Follow Our Lord now and into eternity with joyful perseverance

Having just celebrated our greatest feast of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, we continue to celebrate that moment of our salvation in the Octave of Easter, and then throughout the Easter season.

The Octave of Easter which begins on Easter Sunday and ends on Divine Mercy Sunday helps us relive spiritually that moment which has forever changed the course of human history. Jesus, crucified and risen, has given us what we could never have obtained for ourselves, eternal life and the very means to heaven. Then, the following weeks of the Easter season which will end on Pentecost Sunday, reveal for us the power of the Resurrection in the lives of the Apostles, the first disciples and all who heard the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel, were baptized and lived and died in the Risen Lord Jesus.

How should we celebrate the Easter season? First, with profound joy and gratitude to Almighty God for the gift of His Son Who is our Redeemer. Second, with the same and even greater zeal with which we celebrated Lent. Our daily prayer and Mass attendance, our many good works of mercy and charity and our real penance should continue so that we can live a life of true imitation of Christ.

In the course of the Easter season, we celebrate the solemnities of Easter, the Ascension of the Lord and Pentecost. Each of these solemnities has a direct bearing on our salvation. However, in addition to these solemnities we celebrate the feasts of several saints who have gone before us in faith and have left us excellent examples of how to imitate Christ in the moments of our lives.

One of the reasons the Easter season is longer than Lent is to be found by reading the Acts of the Apostles, which we do throughout the Easter season. The impact of the Lord’s Resurrection from the dead on the Church and on the world cannot be minimized even by those who do not believe. Jesus Christ has changed the course and the trajectory of all history by His life, death and Resurrection. Not to believe this is to be foolish, but to believe this with joyful perseverance is to follow Him now and into eternity. This is what we have been made for and this is why He came to us in time.