From Our Deacon
This Second Sunday of Easter is a day that should be celebrated with the same enthusiasm and joy as the previous Sunday. The Church has customarily celebrated this first week after the holy night of Easter as a major Sunday. We have lived the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus with great intensity, and through this redemptive action, we have been able to enjoy the fruits of liberation and transformation in our lives.
This new life that Christ offers us becomes more apparent in the neophytes. In the first centuries of Christianity, the newly baptized at the Easter Vigil continued to wear the white garment during these eight days, a symbol of the beginning of their new life and dignity. On this second Sunday, the season of Easter begins until Pentecost. Fifty days to deeply reflect on that new life and dignity that all the baptized have.
It is a pity that normally Lent is celebrated with more intensity than the fifty days of Easter, being that Lent is only the preparation for Easter, which then leads us to its culmination with the celebration of Pentecost. This is a time in which we reaffirm the renewal of our baptism and confirmation as children of God and as a community; the mystical body of the risen Christ.
And so that we do not forget that profound reason that moved the Holy Trinity to carry out this plan of salvation for all humanity, this Sunday is called: “Divine Mercy Sunday”.
On the Sundays of Easter, we are presented with the reality of what each Christian Sunday means throughout the year. Frequently we have turned the Sunday celebration into the mere fulfillment of a duty, of a precept, or simply an act of individual devotion, of private contact between God and our own soul, without reference to the community or to the construction of the Kingdom of God.
Today’s Good News of the Gospel teaches us the content and importance of our Sunday celebrations. Do we attend this celebration as the culmination of our week: of our desires, jobs, failures, tasks, achievements, etc.? On Sundays, we celebrate all of that, in the community, with the Risen Lord and the power of the Spirit. And once fed and strengthened and, above all, loved by Christ, we are sent back to our homes, to society, and to all of creation with a renewed spirit and new strength for the mission that consists of living and collaborating, every day with the Kingdom of God. Each and everyone, according to their charism, in synodality: “as disciples going out together.”
Br. Salvador Mejia, OFM
Pastoral Associate, Mission San Luis Rey Parish
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