Monday, April 13th, 2020

So Happy Easter to all of you!  But Father, you might say, you already did that yesterday.  And I respond to you - yes!  You are right. And I do it again today.  Because today also is Easter Sunday. Every day this week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is Easter Sunday.  It is called the Easter Octave - oct, for 8! Because Easter is so important for human history, and to us who love Jesus, that the Church feasts daily for eight days!  So feast merrily today, have some special foods, do some special things, and rejoice!

St Peter expands on our reasons for feasting today: Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.

In other words our feasting is not simply at something which happened a long time ago.  It is not even limited to the fact that Jesus is here risen and radiant at our side right now.  We are also feasting because of what Jesus is doing and will do for us now. Peter says Jesus has promised us, now he is risen, something which has never happened in human history since the fall of Adam and Eve: God is going to pour out on us the fullness of himself, his Holy Spirit.  This means the effect of the resurrection are not simply something that I understand, and I set my life around. Just as Jesus did what we could not in Holy Week, so now, as he taught us he can that week, the Holy Spirit is now going to do what we cannot for ourselves - from within our very heart and soul.  What we saw with our eyes in Holy Week, the Holy Spirit will do himself from within our hearts for eternity.

This of course is the Lord’s first redirection of our eyes towards the feast when he will accomplish this - the feast of Pentecost.  I invite you brothers and sisters, to begin preparing, simply by praying once a day the three words Veni Creator Spiritus: come creator Spirit, come rerecreate me, come liberate and heal me.  Amen.

Let us pray:

O God, who give constant increase

to your Church by new offspring,

grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives

to the Sacrament they have received in faith.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.