Easter Sunday

(Reflection prepared for our vocation department's social media)

Today we wake up to a new world, a new creation that is risen within us by virtue of what happened last night at the great Vigil in the Holy Night: we were either baptized or renewed the promises of our baptism. This new life rising within us cries out and shakes us awake with the great Easter slogan: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above! (Colossians 3:1)

The Resurrection of the Lord and our baptism into the new creation it inaugurates are the deepest of mysteries; this is why Mother Church gives us the longest of her privileged seasons—the fifty days of Easter—to journey into them.

Today on Easter Sunday there is just the announcement—Christ is risen! Over these fifty days the Easter mystery will unfold into how the Risen Lord is present to us—the Good Shepherd, the Bread of Life, and so on—until we arrive at the great day of Pentecost and the celebration of the Risen Lord’s abiding and animating presence in his Church, the gift of the Holy Spirit.