May the risen Lord breathe on our minds and open our eyes
that we may know Him in the breaking of bread
and follow Him in His risen life.”
— Opening Prayer, Mass of Easter Day
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
The Easter Triduum — from Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday — is the culmination of the Church year because over these four days we celebrate in a special way the paschal mystery of Jesus’ suffering, dying and rising. Through His suffering and dying, sin and death are vanquished and no longer have a hold on us. Through His rising, Jesus’ divinity is revealed, while we are given new life, literally a share in God’s own divine life.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul emphasized to the nascent faith community in Corinth that Jesus’ rising is the source of our hope in our own bodily resurrection. There were skeptics even then, since bodily resurrection seemed incomprehensible in their worldview. However, he reminds his listeners that the risen Jesus appeared to St. Peter and the other apostles, St. Paul himself, and to hundreds of other witnesses, most of whom were still living at the time. He articulated this fundamental belief with confidence not only because of his own deeply held faith, but also because so many living witnesses could corroborate his claim and could vouch for having seen Jesus in His glorified body.
Jesus’ rising from the dead, of course, is elemental to our Christian faith. As St Paul reminds us, “[If] Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:17). For us, the resurrection is both an historical reality and a reality that transcends history. We cannot grasp completely, but only in faith, the mystery of our redemption and how it was accomplished. We are now twenty centuries away from those who witnessed the crucifixion and actually saw and experienced the risen Jesus after His death.
And yet, we are not really removed from these great events. We today have access to the reality of Jesus’ suffering, dying and rising. Each time we gather and partake in the Eucharist, Jesus’ suffering, dying and rising are made present for us. By grace we enter into the paschal mystery and its fruits are applied. Although we were not present with the Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, the disciple John, and others at the foot of the cross, although we were not present at the empty tomb, or in the upper room on that first Easter evening, we enter into and obtain the graces of these events each time we celebrate the Eucharist. Jesus assures us of this: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day…Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:54, 58).
It is not a coincidence that in Luke’s account of the resurrection, the first event that is described after the discovery of the empty tomb is the appearance of Jesus to the two disciples who are traveling on the road to Emmaus. They initially did not recognize the risen Jesus. At the urging of the disciples, however, Jesus stayed with them for a while. After joining them at table, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to them. At that, recalls Luke, their eyes were opened and they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:13-35). This wonderful event, so poignantly told by the evangelist, and so closely linked to the resurrection narrative, reminds us of the centrality of the Eucharist and how it connects us so intimately to Jesus’ redeeming love. It reminds us also of the hope we have in our own resurrection. It reminds us that our celebration of the great mysteries of our redemption is not confined to the Easter Triduum.
The Eucharist also expresses and makes real another important dimension of our Christian faith. To discover this dimension, we turn to Saint Paul yet again in his first letter to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor 10:16-17). Paul here is not only emphasizing the active, participatory nature of our bond with Christ and his salvific work, but he also is emphasizing the principle of unity, unity in Christ and with one another.
Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”), wrote, “Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives Himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to Him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, His own. Communion draws me out of myself toward Him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become ‘one body’, completely joined in a single existence” (14). In this, there is a call for Christian unity, for unity within our own Church, and in our own parish communities. It also is a reminder that in the Eucharist, our love of God and love of neighbor become united. Eucharist makes present God’s love for us. We respond by loving not only God, but also our neighbor. We respond by giving witness to this love by living Jesus daily and bringing Him to others.
As we mark the most solemn days of the Church year, it is my earnest prayer that each one of us becomes contagious with the Jesus who lives in us and to whom we are united. May the peace and joy of Easter be with you and your families.
Fraternally,
Most Reverend Joseph A. Galante, D.D., J.C.D.
Bishop of Camden