In Medias Res

Feasting on Easter

by Robert R. Allard

I hope you had an opportunity to celebrate with loved ones on Easter Sunday. But even if you didn’t, take heart! There’s still time to feast!

Many of us today don’t really know how to properly celebrate the great feast of Easter. Sure, we look forward to Easter Sunday every year, but how many people truly understand the incredible blessings that await us at this special time of year? Easter is not just a feast—it’s the greatest feast! In fact, it continues all week long, up until and including the very next Sunday.

And that final Sunday is jam-packed with incredible graces.

More and more people are starting to realize the importance of celebrating the full eight days—also called an octave—that begin on Easter Sunday. Each day of that week is like another Sunday with the days called “Easter Monday,” “Easter Tuesday,” etc. What a great kickoff to the Easter season, which lasts until Pentecost!

Pope John Paul II understood well the importance of this special time in our liturgical calendar and established a special feast on that Octave Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, so that all may receive in great abundance the grace we celebrate during Easter. This is the only Sunday with a special plenary indulgence attached to it. The Octave (which can refer to both the eight-day period and the eighth day itself) has traditionally been a very important way to celebrate a liturgical feast, and Easter is the biggest feast of them all.

Why did Pope John Paul establish such a feast? Could it have been in part to get “Easter-only” and lapsed Catholics to come back to church? How many Catholics go to church every Sunday? A rough estimate might only be around 25 percent. How many come to Mass on Easter Sunday? That figure might be somewhere around 50 percent, and that is a hopeful figure. You may have seen a lot of strangers in the pews around you on Easter Sunday. And what about the other 50 percent of Catholics that don’t come at all?

Put Yourself in Their Shoes

Imagine yourself as an Easter-only Catholic sitting in the pews on Easter Sunday. You are feeling pretty uncomfortable. You sense that you are in serious sin for a number of reasons, including missing Mass on Sundays, and although you figure that it might be all right because a lot of people are doing it, you still have a feeling that you aren’t right with God.

Maybe you’re bracing yourself for instruction from the pulpit, but to your surprise you don’t hear anything. You haven’t been to the Sacrament of Penance in a very long time, but you think it probably isn’t really necessary anymore, and you don’t hear anything from the pulpit to the contrary.

You think you might just barely sneak into heaven, by the skin of your teeth, but you’re not sure. You wish that someone could relieve your feelings of guilt, but it doesn’t happen. You leave the church still feeling guilty and very much afraid of your future, although you try not to think about it.

The feelings of uneasiness described above are actually coming from the Holy Spirit, who is trying to convince you that your soul is in danger of perishing forever.

We Should Be Merciful

Is it an act of mercy to let these souls walk out of church on Easter Sunday without saying a word to them? What would happen to them if they should perish, before next year, in the state of mortal sin? Not only is it a grave sin to deliberately miss Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation without a good reason, chances are our lapsed brothers and sisters have cut themselves off from the Body of Christ in many other ways as well. How could we get these people to come back to church every week and to the practice of their faith? That, at least, would be a start.

Give Them a Feast!

What kind of feast, you might be asking? How about a feast that promises the total forgiveness of sins and punishment due to sin? And, even better, what if that feast were on the Sunday following Easter so they have a reason to come back right away? Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?

Well, we have such a feast and we have Our Lord to thank Jesus for it, because it was His idea. In fact, Jesus Himself provided all the details for this feast.

In 1931, Our Lord appeared to St. Faustina and told her she was going to prepare the world for His Second Coming and that He was going to pour out His mercy on a special feast. He told her to paint an image of Him just as He looked when He appeared to her, with red and pale rays coming from His heart, and then to have it blessed and venerated on the first Sunday after Easter throughout the world. He then told her He wanted that Sunday to be established as the Feast of Mercy on which He would pour out His mercy like a “whole ocean of graces.”

Pope John Paul II established that Feast of Mercy during the Jubilee Year 2000. He then issued the special plenary indulgence right after the clergy sex abuse scandal broke out in 2002. What a great witness to God’s power to counteract sin!

Jesus made a special promise saying that the soul who will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion on the feast of Divine Mercy Sunday would obtain “complete” forgiveness of sins and punishment. Doesn’t that sound like a great enticement to get people to come back to church on that Sunday following Easter? In simple terms, you could say that the Church backed up that promise with the plenary indulgence.

But the Church didn’t stop there. She included in the special plenary indulgence the duties of priests to not only tell everyone about it, but also to make extra time for confessions and to actually lead the prayers for the indulgence after the Masses on that day.

The instructions for priests include proclaiming the indulgence in the most suitable manner. What could be anymore suitable than telling everyone about it on Easter? But even if this didn’t happen in your parish, there’s still time to invite others yourselves.

The Importance of Octaves

Years ago, the importance of celebrating the Octave of Easter had been de-emphasized. In fact the Sunday after Easter had been nicknamed “Low Sunday.” This was just the opposite of what the Octave actually is. In fact, three of the greatest Doctors of the Church—St. Gregory, St. Thomas, and St. Augustine—all point to the Octave as being the greatest day of the festival without taking anything away from the feast itself. Even St. Thomas the Apostle called for a special feast on the Easter Octave. If you look into the earliest liturgical document attributed to the Apostles, you will see an entry by St. Thomas calling for a special feast on that Sunday after Easter.

Now, with the proper emphasis on celebrating the Octave, we have so much more to look forward to. Now we can offer those Easter-only, fallen-away, and lapsed Catholics a great incentive and something to look forward to each year. It is very similar to the Old Testament Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), which was the last day of an annual celebration that obtained for God’s people the yearly forgiveness of all sins. God told Moses that it was to be for them “the Sabbath of Sabbaths.” Divine Mercy Sunday (the Octave of Easter) is our modern-day Sunday of Sundays.

In the same way, the last and final day of our greatest feast can yield for us the total forgiveness of sins and punishment every year until Jesus comes in glory. We are to always expect Jesus’ return. We can’t let anyone perish knowing full well that on this great feast on the Octave Sunday of Easter even the most terrible of sinners can obtain the total forgiveness of all their sins and punishment due to sin.

All they need to do is to go to Confession (usually within 3 weeks, before or after) and receive Holy Communion on Divine Mercy Sunday. It is not only the forgiveness of sins and punishment that they will be receiving on that day, but a “whole ocean of graces” that Jesus promised would be poured out on souls. He even said the worst sinners will receive His graces in the greatest abundance.

It is fast becoming a great evangelization tool. People have been returning to the practice of their faith in great numbers and on fire! Some have likened their experience of an outpouring of an ocean of graces to being “born again.” Just as in the parable of the prodigal son, fallen-away and lukewarm Catholics can be made whole again and be fully restored to their royal dignity through Jesus Christ.

For more information on the celebration of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday, go to www.DivineMercySunday.com. There you will find Church documents, suggestions for homilies (for both Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday), bulletin inserts, images, and articles for use in newspapers and magazines. Don’t let another Easter go by without the proper celebration of the Octave. Let’s start getting excited about Easter again!

Robert Allard is the founding director of the Apostles of Divine Mercy and a revert to the Catholic Church. His articles have appeared in a variety of Catholic publications and he has appeared on EWTN and spoken at various conferences.

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