Easter Every Day

Apr 8

Easter is a celebration that lasts a full fifty days. A recent proposal to make the Monday after Easter a federal holiday cited a statistic that more than 80% of Americans celebrate the feast.

Everyone seems to celebrate Easter, but not so much the Easter Season. While some businesses and schools are off on Easter Monday, many people – Catholics included – seem to finish their celebration by Sunday night. While a few plastic eggs and fake grass may linger in the living room or around the house, most believers put away their Easter spirit when they put away the Easter baskets and finish the last jelly bean.

As Catholics, we know how to observe Lent. Prayers, purple, devotions, and fish sticks on Friday guide us through the forty days. Easter is not as easy. We can celebrate for a day or two, but then we seem to forget the transformative power of Christ risen from the dead.

While we probably can’t host big dinners or celebrations for fifty days, we can certainly remember the Paschal Mystery and the reality of the Resurrection in our lives. We can find small signs of growth and renewal that give us hope and peace. Overcoming our struggles and sins, turning difficulties into victories, finding light in the darkness can happen every day, not just during the season.

The Easter season is a time to make our Lenten practices part of our everyday lives. It is a time to be attentive to the present moment and to truly live our Christian vocation. St. John Paul II famously paraphrased St. Augustine when he reminded the Church that “we are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!”

Being an “Easter person” means living with the knowledge that death is not the end, that we are moving toward a future of joy. As believers, we must act as agents of hope, peace, and love in our daily lives.

Embracing the Easter message gives us the hope that our ordinary lives can be extraordinary. Easter is an opportunity to set a new direction and to begin again. It is the promise of renewal and resurrection.

Let’s keep wishing one another a Happy Easter. More importantly, let’s keep living Easter every day.