Epiphany: The Announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts

The Roman Missal for the Solemnity of the Epiphany allows for an announcement of the "movable feasts" of the Liturgical Year (ie those feasts whose celebration can occur on a different date each year) to be made after the Gospel at Mass.

Know, dear brethren, that, as we have rejoiced at the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, so by leave of God's mercy we announce to you also the joy of his Resurrection, who is our Saviour.

As Pope Francis recognised in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025, the coming year sees the 1700th anniversary of the Council if Nicea. It is also a year in which the celebration of Easter in the West and East falls on the same day, giving the year a particular ecumenical significance.

The Council of Nicaea also discussed the date of Easter. To this day, different approaches to this question prevent celebrating the fundamental event of our faith on the same day. Providentially, a common celebration will take place in the year 2025. May this serve as an appeal to all Christians, East and West, to take a decisive step forward towards unity around a common date for Easter. We do well to remind ourselves that many people, unaware of the controversies of the past, fail to understand how divisions in this regard can continue to exist.

 This aspect of the Jubilee 2025 has a particular resonance for the Focolare Movement, inspired by a "spirituality of unity" in which ecumenical dialogue forms one of a number of different dialogues in which the Movement engages. These can be explored at this page from the international website - In Dialogue - where they are summarised as follows:

The Focolare spirituality has spread throughout the world and has given rise to various forms of dialogue.

The Movement is engaged in dialogue among movements and new communities within the Catholic Church and is also in dialogue other Christian Churches and ecclesial communities. Relationships with the faithful of the world’s religions have paved the way to a broader dialogue among the major world religions. 

Collaboration between believers and those who profess no specific religious faith has given rise to a fruitful dialogue and concrete projects for peace and justice in the world. A dialogue (with the) world of culture opens its eyes to new insights.

Called to Hope is the title of an ecumenical conference that the Movement is organising to mark the Jubilee 2025. 

This dimension of the Jubilee 2025 strikes something of a chord, as the timing of a holiday in Kefalonia last year meant that we arrived on the island as they celebrated Easter Sunday, roughly a month later than we had celebrated it here in the UK.

Peter: witness to the Resurrection

 In his homily at the Easter Vigil last night, Pope Francis preached on the three words that describe the behaviour of the women who first arrived at the tomb early on that first Easter morning: they saw, they heard and they proclaimed. The Holy Father ended his homily thus:

Let us make Jesus, the Living One, rise again from all those tombs in which we have sealed him.  Let us set him free from the narrow cells in which we have so often imprisoned him.  Let us awaken from our peaceful slumber and let him disturb and inconvenience us.  Let us bring him into our everyday lives: through gestures of peace in these days marked by the horrors of war, through acts of reconciliation amid broken relationships, acts of compassion towards those in need, acts of justice amid situations of inequality and of truth in the midst of lies.  And above all, through works of love and fraternity.

Brothers and sisters our hope has a name: the name of Jesus.  He entered the tomb of our sin; he descended to those depths where we feel most lost; he wove his way through the tangles of our fears, bore the weight of our burdens and from the dark abyss of death restored us to life and turned our mourning into joy.  Let us celebrate Easter with Christ!  He is alive!  Today, too, he walks in our midst, changes us and sets us free.  Thanks to him, evil has been robbed of its power; failure can no longer hold us back from starting anew; and death has become a passage to the stirrings of new life.  For with Jesus, the Risen Lord, no night will last forever; and even in the darkest night, in that darkness, the morning star continues to shine.

In this darkness that you are living, Mr. Mayor, Parliamentarians, the thick darkness of war, of cruelty, we are all praying, praying with you and for you this night. We are praying for all the suffering. We can only give you our company, our prayer and say to you: “Courage! We are accompanying you!” And also to say to you the greatest thing we are celebrating today: Christòs voskrés! Christ is risen!

When the Pope celebrates Mass in St Peter's Square on the morning of Easter Sunday, a first act is a witness of the Holy Father to the resurrection, modelled on that of St Peter at the tomb. As the doors covering an icon of the Holy Redeemer are opened, the deacon sings, alternating with the three fold Alleluia of the choir and congregation:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. 

The Lord has risen from the tomb, who hung on the cross for us. 

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.  

(At this point the deacon turns to face towards the Holy Father.) 

The Lord has truly risen, and has appeared to Peter.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.  

 And the Successor of St Peter venerates the icon representing the risen Lord.

Peace be with you

 Our Lord's words, when he addresses the disciples gathered together on the day of his resurrection, are "Peace be with you". This greeting, of the risen Lord to his new church, is echoed in the sign of peace at Mass. It's been more than a year since the peace was last physically shared by those attending Mass - some people may not miss it, but I know some do. It's just one element of  what we do in church that serves to remind us of our unity and fellowship. And what binds us together, above all, is our Easter faith.

These are the words that open the Easter week parish newsletter of the parish where I go to Mass. It reminds me of the thought of Fr Cantalamessa on the Christological foundation of human fraternity in my last post. It is also the opening greeting of a bishop at the start of the celebration of Mass, which I hadn't until now appreciated for its Christological/ecclesiogical significance.

At the day time Mass of Easter, Pope Francis' first liturgical action is a witness to the resurrection,  in the veneration of an icon showing the risen Lord.

The deacon opens the doors of the icon of the Most Holy Redeemer.

The deacon, turning to face the assembly, sings:

Allelulia, allelulia, alleluia.

The assembly sings:

 Allelulia, allelulia, alleluia.

The deacon sings:

The Lord has risen from the tomb, who for us hung on the cross.

The assembly sings:

 Allelulia, allelulia, alleluia.

The deacon, turning towards the Holy Father, sings:

The Lord has truly risen, and has appeared to Simon.

The assembly sings:

 Allelulia, allelulia, alleluia.

The Holy Father venerates the icon.

Video and photographs here.

Did Jesus appear to the Virgin Mary before he appeared to the Magdalen?

This week the meditations in MAGNIFICAT have offered alternative answers to this question. On Monday, the meditation was an extract from Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year vol.7:

Meanwhile, our Risen Jesus has been seen by no mortal eye; he has sped to his most holy Mother. He is the Son of God; he is the vanquisher of death; but he is, likewise, the Son of Mary. She stood near him to the last, uniting the sacrifice of her Mother's heart with that he made upon the cross: it is just, therefore, that she should be the first to partake of the joy of his Resurrection.

The Gospel does not relate the apparition thus made by Jesus to his Mother, whereas all the others are fully described. It is not difficult to assign the reason. The other apparitions were intended as proofs of the Resurrection; this to Mary was dictated by the tender love borne to her by her Son. Both nature and grace required that his first visit should be to such a Mother, and Christian hearts dwell with delight on the meditation of the mystery. There was not need of its being mentioned in the Gospel; the tradition of the holy Fathers, beginning with St Ambrose, bears sufficient testimony to it; and even had they been silent, our hearts would have told it us.

And why was it that our Saviour rose from the tomb so early on the day he had fixed for his Resurrection? It was because his filial love was impatient to satisfy the vehement longings of his dearest and most afflicted Mother. Such is the teaching of many pious and learned writers; and who that knows aught of Jesus and Mary could refuse to accept it?

For Saturday, the vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy, we are offered this extract from Adrienne von Speyr's meditations on the Gospel of St Mark: Mark, Meditations for a Community. Adrienne comments on the text "He appeared first to Mary of Magdala":

The Lord appears first to the former sinner. She is the first to experience his being alive. And from this, she comprehends the cross. All the sins of the world, also her own, which were so visible, struck the Lord on the cross. But because she is no longer a sinner but, rather, was converted by the Lord already before the cross, he appears to her. She is surely to embody in her person the absolution that is granted to all sinners on the cross.

But beyond this, the Lord placed her under the cross as one who has been converted, as one who loves and does penance in a very profound union of her suffering with his suffering and also of her suffering with the suffering of his Mother. And if the Holy Spirit has found it right to leave the Mother's suffering in mystery and not to mention her joy at the Resurrection of her Son, then it is as if Mary Magdalene is sent ahead in order to represent all those who suffered together directly with the Crucified, above all, the Mother of the Lord. From the outside, she remains, above all, the former sinner, who with the apparition on Easter morning receives the certainty of absolution for the whole Church.

 Adrienne gives an account of Mary's joy at the Resurrection in a chapter of her book The Handmaid of the Lord entitled "Easter". Her words very carefully nuance the primacy of Mary's joy and the absence of a physical apparition.

On Easter morning [the Virgin Mary] is again, as she once was at the angel's apparition, sheer open expectation. She does not anticipate any particular apparition. But her faith is so open that anything can appear within it space. And there he stands before her, her Son in the glory of God, and he fills this space with a fullness which surpasses all human senses. He not only fills the emptiness at hand; he fills it to overflowing, in the way the Godhead brims over man's every expectation. Her first Yes to the angel, her first joy at the conception, her first jubilation in the Magnificat, are like a tiny human beginning compared with this storm of the Easter assent and this fire of a new Magnificat. The first Yes to the angel was full of responsibility for the future. It was spoken wholly in joy, but with the background of the coming suffering as the price she was to pay for this joy in her conception. But the joy of the new assent is so great, it so outshines all else, that it can survey as if from a mountain peak all past suffering and separations and those which are perhaps to come..... She could formulate and utter her first assent herself - could give it expression in the song of the Magnificat. Her new Yes is nameless. It flows into the eternal Yes of God himself like a river into the sea and is washed over and absorbed by it. What she says now is a jubilation that is beyond words.

The two writers do come from very different times, and very different contexts, in the life of the Church, which may go some way to explaining their difference in perspective. But I do find Adrienne von Speyr more compelling than Dom Gueranger.

The Passion in Trafalgar Square

The Passion of Jesus in Trafalgar Square (and also here) is a very impressive occasion each year. If there is an example of the "new evangelisation" in action, then surely this is it. Performances at 12 noon and 3.15 pm on Good Friday.

Proclaiming the Resurrection; Appealing for Peace

The repeated message of the homilies during my participation in the celebration of the Triduum and Easter Sunday was that, if the Mysteries being celebrated meant anything to us, we would go out of that Church onto the streets outside and proclaim that Christ is risen. These homilies represented a clear call to each of us to undertake an act of "primary proclamation" by speaking explicitly of Christ to others.

The Easter flowers in my front window are a somewhat feeble effort at this. I should point out that double decked buses pass in the street outside roughly every five minutes and my flowers will be on ready view to any on the top deck.

On Sunday morning, in a St Peter's Square transformed into an Easter Garden by the flowers donated from the Netherlands, the Successor of Peter took part in the "Resurexit" rite, re-enacting the first appearance of the risen Lord to the first St Peter. It occurs between about 12 minutes and 15 minutes of the video on the Vatican Youtube Channel: Easter Mass. It is particularly moving as the Deacon sings that "He has truly risen and has appeared to Simon".

Pope Francis chose not to preach during Mass. Instead he opened his Urbi et Orbi address - at the beginning of which he explicitly greeted both the people of the city of Rome and the whole world - with an insistent proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ. Watch the first four or five minutes here: Urbi et Orbi.

What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons …

Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious!

We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom.

It is the reference to hell in the next paragraphs that particularly fascinates me, echoing for me at least the experience of Adrienne von Speyr and the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar:

This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell - to the abyss of separation from God - this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus and transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.

This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and his glory is the living man (cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).

Some have wanted to say that Pope Francis has simplified the celebration of the Papal liturgy, in contrast to his predecessor, who instead wanted to aggrandise it. Such a perception seems to me unfair to both Francis and Benedict XVI. Pope Francis Easter Sunday Mass is full of splendour - the flowers, the music, the "Resurrexit" rite. Pope Francis has retained the "Benedictine arrangement" of candles and crucifix on the altar, whose prime intention is to express the orientation of the celebration towards the Father through the Son, though with the adjustment of moving the candles more to the side. My own assessment is that, more than anything else, Pope Francis has been anxious to remove from the Papal liturgy those moments that might in some way manifest a privileging of some persons over others (though, of course, a priest or deacon has a certain privilege that derives from their office rather than from their particular person). This would explain his not distributing Holy Communion himself, his opening of his daily Mass to (not-quite) all comers rather than to invitees, his wish to wash the feet of young detainees, a certain simplicity in the choice of vestments.

For the full report of Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi address see here: Urbi et Orbi Message, Easter 2013. The appeal for peace in the world, that was more widely reported in the main stream media than the proclamation of the Resurrection, follows on from the passages quoted above.