April 9, 2023 - "Christ is Risen, Alleluia!"

Happy Easter to all who are at Mass on this most glorious Easter day.  I want to give a special word of welcome to our visitors who are joining us for Mass today.  I hope that you feel very welcome, for indeed you are!  I am going to pause this week from my current series of writing about the Doctors of the Church.  I will continue the series next week.  I want to focus on this very great day in our liturgical calendar. Often on Easter when I greet people after the Masses, people stop and ask me questions.  Let me mention some questions that I have been asked over the years on Easter Sunday and then answer the questions.
 
What do we mean when we say that Jesus rose again from the dead?  I thought that he died and rose only once. 
This is very true:  Christ died only once and rose only once.  Both the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed say that Jesus “rose again from the dead.”  The Greek word for resurrection is anastasis.  Greek is, of course, the language in which the New Testament is written.  Anastasis is a compound word.  The prefix ana means “up” or “again.”  Stasis is related to our word “stand.”  When the New Testament was translated into Latin from Greek, the word resurrectio was used to translate anastasis.  The Latin word resurrectio is also a compound word.  The prefix re means again.  The Latin word surgere is related to the English word “surge” and means to “rise” or “stand.”  The Latin word imitates the component parts of the Greek word.
 
When you see the word translated into English, often you see the translation “rose again” as a way to capture both parts of the Latin and Greek words.  Fr. Paul Turner, a noted pastor and liturgist, remarks that all this means is that Jesus rose in a more complete way than he did when he got up in the morning.  He rose into new life.  We say that he “rose again” as a way of saying that he rose in a powerful way.
 
What do people mean when they talk about making their Easter duty?
Today most people present themselves for Communion when they attend Mass.  But that was not always the case.  For many centuries people received communion infrequently.  As the Church stressed the belief in the real presence of Christ, people felt unworthy to receive Communion.  To handle this situation, the bishops gathered at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) required the faithful who had reached the age of discretion (typically the age of seven) to confess their sins at least once a year to their own parish priest and to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist reverently at least once a year at Easter.  A version of this rule is still in the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.  After their first communion, each of the faithful must receive Holy Communion at least once year during the Easter season (the fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost).  But for a just cause, people may receive at another time of year.  When Catholics reach the age of discretion, they are obliged to confess grave sin at least once a year to any priest, which many people have done during Lent to prepare for their Easter communion.  This recommendation in canon law is a minimal requirement.  I think that we should confess grave sin right away so that we can receive communion every Sunday!
 
Until next week…..Fr. John