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Living to God

The Easter Season

by

Mary Perkins Ryan

(With Study-Club Questions

)

V
PAULIST PRESS
(Paulist Fathers)

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Nihil Obstat: William J. Collins, S.T.L., Censor

Imprimatur: Ernest J. Primeau, S.T.D.,

Bishop of Manchester

August 28, 1962

The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declara-
tions that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or
moral error. No implication is contained therein that
those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Impri-
matur agree with the contents, opinions or statements
expressed.

Copyright © 1962 by
The Missionary Society
of St. Paul the Apostle

in the State of New York.

Manufactured in the
United States of America by
Paulist Press, New York, N. Y.



Introduction

Every practicing Catholic is aware of the

holy season of Lent and feels an obligation

to do something to observe it. But our Chris-

tian life cannot attain its proper fullness and

maturity until we also observe the holy sea-
son of Eastertime. Easter is the culmination

of Lent which prepares us for it. This is the

season of joy, and we need to learn how to
“rejoice in the Lord.” It is also the season

in which we come to know the Risen Christ
and to see that He is the same Jesus who
walked our earth, but who now lives in a new
way which makes Him able to be our life and
to send us the life-giving Spirit.

During these weeks, the Church forms us

in the manner by which Jesus formed the
Apostles, through the forty days of His pres-

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ence with them, living His risen life but still

visible on earth; through the nine days of

prayer while they waited to be “filled with

power from on high”; and, finally through

the coming of the Spirit on the fiftieth day

in wind and fire to inaugurate the mission of

the Church to the world. This season which

begins with the renewal of the grace of bap-

tism ends with that of the grace of confirma-

tion.

“Rejoice to God, All the Earth, Alleluia”

We have already seen that Our Lord’s re-
deeming work is the true Exodus, the true

Pasch, foreshadowed by the first Exodus of

the Jews from Egypt and taking place at the

time of the Passover celebration. The weeks
of the Easter season are one continual Paschal

celebration, lasting through eight Sundays

instead of eight days, and concluded by the

feast of Pentecost which took place at the

time of the Jewish feast commemorating the

giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai . 1

1 To the mind of the ancients, fifty was a perfect
number, made up of seven sevens with one more for
completion. The fifty days between the Passover and
Pentecost therefore were like one great day. When
this symbolism was lost sight of, the feast of Pentecost
was given its octave, like other great feasts.

4



As Mass-chants during this season, there-

fore, the Church takes psalms celebrating

God’s great deliverance of His people. Psalm

117, used in every Mass of Easter week and

also during the season, is the great song of

Christ’s triumph. Here, as in the psalms of

Passiontime, we are to understand Christ as
the chief speaker, He who has triumphed over
His enemies by the Lord’s power; we are the
joyful chorus celebrating His victory. “This

is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad

and rejoice therein.”

Psalm 65 is also frequently used—a psalm

of the deliverance of God’s people “through

fire and water” to final triumph. This is our

song, the song of the new people of God
whom He has brought through the new Exo-
dus of baptism to Christ’s freedom.

Psalm 80 (Low Sunday) is a Passover chant.

Psalm 32 (Introit of 2nd Sunday) calls us

to rejoice in the “plan of God’s heart,” the

plan of redemption which makes the “whole

world overflow with God’s goodness.”

Psalms 97 (5th Sunday), 95, 46 and 67

(Ascension and Pentecost) are chants that may
have been first composed to celebrate the en-

thronement of the Ark of the Covenant in
the Temple, a foreshadowing of the triumph

of Christ in His glorification. Above all, the

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Church continually repeats the one word
“alleluia/’ meaning “praise Yahweh!”, a holy
shout of joy, a prayer of praise to the God
who reveals Himself to His people and re-
deems them.

“The Victory That Overcomes the
World, Our Faith”

In the ancient Church, the Sunday after
Easter was the first day on which the newly

baptized, having taken off their special white

robes the day before, joined the ranks of

“ordinary Christians.” The Epistle and Gos-
pel, therefore, stress the primary requisite of

the Christian life—faith. In both passages,

St. John brings out the primary object of

Christian faith: “that Jesus is the Son of God.”

“My Lord and my God!”

The faith that is meant here is not mere
assent to the abstract proposition, “proved”

by arguments, that Jesus is true God and that
He truly rose from the dead. It is a vital be-
lief in the God who so loves the world as to
send His Son to take our nature, to suffer and

die and be raised to glory in that nature, to

draw us into His life and make us “sons in
the Son.” This faith means, as the Epistle

tells us, that we consent to believe the wit-
ness God gave His Son through His passion

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and glorification and the sending of the Spirit,

the witness that He gives us now in the sacra-
ments of the Church. For these, particularly

baptism and the Eucharist, at once proclaim

Christ dead and risen again and unite us

with Him in faith, hope and love.

“Following in His Footsteps”

The Epistles of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
Sundays of Easter continue to bring out the

basic requirements of the Christian life into

which we have been newly inducted by the
Paschal renewal of the grace of baptism. We
are now, liturgically, starting to live the Chris-

tian life again, with all the joy and freshness

of a new beginning. On the second Sunday,
St. Peter tells us that we are to follow Christ's
example. As He laid down His life so that we
could die to sin and live to holiness, so we
are to lay down our lives to bring others back
to Him, “the shepherd who cares for our
souls.”

On the 3rd Sunday, St. Peter tells us that
we are to be “like strangers and exiles”—to
estrange ourselves from everything in our-

selves and our world which is foreign to
Christ's life. We have to act in such a Christ-
like way that our neighbors can tell from
observing our actions what the Christian life

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really is. (The Greek word for “observing”
was, scholars tell us, the current term for the

process of initiation into the secrets of the

mystery-religions.) Our neighbors are to be
“initiated” into the secrets of the Christian

life by seeing our good acts, so thoroughly

initiated that they will be ready to welcome

God and praise Him when His grace is of-
fered them. Here is material, indeed, for an

Eastertime examination of conscience!

On the 4th and 5th Sundays, St. James tells
us how we should act as God’s children whom
He, giver of every good gift and “Father of

all that gives light,” has begotten by the

“word of truth.” We are, therefore, to disci-
pline ourselves so that we shall not be giving
bad gifts to our neighbor—anger, irritation,

ill-will—and we do so by cherishing the Word
implanted in us, the Word which is Christ.
But we must be doers of this Word and not
merely hearers. We are to find in Christ the
“perfect law of liberty”; we are to look closely
into it so that we will come to be like what
we see, and then go and act accordingly.

For many of us, it will mean a real “con-
version” to think of our Christian life as a

life of freedom from constraint. For many
reasons (not by any means our own fault),
most of us unfortunately have grown up to

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think of it as a life of restraint, of things we
have to do or not do. One of the great les-
sons of Lent, Holy Week and Eastertime is
that we have been freed from slavery to sin-
fulness and selfishness; we have been made
free to love God and one another with His
own love. We are to live as free children of
God who will do His will because they want
to, because it is their will as being His. The
commandments and prescriptions of God and
the Church are not meant to be constraining,

except in the sense of showing us where we
would cease to “walk in the Spirit.” The
“great commandments” and Christ’s new com-
mand are wholly positive—to love.

“The Disciples Were Glad When
They Saw the Lord”

In the Gospels of this season, our Lord

Himself introduces us into the mystery of

His risen life. As the Gospel for Low Sunday
says plainly, Christ is not a spirit but a real

man, a whole human body-soul composite.
Yet He comes and goes like a spirit; He has
a spirit’s freedom from all the limitations of

our psycho-physical nature. He is the same
Christ who lived on earth as we do, but now
His human nature is completely refashioned
by the Spirit, charged with the freedom and

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power of the Spirit and able to communicate

the Spirit for the forgiveness of sins.

This glorified Christ is still present with

us. In the Gospel accounts, His Easter ap-

pearances to His disciples seem to be the

visible manifestations of a continuous pres-

ence, inaugurating His new mode of presence
with the Church through the ages, while an-

ticipating the life of heaven where we shall
see Him always. During Eastertime then, we
are to be “glad when we see the Lord,” glad
that we see Him by faith. For we are those
whom He called blessed because we have not
seen Him with our bodily eyes and yet have
learned to believe in Him, our Lord and

God.

“I Know Mine and Mine Know Me”

The second Sunday after Easter is called
“Good Shepherd” Sunday because both the
Epistle and Gospel show our Lord as the

shepherd who lays down His life for His
sheep, the shepherd who is continually pres-
ent with His sheep, caring for them, feeding

them and guiding them.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh frequently
called Himself the “shepherd of Israel”; He
promised to gather His flock together again

after their dispersal into exile, to feed and

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care for them as of old. When our Lord
called Himself the Good Shepherd, He showed
Himself to be God, now fulfilling His prom-
ises.

In this image of the shepherd and the

sheep, He shows us the infinite difference
between Himself and us. But in the same

breath, He shows us the amazing personal
intimacy we are to have with Him. We are
to be known by Him and to know Him as
He is known by the Father—a closeness of
knowledge and love and intimacy beyond all

human images. It is to such intimacy that He
calls each of us and all His “other sheep” not

yet in the fold. This intimacy is possible be-

cause Christ’s human nature now shares in
the complete self-givingness of the Spirit.

His presence is no longer limited by time and

space; we can be “joined to the Lord so as
to be one spirit” with Him. And this inti-
macy enables us to become like Him. We are
to follow His example, laying down our lives
for others as He died for us.

“Your Joy No Man Shall Take from You”

The Gospels from the 3rd Sunday through
Pentecost are all taken from the chapters of

St. John called the “discourse at the Last Sup-

per.” On the 3rd Sunday after Easter, our

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Lord repeats that in a little while the Apostles

will not see Him, and after a little while they
will see Him again, because He is going to the
Father. Then they will be glad with a joy
that no man can take from them.

In the context of the Last Supper, the little

while when they did not see Him was the
time of His Passion and death. They saw
Him again at the resurrection, and their joy
was not taken away by His ascension into

heaven, for the removal of His visible pres-

ence meant His far more intimate presence

with them in the Church.

But our Lord often refers to two intercon-

nected realities in the same phrase. Here,

since we see Him present with us here on
earth by faith and not yet by sight, this “little

while” when we do not see Him means also
the time of our earthly life and of the life of

the Church on earth, at the end of which we
will rejoice in seeing Him for all eternity.
Yet even now our joy is to be full and one
that no one can take from us (“Who can
separate us from the love of Christ?”) This is

the primal Christian joy—the presence of the

Risen Christ with us in the Church.

“I Will Send Him to You”

On the 4th Sunday after Easter, Our Lord

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begins to speak to us about the Holy Spirit

whom He will send us from the Father. Dur-
ing Jesus’ life on earth, He was a “Paraclete”
to His Apostles — their counsellor, consoler,
strengthener, their advocate with the Father,

their defender against God’s enemies. When
He has made His way to the Father, He will
send the very Spirit of God to take His place,
but from within.

It will be the Spirit, working in and

through those whom Christ sends as He Him-
self was sent by the Father, who will show
the world that sin finally consists in refusing

Christ; that Christ, now at the Father’s right
hand, is truly the Lord, the source of all

“justice,” life and salvation; that by His

death and resurrection the “prince of this

world” has already been judged and con-

demned. It will be the Spirit who will teach
the Apostles all truth, opening out to them

the meaning of what Christ has revealed and

done.

uAsk and You Shall Receive”

In the Gospel for the 5th Sunday, our Lord

tells us, “If you ask the Father for anything

in My Name, He will give it to you . . . ask
and receive that your joy may be full.” Here
is the charter, so to speak, of Christian prayer.

13



We are to feel free to ask the Father for any-
thing in the Name of His beloved Son; He
will give us His best gifts for the asking, and

translate our mistaken prayers into prayers

for these gifts. His purpose in granting or

refusing some specific prayer is the same: that

our joy may be full, that His purpose of love
be fulfilled in us.

“And Now, Father, Exalt Me at Your Side”

The Mass for the Vigil of the Ascension
prepares us to understand the true meaning

of the feast. For our Lord’s “going up to
heaven” was simply the visible manifestation

of what had already taken place—the glori-

fication of His human nature at the right
hand of God. His resurrection from the dead

and His complete glorification are all one act

of God’s power; He had already “ascended”
when He appeared to His disciples on the
first Easter. His visible ascension shows us in

terms of time and space that He has now
“placed at the right hand of the Father’s glory

the substance of our frail human nature
united to Himself” (Communicantes). After

the forty days of Eastertime, our Lord was

seen “going up” to heaven—how else could
His going beyond the conditions of earthly

life be visibly indicated? Yet we should not

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think of His present state as being “up.” It

is “other,” and we need not confuse our imag-
inations by giving it a cosmological “where.”

This complete glorification is what our

Lord asks of His Father in His priestly prayer

pronounced before His Passion and death,

given in the Gospel of Ascension Eve. Here

He shows us the whole scope of His redeem-
ing work—to bring us to the knowledge of
the Father and of His Son which is eternal

life. We are the Father's gift to Christ; we
are still in this world through sharing His

life—and His life is one with that of the

Father.

St. Paul tells us in the Epistle of the Vigil

that Christ “rose high above all the heavens

in order to fill all creation with His pres-

ence.” He did not ascend to be farther from
us, but to take on the higher mode of exist-
ence which would enable Him to be nearer
us, to make us into His Body, the Church, to
be the source of its life and growth, “to give

us a share in His divinity” (Preface).

And so, in the Epistle and Gospel of the
feast, our Lord’s ascension is directly asso-

ciated with the mission of the Church. “You

are to be witnesses to me to the ends of the
earth.” “Go into the whole world and preach
the Gospel to every creature.” And this mis-

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sion is in turn connected with Christ’s visible

return in glory. “This Jesus who was taken
from you into heaven will come back as you

have seen Him going into heaven.”

This feast brings home to us the paradox
of the Christian life. We are to “live in the
heavenly places” with Christ (Collect), and

yet to be about His work on earth, preparing

for the day when He will take us all, body
and soul, to share the glory that is His in

His Father’s house.

“Persevering in Prayer with Mary. . .

The nine days between the Ascension and
Pentecost form, of course, the original novena,

first kept by the Apostles and Mary and the
other disciples, waiting in Jerusalem until

they were “imbued with power from on high.”

Whatever other novenas we make during the
year, we should always make this one, in our
parishes and our houses, asking for the new
and fuller coming of the Spirit on the whole

Church and on ourselves, for a renewal of the

graces of Pentecost and of our own confirma-
tion. “O Lord Jesus Christ, who today
ascended in triumph over all the heavens, do

not leave us orphans, but send us the Promise

of the Father, the Spirit of truth, alleluia”

(Antiphon at Vespers).

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“Come, Holy Spirit”

But, if we are really to desire the Gift of

the Spirit, we need to realize more clearly
Who and what He is, as the Scriptures reveal
Him to us.

In the thought of the Old and New Testa-
ments, “spirit” means aliveness in all its posi-

tive aspects; power, freedom, vitality, glory.

The word in Hebrew, as in Latin and Greek,
comes from the root meaning “breath/’ for

the breath of a living creature is what most

clearly shows that it is alive. God is su-
premely “Spirit,” not because “He has no
body,” but because He is infinitely removed
from the limitations of a body; He is su-
premely alive, powerful, free, glorious, cre-

ative of life. And so the Holy Spirit is God’s
“breath,” His very vitality, freedom and cre-

ative power. The Spirit hovers over the
primeval waters to make them fruitful.
Psalm 103, used in the Pentecost liturgy, sings,

“Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be

created, and You shall renew the face of the
earth.”

The Spirit is associated with the fire and
tempest and shining cloud that visibly mani-

fested God’s presence in the burning bush on

Mt. Sinai, at the dedication of Solomon’s

Temple, in the prophets’ visions. At the In-

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carnation, the Spirit “overshadowed” Mary to
make her the Mother of God; at our Lord’s
transfiguration, a shining cloud enveloped

Him. And it was in wind and fire that the
Spirit came down on the apostles on Pente-
cost.

In Scripture the Spirit is also associated

with water—as hovering over the waters in

Genesis, as pictured by the dove sent out by

Noah at the flood and by the shining cloud,
at once fire and water, of Exodus. We ob-
serve this in prophecies, too, especially Eze-

chiel quoted in the Introit of Pentecost Eve:

“I will pour clean water over you and cleanse

you from all your stains and I will breathe

into you a new spirit.”

In the New Testament, the dove is present
at Christ’s baptism in the Jordan; our Lord

tells the Samaritan woman about the “living
water” He will give. At the great festival, He
cries out, “If anyone thirst, let him come to
Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the
Scripture says, (of the Messiah) ‘From within

him there shall flow rivers of living water.’
”

St. John adds, “This He said of the Spirit
who was not yet given because Jesus had not
been glorified.” And, in the Apocalypse, the

Spirit is the river of life flowing from the

throne of God and the Lamb, the river of

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Ezechiel’s vision which would sanctify the

holy city and go out from there to make the
whole earth fruitful.

Above all, in the Old Testament, the Spirit

was given to those whom God entrusted with
some special mission — priests, kings and
prophets. The promised Servant of Yahweh
was to have the Spirit resting on him, to be

“anointed” with the Spirit, receiving in full-

ness what we call the “seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit,” to carry out his universal mission of

salvation. And the prophet Joel, quoted by
St. Peter on Pentecost Sunday, had foreseen

the time when the Spirit would not be limited
to a few chosen persons, but “be poured out

on all flesh.” This is what is fulfilled in the

Church through the ages, in different ways in

the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and

orders.

Our Lord’s final revelation, then, is that
the Spirit of God is what we call a Person,
a “who” and not merely a “what”—a Person

who was to be their Paraclete, with them al-
ways, leading them into all truth, giving wit-

ness to Christ and enabling them to give wit-

ness. And, He said, His reason for “making
His way to the Father” through His Passion
and death was precisely to send them the
Spirit.

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“The Gift of God Most High”

In the light of God’s revelation, we begin
to see why the Spirit is the Gift, the supreme
Gift of God to men, reserved to these “last
times” after Christ’s Incarnation and glorifi-

cation. The Spirit is the very breath of God’s
life, breathed into us at baptism to make us
alive with God’s own life, as He first
“breathed on Adam and made him a living
soul.” God’s life is not an abstraction; it is

the fiery, tempestuous, outpouring glory of

His holiness and love, giving us “grace,” to

permeate and transform and vitalize our

whole human selves with the aliveness of
God’s own life.

We can dimly see also why the Spirit could
not be poured out on men before Christ’s
death and glorification. Mankind was
estranged from God! We could not turn to
Him and return by ourselves. The Son of
God had to take on our nature so that man-
kind in Him, the new Adam, would once
more completely turn to God, and return to

Him through a free and loving acceptance
of the conditions of our fallen nature. Now
that He has returned to the Father, now that
His human nature is fully charged with the
Spirit whom He always possessed, He can
communicate the Spirit to men who are

20



united with Him by faith and baptism. We
have to be one with Christ in order to re-

ceive the Spirit, for in Christ our human na-
ture is already “inspirited.”

And so the Spirit comes to us as “the Spirit
of Christ,” poured out on us through the hu-

man nature of the Son of God. “From His
heart will flow streams of living water.”

Here, once again, we see how fully human
and fully divine is God’s plan for our salva-

tion. The Spirit does not come to us as
something alien, but as the Spirit of the glori-

fied human Christ, the New Man, in whom
we are all to become sons of God.

The Gospel for Pentecost Sunday develops
this mystery of our life in God. If we keep
Christ’s word, He and the Father will come
and abide with us. It is the indwelling Spirit

who will teach us what this presence means.
For He is uncreated Love, and He pours the
love of God into our hearts—the very current
of love that unites the Persons of the Blessed

Trinity . 2

2 The Sequence of Pentecost brings together these
attributes of the Holy Spirit. Following the Fathers,
it also calls Him the “finger of God’s right hand.”
God’s right hand, so frequently mentioned in Scrip-
ture, is His Son, His Word, and the Spirit is the finger
through which Father and Son directly work on us,
forming us to the image of Christ and engraving the
Law of God in our hearts.

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“I Am Come to Cast Fire on the Earth”
In the Epistles of Pentecost Week, we see

the Holy Spirit at work in the early days of

the Church, while the Gospels of this week

bring out various aspects of the work of

Christ now continued on earth through the
Church, by the power of the Spirit. Chris-

tian tradition associates the Pentecostal out-

pouring of the Spirit on the infant Church

with His coming down on Christ at His bap-
tism in the Jordan at the beginning of His

public life, and with the coming of the Spirit

to us at confirmation. We receive the Spirit
at baptism to make us “sons in the Son”; but
we receive a new outpouring of the Spirit at
confirmation to send us out to others, giving

us the strength of prophets and witnesses,

that is, martyrs.

We can see from the accounts in the Acts
what the effects of this new gift of the Spirit
are to be—praise of the wonderful works of
God and public proclamation of these works,
of the “Good News of Jesus Christ.” Many
of us could find more opportunities than we
do to carry out our mission as confirmed

Christians by proclaiming the Good News to
our own children, or by taking part in the
work of the Confraternity of Christian Doc-

trine. In any case, we are all called to give

22



public witness, by our lives and actions, to

the reality of God’s love given us in Christ

and poured into our hearts by the Spirit. For

it is desperately necessary today that those

outside and inside the visible Church come to
realize Christianity, not as something to make
people tame, respectable, “adjusted,” but as

“fire on the earth”—the fire that our Lord

came to cast upon earth and that He longs
to have kindled to a mighty flame.

On Pentecost and during the octave we
may well pray for a renewal of the grace of
our confirmation, and for a renewal of the

graces of Pentecost for the whole Church.

This is the hope that the Holy Father ex-

pressed for the Council—the wonder of a new
Pentecost; this is the hope we should all be
voicing to God and striving to make a reality
in our own lives. “Send forth Your Spirit and
they shall be created, and You shall renew
the face of the earth.”

Study-Club Questions

1. How might the Easter season be made real
as Lent in modern Catholic life?

2. Why do so few people think of making
the Pentecost novena to the Holy Spirit?

3. What can each of us do to cultivate Chris-

23



tian joy, not the irritating cheerfulness

which sometimes passes for the real thing?

Suggestions for Reading

Bouyer, Louis. Christian Initiation. New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1961.

McLaughlin, Helen. Easter to Pentecost Fam-

ily Customs (pamphlet). Collegeville:

Liturgical Press.

New Testament Reading Guide (Nos. 5, 12,
15). Collegeville: Liturgical Press.

Novena to the Holy Spirit (pamphlet). Col-

legeville: Liturgical Press.

Parsch, Pius. The Church's Year of Grace,
Vol. 3. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.

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