The Easter Season began yesterday with the Resurrection of Our Lord. Now that it’s Monday, Easter isn’t over, but rather, the Church’s 50 days of celebration are just beginning.
The Church “set[s] aside particular times for a particular spiritual focus. The Church provides a way to enter into that particular time … each of us have a choice about how much we’re really going to enter into that,” explains Fr. Boniface Hicks, Benedictine monk and regular contributor to The Inner Life.
Your experience of the Easter season may be different depending on how you immersed yourself in Lent and the Sacred Triduum, and “how much [you] allow the liturgy, the Church’s celebrations and prayer, to enter into [your] daily life.”
The beauty of Easter is seen in many ways during the liturgy, such as the singing of the Gloria, the Victimae Paschali Laudes, Easter flowers, incense, and a great sense of joy. “The Church is offering us a lot to help us to really internalize and continue to live out the incredible gift of Easter, that Christ is risen from the dead and that He gives us new life,” says Fr. Boniface. “He gives us a new beginning. He gives us hope in the midst of the deepest darkness. He gives us a reason to persevere when we are overwhelmed with suffering. He gives us a new horizon to lift our heads and gaze upon.”
“We want to not make Easter just a little blip on the scale, a day that we have a couple pieces of candy and a nice ham and then otherwise just move on with our life,” says Fr. Boniface. We are called to bring the joy of Easter into our homes and carry that joy in our hearts. “The more that we can carry that with us, the more it will change us. That our religion is not just something we do from time to time, but it really becomes the driving force, the life and strength that carries us and moves us from day to day.”
Tune in to The Inner Life weekdays at 11am CT only on Relevant Radio.