EASTER TIDE
IS THE TIME OF NEW LIFE.
Our Savior’s in the first place, living for ever a life which belongs no more to the earth and which one day we shall share with Him in heaven. And then our own lives — from Christ to us — for we have more than the assurance of rejoining Him; snatched by Him from the power of the devil we belong to Him as His by right of conquest and we share His life.
Easter week is the week of the baptized. They have passed from death to life, from the darkness of sin to the life of grace in the light of Christ.
The moral requirements of the new life are recalled throughout Eastertide. They are governed by the principle enunciated by St. Paul that, risen with Christ, the Christian must raise his desires to heaven, detach himself from earthly pleasures in order to love those of heaven. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to complete the formation in the baptized of the “new man” who, by the holiness of his life, bears witness to Christ crucified.
The Fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, or better as one “great Sunday.”
These above all others are the days for the singing of the Alleluia.
