Easter Has Only Begun

One thing I love about being Catholic is that Easter is not only one day. In fact, it is an 8 day feast and the Easter season lasts until Pentecost. So wishing someone Happy Easter on Monday is totally valid! Here is a meditation by Papa Ben that I came across in the Magnificat. May we all be Easter People!

Jesus...says of his death: "I go away, and I will come to you." It is by going away that he comes. His going ushers in a completely new and greater way of being present. By dying he enters into the love of the Father. His dying is an act of love. Love, however, is immortal. Therefore, his going away is transformed into a new coming, into a form of presence which reaches deeper and does not come to an end...Jesus who is now totally transformed through the act of love, is free from barriers and limits. He is able not only to pass through colsed doors in the outside world, as the Gospels recount (Jn 20:19). He can pass through the interior door separating the "I" from the "you," the closed door between yesterday and today, between the past and the future...Now he can even surmount the wall of otherness that spearates the "I" from the "you."...Believers are never totally cut off from one another. We are in communion because of our deepest identity: Christ within us. Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close (Eph 2:13)...The Lord has granted us the light of truth. This light is also fire, a powerful force coming from God, a force that does not destroy, but seeks to transform our hearts, so that we truly become men of God, and so that his peace can become active in this world...Let us pray...in these words: Yes, Lord, make us Easter people, men and women of light, filled with the fire of your love.

Pope Benedict XVI