Easter

Easter is the fifty-day Catholic liturgical season that runs from Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday. It is the longest festal season of the entire Catholic year, longer than the Christmas season and longer than the four Sundays of Advent or the forty days of Lent. The General Norms for the Liturgical Year describe the Easter season as the period in which "the fifty days from the Sunday of the Resurrection to Pentecost Sunday are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, indeed as one 'great Sunday.'"¹

The fifty days of Easter

The Latin name for the Easter season is Quinquagesima, the "fifty days." The number is drawn from the Old Testament: the Jewish feast of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, fell fifty days after the Passover (Leviticus 23:15-16). It was on this fiftieth day that the apostles, gathered with Mary in the Upper Room, received the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13). The Catholic Easter season therefore preserves the original chronology: fifty days from the Resurrection at Passover to the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost.

The fifty days are not subdivided into separate sub-seasons. They are one continuous celebration of the Resurrection, with three principal solemnities punctuating the arc:

• Easter Sunday and the Octave of Easter (the first eight days)
• The Ascension of the Lord (the fortieth day after Easter, traditionally; transferred to the following Sunday in many regions)
• Pentecost Sunday (the fiftieth day, the close of the season)

The Octave of Easter

The first eight days of the Easter season form the Octave of Easter, in which each day is celebrated with the rank of a solemnity. The liturgy throughout the octave is shaped by the joy of the Resurrection: the Gloria and the double Alleluia (alleluia, alleluia) are sung at every Mass, the entire celebration is in white or gold, and the Exsultet's Easter Proclamation continues to set the tone.

The Sunday after Easter, the eighth day of the Octave, is Divine Mercy Sunday. The feast was instituted in the universal calendar by Pope Saint John Paul II in 2000 at the canonization of Saint Faustina Kowalska, in fulfillment of the request of Christ as recorded in her diary that the Sunday after Easter be celebrated as the Feast of the Mercy of God.² The Gospel of the day, the appearance of the Risen Christ to the apostles in the Upper Room with Saint Thomas (John 20:19-31), provides the scriptural foundation for the feast.

The traditional Divine Mercy Novena, prayed from Good Friday through the Saturday before Divine Mercy Sunday, prepares the faithful for this feast.

The Ascension of the Lord

Forty days after Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Ascension, commemorating the bodily ascent of the Risen Christ to the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11). In the universal calendar the Ascension falls on a Thursday (the fortieth day from Easter Sunday); in the United States, parts of Canada, and several other regions, the celebration is transferred to the following Sunday.

The Ascension closes the bodily appearances of the Risen Lord to the apostles and inaugurates the nine-day novena that the apostles, with Mary, prayed in the Upper Room awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:13-14). This novena, often called "the original novena," is the model from which all subsequent Catholic novenas take their nine-day pattern.

The third Glorious Mystery of the rosary is the Ascension; meditation on this mystery during the Easter season returns the believer to the original event.

Pentecost: the close of the Easter season

Pentecost Sunday, fifty days after Easter, celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Upper Room (Acts 2:1-13). The liturgical color of the day is red, signifying the tongues of fire and the Spirit. Pentecost is the only day of the Easter season on which the color is not white or gold.

The traditional Pentecost Vigil, modeled on the Easter Vigil, may be celebrated on the evening of the Saturday before Pentecost. It includes an extended Liturgy of the Word with up to four Old Testament readings, recalling the four great Old Testament theophanies of the Spirit: the giving of the Law on Sinai, the dry bones of Ezekiel, the prophecy of Joel, and the prophecy of Isaiah.³

After Pentecost Sunday the Easter Candle is removed from the sanctuary (it remains in the baptistery, lit at baptisms and funerals), the Easter season concludes, and the Church returns to Ordinary Time.

The liturgical character of the Easter season

Throughout the fifty days the Mass is marked by several distinctive features:

• The Gloria is sung at every Sunday Mass.
• The Alleluia is doubled before the Gospel: Alleluia, alleluia.
• The Easter Candle stands lit in the sanctuary at every Mass.
• The Regina Coeli replaces the Angelus as the Marian antiphon prayed at noon and at sunset.
• The vestments are white or gold, with red on Pentecost.
• The Sequences are sung on Easter Sunday (Victimae Paschali Laudes) and on Pentecost (Veni Sancte Spiritus).

The Acts of the Apostles is read at the first reading throughout the Easter season (replacing the Old Testament reading), and the Gospel of Saint John is read extensively at the Gospel proclamations.

Easter in the lay Catholic life

The lay Catholic celebration of Easter properly extends the full fifty days. The traditional Easter greeting Christus resurrexit, vere resurrexit ("Christ is risen, He is risen indeed") is exchanged throughout the season. Easter foods (specially blessed at the Easter Vigil or on Easter Sunday morning, in the rite of the Benedictio Cibi), Easter eggs, and Easter customs are continued not only on Easter Sunday but through the Octave at minimum.

The praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet is particularly recommended in the Easter season, especially on Divine Mercy Sunday and on the days of the Easter Octave.

For the season that precedes Easter, see Lent and the Sacred Triduum. For the period that follows Pentecost, see Ordinary Time.

Sources

Footnotes

1. General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, n. 22. ↩

2. Decree Misericors et miserator of the Congregation for Divine Worship (May 5, 2000), instituting the Second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday in the universal calendar. Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary, n. 699, on the request of Christ. ↩

3. Roman Missal, third typical edition (2002), the Vigil of Pentecost. ↩