Easter is Not Over!

The day after Christmas it is not uncommon to see Christmas trees already being discarded. However, in the Catholic Church, Christmas is seen as too important to be over with a single day. We celebrate it as a season that includes the Feast of the Holy Family, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, The Epiphany, and the Baptism of the Lord. While the exact length of the Christmas season varies, it generally ends between January 8th and January 15th with our celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.

Two days ago we celebrated Easter Sunday. The tomb was found empty on the first Easter morning. Jesus Christ is Risen! Alleluia, Alleluia!

Like Christmas, Easter is too important to celebrate for just a single day. First, we cannot celebrate the Resurrection without celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday and the Crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday. To celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, we must first celebrate his death. Through Jesus’ Institution of the Eucharist, every time we celebrate Mass, we are celebrating the Paschal Mysteries, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

As I mentioned above, Christmas is a season that varies in length. The length of our Easter season is fixed and it is determined by what we read in the Bible. After his Resurrection we know that Jesus spent forty days on Earth until his Ascension. We can read this in the Bible in Acts 1:3. Forty days is a significant number in the Bible. It rained for forty days and forty nights in the great flood in Noah’s day (see Genesis chapters 6-9). Moses spent forty days on the mountain with the Lord to receive the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 24:18, Exodus 34:28). The Israelites spent forty years in the desert (Deuteronomy 8:2). Jesus spent forty days in the desert leading up to his temptation by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-12).

During the forty days after his Resurrection, Jesus taught his disciples what it means to rise. We hear the story of Doubting Thomas (see John 20:19-30). He showed the disciples his hands and sides to show that He is risen with the same body in which He was crucified. He helps them understand how all that happened fulfilled what had been foretold in his encounter with two of his disciples on the Road to Emmaus (see Luke 24:13-35). He commissioned his disciples and gives us our mission to “make disciples of all nations” in Matthew 28:16-20.

While forty is an important number in the Bible and it is how long Jesus spent on Earth after his Resurrection, forty days is not the length of our Easter season. Easter is fifty days long. It ends on Pentecost. Acts 2:1 begins, “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled.” Pentecost was a Jewish feast but the Pentecost we celebrate today is a new Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended on the first disciples (see Acts 2:1-11). The very name of this feast, Pentecost, tells us that it occurs fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus. How? Because the word “pentecost” means “fifty.” This ties it back to Easter, which is why celebrate the season of Easter until Pentecost and it tells us how many days it is.

Thus, Easter lasts for fifty days. In discussing how long Easter is, I would be remiss if I did not include something on the Octave of Easter. Our Catholic Church celebrates two octaves each year. The first is the Christmas Octave and the second is the Easter Octave. An octave is a period of celebration for eight days for great feasts. Christmas and Easter are the two greatest days of the year. So, we celebrate them with octaves.

The celebration of octaves as eight day celebrations is not an invention of Catholics. We read in Genesis 21:4 how Abraham had his son Isaac circumcised when he was eight days old “as God had commanded.” This was still practiced when Jesus was born as He was circumcised on the eighth day (see Luke 2:21).

The New American Bible Revised Edition, gives the heading “Octave of the Ordination” to Leviticus chapter 9, which begins, “On the eighth day Moses summoned Aaron and his son.”

The First and Second Book of Maccabees contains the story of a terrible time when the Jews were overcome by their enemies but not defeated forever. The Jews are victorious. A new altar is built (1 Maccabees chapter four) and an eight day celebration follows (1 Maccabees 4:56) (This is Jewish feast of Hanukkah, which is still celebrated by Jews today).

So, clearly Catholics did not invent the idea of eight day celebrations but there is a particular Christian significance to the eighth day. Jesus rose on the first day of the week, marking a new beginning. As Christians we see this as the eighth day.

Easter is not over. There is much to celebrate.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff