THE GLOBE
PO BOX 5079 (51102)
1825 JACKSON ST.
SIOUX CITY, IA (51105)
712.255.2550
800.352.9035
WWW.CATHOLICGLOBE.ORG

EASTER RELIGION EDITOR

By Father Dennis Meinen
View from the scooter

Imagine you were the person at your local newspaper in charge of Matters Concerning Religion and you get the following question in the mail, “A friend of mine always makes such a big deal about Easter! I thought Easter marked the end of Lent.  Now this friend says it’s not just for one day. What’s going on here?  The letter is signed, “Curious.”

You ask all the priests and sisters at Holy Spirit Retirement Home for advice and this is what you write to curious:

Dear Curious,
These days and weeks after Easter Sunday are indeed significant. We Christians are an Easter people. The Resurrection is the cornerstone of our faith. Without the belief that Christ conquered death, and our hope that we will share in that same victory over the grave, St. Paul says our faith is pointless or worthless.

So we celebrate with great fanfare that we are a redeemed people in Jesus Christ. Every year our forty-day Lenten preparation of fasting and penance leads us to the feasting and joy of the fifty days of Easter. This unbelievable news that the risen Christ is in our midst draws us into a festival that cannot be contained in a single day. “The Fifty Days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, or better as one ‘great Sunday’” (General Norms for the Liturgical Year and Calendar, 22).

Like the show “Mission Impossible,” your mission, if you choose to accept, is to learn how to celebrate a fifty-day feast. ( I wonder how many Catholics do not think of Easter as an extended feast?)

We tend to see Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost as three separate, independent feast days, each with its own themes. The truth of the matter is that they are all part and parcel of the other, intertwined and borne of the same glorious fact of Christ’s Resurrection.

This is a perfect time to remind ourselves of that joyous and significant connection!