Kathryn Lopez
1.
Resurrected Christ Appears to the Virgin Mary, Miraflores Altarpiece (detail), R. van der Weyden, @smbmuseum, Berlin. pic.twitter.com/xG4zz4kxV4
— Maria VickroyPeralta (@MVickroyPeralta) April 5, 2015
2. Maybe give the glorious Exsultet a read every day of the Easter season. To keep the flame burning.
3.
We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song." – Saint Pope John Paul II
Happy Easter, apostles of prayer. pic.twitter.com/cJNsDkqe11
— ApostleshipOfPrayer (@aposprayer) April 5, 2015
Let God’s people then recognize that they are a new creation in Christ, and with all vigilance understand by Whom they have been adopted and Whom they have adopted. Let not the things, which have been made new, return to their ancient instability; and let not him who has ‘put his hand to the plough’ forsake his work, but rather attend to that which he sows than look back to that which he has left behind. Let no one fall back into that from which he has risen, but, even though from bodily weakness he still languishes under certain maladies, let him urgently desire to be healed and raised up.
More here.
5.
Dawn on the first Easter day: stained glass window from Providence College's chapel https://t.co/uKKSqdmZHB
— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) April 5, 2015
6. Fr. Robert Barron writes in Magnificat:
How many martyrs are there to Osiris, Hercules, of Dionysus? The answer is none! No one dies for a mythic abstraction, but people were more than willing to die for their friend, “whome they had looked upon and their hands touched,” and who had come back from the dead. To grasp this still-startling truth is to grasp the meaning of Easter.
There is no equivocating. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead- and he rises from the dead in his body in his blood- he rises in the flesh. This is what we witness to today, what we celebrate, what we Christians believe. There is not for us Christians a retreat into comfortable symbols or banalities about ethics. Our faith is uncomfortable, for God in Christ does what he should not be able to do and asks us to believe and do what the world deems impossible.
This uncomfortable faith in God in Christ, who becomes man, who dies and rises from the dead, becomes an oath we take in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. In the Eucharist, the divine life of the living Lord Jesus is given to us and before we receive that life, we testify that we believe in him, in his resurrection, and that he lives, not just in memory or symbol, but also in reality. Jesus Christ is alive now and forever.
On this, our Sunday Morning, the first day of a new creation, the day when all humanity received from God the news that this world is not all that there is for us, we turn away from the graves of modern doubts and give ourselves over to faith in the Lord Jesus, in whom we place all our hope, in whom we profess our faith.
Amen! Alleluia!
8.
"On the first day of the week Mary Magdalen came to the tomb." A reflection on the Gospel and prayer for Priests. http://t.co/qxTQ6KqvTo
— Adopt-a-Priest (@adopt_a_priest) April 5, 2015
More on praying for priests here.
9. Dorothy Day:
On Easter Day, on awakening late after the long midnight services in our parish church, I read over the last chapter of the four Gospels and felt that I received great light and understanding with the reading of them. “They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. How do we know we believe? How do we know we indeed have faith? Because we have seen his hands and his feet in the poor around us. He has shown himself to us in them. We start by loving them for him, and we soon love them for themselves, each one a unique person, most special!
In that last glorious chapter of St. Luke, Jesus told his followers, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones as you can see I have.” They were still unconvinced, for it seemed too good to be true. “So He asked them, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ They offered him a piece of fish they had cooked which he took and ate before their eyes.”
How can I help but think of these things every time I sit down at Chrystie Street or Peter Maurin Farm and look around at the tables filled with the unutterably poor who are going through their long-continuing crucifixion. It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path.
Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across from the Catholic Worker office, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that He is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask.
The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
10.
"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song." – St. John Paul II pic.twitter.com/2s5KWXxle2
— Brandon Vogt (@BrandonVogt) April 5, 2015
11. Pope Francis:
“Entering the tomb”. It is good for us, on this Vigil night, to reflect on the experience of the women, which also speaks to us. For that is why we are here: to enter, to enter into the Mystery which God has accomplished with his vigil of love.
The women who were Jesus’ disciples teach us all of this. They kept watch that night, together with Mary. And she, the Virgin Mother, helped them not to lose faith and hope. As a result, they did not remain prisoners of fear and sadness, but at the first light of dawn they went out carrying their ointments, their hearts anointed with love. They went forth and found the tomb open. And they went in. They had kept watch, they went forth and they entered into the Mystery. May we learn from them to keep watch with God and with Mary our Mother, so that we too may enter into the Mystery which leads from death to life.
12.
Extraordinary. Pope Benedict XVI on Easter. Awake, O sleeper, awake! pic.twitter.com/WwMT5ZBRCy
— Catholic Thinker (@ThinkerCatholic) April 5, 2015
13. More B16:
At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.
14. From my interview with Mother Cecilia of the Benedictines of Mary, currently on the top of Billboard/Amazon/itunes:
Q: What is “Haec Dies” all about?
A: “Haec Dies” is sung at least ten times on Easter, from Psalm 117:24, translated as “This is the day that the Lord has made.” It is the Easter song, as Easter is the day that has changed all our days since the Resurrection took place. It is truly the first day of the new Creation, when all the world was made anew by Christ’s rising. We sing three versions on the recording: one in English, and two in Latin, one in four parts and another in eight parts.
Q: How about “Exultemus et Laetemur,” another one of your tracks?
A: “Exultemus et Laetemur” are the very next words after “Haec Dies” in Psalm 117, so I am glad this was the next question! This is the Day in which “we will rejoice and be glad!” We included the lovely Medieval chant in the album which recalls the events of Easter morning. It is a cry to all Creation to remember Who it is that renews it. This is only natural in supernatural love: We want even His inanimate creation to proclaim His praise.
Q: Why is the “Regina Caeli” so important?
A: “Regina Caeli” is the hymn to Our Lady, sung or said four times a day at Eastertide. It was a prayer that was traditionally first sung by the angels, telling Mary to rejoice because her Son who was dead is now risen.
Q: Who do you sing for?
A: A priest once gave the whole community a salient piece of advice some years ago: Sing for an audience of One. I might extend that a little, because while we truly sing for Our Lord, it is in the company of His Mother, and all His angels and saints. One young sister joked before the recording fame that if anyone ever asked her what she did, she would say: “I am a vocalist. I sing each night for the King of Kings! It’s a full house each night.” That is really the spirit. We give our voices first to our Maker. That others now hear it is incidental. I do not mean that in a high-handed way. It is beautiful that others can hear these songs of love without our going out to them, but we are singing first for Him Who first loved us. In time, and after we are able complete our planned construction project for a proper Church, we hope to welcome anyone who wishes to hear the Divine Office sung eight times each day.
15. This made me smile:
Peace to all! #Easter Vigil, Our Lady of Mercy #nh (& thanks @kathrynlopez for the #Lent Stations prompts) http://t.co/FO9jscQyvn
— Ellen Kolb (@Leaven4theLoaf) April 5, 2015
Thank you, to all who tweeted #StationsoftheCross this #Lent – especially @SrMaryK.
16. On Easter and the Year of Consecrated Life.
17.
Sermon for Easter Sunday: examining the evidence for Christ's Resurrection
http://t.co/9i5lvWcQXU
— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) April 5, 2015
18. Return to Galilee. (Pope Francis in 2014)
19.
"The paschal revelation gives us the right to sing "Alleluia" in a world overcast by the shadow of death". Benedict XVI
— FrSteveGrunow (@FrSteveGrunow) April 5, 2015
20.
Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life's own Champion, slain, yet lives to reign: http://t.co/O3xehRwiGa
— Fr James Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) April 5, 2015
PLUS: This puts things in perspective:
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