Easter in the New Millennium is when Christ is Crucified

David Martin | The Daily Knight

While many today still relish the sublime Feast of Easter, a great many have disregarded the true grandeur of the feast and have somehow construed the idea that Easter is a humanist party or occasion of human encounter to be celebrated right inside the Church.

If there is one day of the year when women come into the Church indecently dressed with their tights, low-cuts, and exposed midriffs, when the people socialize and carry on right in the pews about their next vacation or trip to Vegas, and when the noise of worldly chatter resounds throughout the Church, it is on Easter Sunday.

And the worst of it is that this merry-making is carried on under the illusion that the Holy Spirit is the guide of all this chatter. Easter is especially the one day of the year when Christ is crucified in his Church, for his people refuse to resurrect from worldly ways but prefer to remain is the sepulcher of sin—the very sin that places the nails into his hands anew.

The Easter Mass is Still the Sacrifice of Calvary

With this, people are forgetting that the liturgical act of worship on Easter Sunday is still the Sacrifice of the Mass, that is, the reenactment of Calvary, no different than any other Mass. The Feast of the Resurrection is simply honored at the Easter Mass, but it is still the Mass where Christ’s Crucifixion is reenacted on the altar, though in a mystical, unbloody way, but nonetheless the real thing, not a mere commemoration. The Holy Sacrifice is still the centerpiece of our worship on Easter, the same Sacrifice that purchased for us the Resurrection, and not vice versa. The purchased fruits of Christ’s Sacrifice were simply applied on the day of his Resurrection.

But even if Mass weren’t offered on Easter Sunday, the people would still be obliged to worship in tearful, holy silence because they’re in the House of God and because they are honoring the Resurrection that opened the entire treasury of Heaven to us. Does this not warrant reverence and respect from us after the Easter Mass?

To talk and embrace outside or in the parish hall after Mass is perfectly right, but not inside the Church when people are still praying and when Our Lord is in grief over all the irreverence in his Church. What he wants on Easter Sunday is more reparation and thanksgiving after Mass, not a social fest.

On the Sunday after Easter the Church celebrates the Feast of Divine Mercy, but let us not forget that “His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him.” (St. Luke 1:50)