Third Sunday of Easter: Meditation on the Entrance Antiphon

"Cry out with joy to God, all the earth; O sing to the glory of his name. O render him glorious praise, alleluia." - Entrance Antiphon for the Third Sunday of Easter

Throughout the Easter Season, all the Prefaces for Eastertime begin with this introduction:

"It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
at all times to acclaim you, O Lord,
but in this time above all
to laud you yet more gloriously
when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed."

These words correspond well with the Entrance Antiphon for today, for two weeks have passed since the great commemoration of the Lord's Resurrection, yet we do not cease to rejoice in that event, so important is it. We experienced forty days of sorrow at His Passion and Death; we will now rejoice for fifty days!

There is a thought, even if unconscious, among some, and perhaps even many, of the Faithful, that with the conclusion of the season of Lent and the onset of the Easter Season, they should return to their normal practices and way of life. Yet how far this is from the truth! While it is true that the season of Penance and Sorrow is ended, yet the season of Easter provides at least the same level, if not even more so, of a period for progress in the spiritual life.

In order to better understand this, let us consider the three pillars of Lent, which we discussed at the beginning of that holy season - prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. In regards to the first, it should be easy to see that we should not abandon prayer simply because Lent is over. This season, like Lent, is a special time for prayer, albeit of a different nature. While Lent was a time for especially meditating on the Passion of the Lord, this is a time for meditating upon His Resurrection, the life of the Church, and the eternal life we are promised in Heaven.

In Lent our prayer was for purification of our sins. While we of course still pray for that, hopefully through Lent we encountered a deeper form of pray and found a new joy in it. In Easter, then, we are called to keep that newfound prayer alive. The season of Easter is given to us so that the discipline we instilled during Lent may now be practiced and penetrate every depth of our life.

Prayer is essential for this to occur though, for now we must dwell on high with Christ. Thus, as we observed last year, the Easter Season is very much a "Season of the Sacraments (here, here, here, and here)." Therefore, within this season we should be especially thoughtful of all the Sacraments, both in our reception of them and in what a great blessing they are to us. Throughout Lent we especially had recourse to the Sacrament of Confession, and we shall still do so! For we saw in the Octave of Easter itself how important this Sacrament was, especially on the final day, Divine Mercy Sunday.

Yet we also remember the great blessing Baptism and Confirmation were to us, in making us members of the Church. We contemplate the Sacraments of Matrimony and the Priesthood, through which the life of Christ is transmitted to succeeding generations of the Faithful. The Anointing of the Sick is considered as giving us the final strength to complete the journey into eternal life. But most especially we consider the Holy Eucharist, as the memorial of Jesus' Death and Resurrection, the final initiation into the Church, and as His abiding presence among us.

This Season of Easter, then, even more so than Lent, is a time which we should spend in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The church building itself is alive with the glorious beauty and smells of new life and Easter, and is a fitting place for contemplation of our life as living stones in the Church Universal. May our Easter prayers, then, be radiant with joy at the Sacraments of the New Life, primarily the Holy Eucharist!

But let us move on to consideration of the next pillar, that of almsgiving. We may, once again, easily see that this should not be abandoned simply because the Season of Lent is over, nor should the manner be abandoned. Lent was a period in which we refined our almsgiving, we directed it to the Lord and placed it in the context of charity. While we hammered out those impurities that may have crept into our motives, it is now time, with renewed vigor to give alms in order to proclaim the Risen Christ!

This should be the basis of all our charitable works, in whatever form they take - that through them we may show the Risen Lord Jesus to the world. It is so important, then, to root our almsgiving in the spirit of charity, for love was the very foundation of Jesus' suffering and was the means of His glorious Resurrection. It is only through charity that we can rise to new life, and, as St. John tells us, "If any one says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (1 John 4:20)." May we always live in the love of the Risen Lord, and may that love manifest itself by our charitable works to our neighbor.

The last pillar, that of penance, is not so easy to see its relationship to the Easter Season, for it manifests itself quite differently than the other two pillars do in relation to the two seasons. It must first be acknowledged Easter is not a penitential season, and therefore, penance, strictly speaking, is not proper to it. Yet the idea of the Lenten penance was to instill in us the necessary discipline so that those practices would lead us closer to God, and it is in this sense that we must see penance in the Easter Season. Those practices, which we added on for our benefit, we should continue to practice; and in theory the discipline we followed during Lent has made these, if not easy, at least easier and created an attachment.

This attachment, this longing for holiness, which has begun in us is like a seed, which must continue to be nourished and cared for, so that it may produce the actual fruit of sanctity within us. Easter, then, as a time for new life, which we cannot cease repeating, is very much, then, a season for continuing these practices, but not with the first drudgery which may have accompanied them during Lent, but now with joy at the eventual fruit. The Spirit of God is at work in us! May we strive to allow Him to complete His work within us.

The Easter Season, then, is a time of joy, but it is the joy built upon hard labor, which we must always care for and watch over. Once the house is firmly established its inhabitants may dwell in it in peace and joy, but they cannot cease to watch over it. Instead they need to address any problems which may arise quickly so that they do not become worse.

And it is the house of God, which He has raised up through the Resurrection of Christ, the Church that we rejoice in during Easter. And this house has been raised up all throughout the earth. During Lent, the entire earth toiled, but now it is able to rejoice in the Risen Lord. All the earth extols the glory of the Lord's name, for through Him we have all been made members of His Church and are privileged to dwell with Him even here below. We have all had His grace poured into our hearts in love, and we have all been supported by Him in our labors so that we may attain the holiness and happiness which He desires for us!