many elderly not to think of themselves as a burden to the community, and sometimes even to their own families, living in a situation of loneliness that leads to the temptation of isolating themselves or becoming discouraged.

It is necessary to raise the awareness in public opinion that the elderly represent, in any case, a resource to be valued. For this reason, economic support and legislative initiatives, which allow them not to be excluded from social life, must be strengthened. In truth, during the last decade, society has become more attentive to their needs, and medicine has developed palliative cures that, along with an integral approach to the sick person, are particularly beneficial for long-term patients.

3. The greater amount of free time in this stage of life offers the elderly the opportunity to face the primary issues that perhaps had been previously set aside, due to concerns that were pressing or considered a priority nonetheless. Knowledge of the nearness of the final goal leads the elderly person to focus on that which is essential, giving importance to those things that the passing of years do not destroy.

Precisely because of this condition, the elderly person can carry out his or her role in society. If it is true that man lives upon the heritage of those who preceded him, and that his future depends definitively on how the cultural values of his own people are transmitted to him, then the wisdom and experience of the elderly can illuminate his path on the way of progress toward an ever more complete form of civilization.

How important it is to rediscover this mutual enrichment between different generations! The Lenten Season, with its strong call to conversion and solidarity, leads us this year to focus on these important themes which concern everyone. What would happen if the People of God yielded to a certain current mentality that considers these people, our brothers and sisters, as almost useless when they are reduced in their capacities due to the difficulties of age or sickness? Instead, how different the community would be, if, beginning with the family, it tries always to remain open and welcoming towards them.

4. Dear brothers and sisters, during Lent, aided by the Word of God, let us reflect upon how important it is that each community accompany with loving understanding those who grow old. Moreover, one must become accustomed to thinking confidently about the mystery of death, so that the definitive encounter with God occur in a climate of interior peace, in the awareness that He “who knit me in my mother’s womb” (cf. Psalm 139:13b) and who willed us “in his image and likeness” (cf. Gen. 1:26) will receive us.

Mary, our guide on the Lenten journey, leads all believers, especially the elderly, to an ever more profound knowledge of Christ dead and risen, who is the ultimate reason for our existence. May she, the faithful servant of her divine Son, together with Saints Ann and Joachim, intercede for each one of us “now and at the hour of our death”.

My Blessing to All!

JOHN PAUL II