The season of Easter begins at sunset on Holy Thursday. The Pascal Triduum, the three days we celebrate as one, carries on through Good Friday, Holy Saturday and ends at sunset on Easter Sunday. These holiest of days in the Christian year are the foundation of our faith. They are what we trust in for our eternal salvation. They are what give us hope during the trials of life. They show us that love truly conquers all.
On Holy Thursday and Good Friday we enter into our Lord's passion where He ultimately suffers the weight of all sin—past, present, and future—as He hangs upon the cross. There in that moment of finality God, the Creator of all things, the reason for and possibility of anything, died. The Word of God lay dead in Sheol (the Hebrew underworld) preaching to the dead gone before Him in silence. Drawing all Creation to Himself, the first-born of Creation brought Creation with Him into death. We who came after this event join Christ in this moment at our baptism, as we were held under water (whether poured or immersed). In His act of solidarity with us, and ours with Him, our death is destroyed.
The Spirit of Love, the Spirit of God that fills us at baptism, called the Word back to the land of the living from God-forsakenness. As Creation joined Him in death, so too does the resurrection of Jesus restore to life all Creation in Him. He is not alone, but rather first-born from the dead, and when the stone rolls back from the tomb He is but the first of his brother and sisters to step forth from the grave born anew.
Easter doesn't end at the resurrection. As a matter of fact, it's just beginning. For forty days, Jesus showed himself to the world, alive, but new; changed. Those who walk His road are forever changed, and can't linger in a world waiting to be restored. The Word of God returns to the Father, having accomplished His will. His divinity unchanged, but His humanity, taken on in the Incarnation, is eternally changed. In the Ascension humanity goes to where it has never gone before, into the very heart of God; the mansion with many rooms and a place for all who cling to the Son.
This Easter, savor every day. Live boldly in the freedom and joy of the Children of God who hope in the great promise of eternity won for us by the love of Christ.
