From WCU: Weekly Update from CCM

Dear Students,

'TIS THE SEASON

No, not the Christmas Season - I don't have my holidays mixed up.  I meant the Easter Season!  Yes, it is a whole season in the Church year.  I once read an article by a very misinformed Catholic who did not understand this fact.  She had gone to a Protestant church with a friend on the Sunday after Easter.  At this church they were celebrating "Butterfly Sunday" which she said was a beautiful reminder of the power of Resurrection, using the image of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.  She really liked the service and suggested that the Catholic Church really ought to do something similar, to extend Easter beyond just Easter Sunday so we can give the Resurrection its fair due.

The writer identified herself as a Catholic, but her comments left me wondering how often she makes it to Mass.  We certainly don't need "Butterfly Sunday" to help us extend the Easter holiday.  For us it is a whole season, stretching from Easter Sunday itself for fifty days until Pentecost.  More than that, the eight days from Easter until the next Sunday (the "Octave of Easter") are regarded really as one extended day in the liturgical calendar.  To give an example, in the Liturgy of the Hours (the Divine Office) for Morning Prayer, the psalms and antiphons for each day this week are taken from the Easter Morning Prayer.  It is the same day over and over again.  But unlike "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray, we don't repeat the emergence of a rodent from a den, but the Risen Christ from the Tomb.  We consider this such a seminal event in our faith that one 24 hour day just is not enough!

The Second Sunday of Easter in particular has been designated as Divine Mercy Sunday (far better than "Butterfly Sunday" in my book).  The Divine Mercy devotion is rooted in the diary of a young polish nun, St. Faustina Kowalska, written in the 1930s.  In it, she recounts many revelations she received about God's mercy.  The message of mercy is that God loves us, no matter how great our sins.  His mercy is stronger than our sins.  If we trust in His mercy, we not only receive His mercy, but we allow it to flow through ourselves and spread to others.  In short, we must ask for God's mercy, we must ourselves be merciful, and we must completely trust in Jesus.

If you are unfamiliar with the Divine Mercy devotion, or the chaplet, here is a great link to an EWTN mini-site with all sorts of information.

http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/mercy/backgr.htm

Butterflies are beautiful creatures of God - but if I have to choose between them and God's mercy, all I have to say is, "Jesus, I trust in You!"

God bless and have a great week!

Matt

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WCU Catholic Campus Ministry

Matthew Newsome, MTh, campus minister

www.WCUCatholic.org

  

(828)293-9374  |   POB 2766, Cullowhee NC 28723

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Gospel For Today

EASTER SUNDAY

cick here for readings

He is risen! Alleluia!  Allow me to wish you a Blessed Easter by taking you back to Holy Thursday.  I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament immediately after the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper; the Sacrament had been removed from the sanctuary and taken to an altar of repose.  Like many churches, our place of repose was decorated with flowers and Easter lilies, making it a reflection of the Garden of Gethsemane, where our Lord spent his final hours before his Passion.

I was reflecting on this, putting myself there in the scene, waiting in the garden, keeping watch with Jesus.  As I meditated on this, a thought entered my mind:  He is there now.  

This was not merely a reenactment of an event which happened long ago.  Christ was there, is there, now, waiting in the garden to be arrested.  When he says, "Stay here and keep watch with me" (Mt 26:38), he is speaking to you and me.  

How can I say Christ is still there at Gethsemane?  Isn't he in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father?  Yes, of course he is.  And that is precisely why he is still in the garden; why he is still suffering on the cross; and why he is even now risen from the tomb.  Christ lives and reigns from eternity.  And eternity gives one a very unique perspective.

Most of us have a very wrong view of what eternity is.  We tend to think of it is just a really, really, really incredibly long time that stretches forever before us without end.  When we think of eternity that way, and imagine heaven as us sitting and adoring God in awe and wonder for endless centuries, we cannot be blamed for thinking, "how boring."  No wonder we don't try very hard to get there.

But eternity is not "a really long time."  Eternity is completely outside of time.  From the perspective of eternity, all time is the present.  We cannot fully understand what that will be like from within time, but it means that there is no past and there is no future.  All time - every moment - is eternally now.

So from his perspective in eternity, Jesus is waiting right now in the garden for the soldiers to arrest him.  He is hanging right now on the cross, bruised and bleeding, struggling to draw one final breath.  He is emerging from the tomb, risen and glorified, the conqueror of death.  He is living through it all, right now, for you and for me.

Today is Easter Sunday.  It is the day in the liturgical year when the Church celebrates in a special way the Resurrection of our Lord.  But in truth, we celebrate the Resurrection every Sunday, just as every Friday is a day of penance in honor of our Lord's death. Every Mass is a memorial of his Passion.  We do not simply remember it as something that happened once long ago.  We believe that the celebration of the Mass truly makes present Christ's sacrifice for us, so that we may participate in it (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1362-1372).   This is only possible because God allows His Church to sacramentally "tap into" eternity.

As I thought of Jesus, from his perspective in eternity, perpetually living through the events we recollect during Holy Week, it occurred to me that this will one day be our perspective as well.  The human soul is immortal.  We will live forever.  That is not in doubt.  The question is what kind of life will it be?  

Every moment of Christ's life is eternally present to Him.  We only know the highlights.  His Incarnation; his being born of the Virgin.  His preaching in the temple.  Turning wine into water at the wedding in Cana.  Restoring sight to the man born blind.  Raising Lazarus from the dead.  The Last Supper.  His trial before Pilate.  His death on a cross.  His rising from the dead.  His ascension into heaven.  Jesus walked with us for thirty-three years.  How many hidden moments were there that we will never know of?  Each of these moments is eternally present to him.  For Jesus, each of these moments was a moment infused with grace.  He never wasted a single breath.

Can you say the same?  I certainly can't.  I have no shortage of wasted moments, missed opportunities, and times in my life that were certainly less than grace-full.  I am reminded of a lyric from Jack Johnson; "If I had a minute for every hour that I wasted, I'd be rich in time."  

In eternity, every moment of your life will be forever present to you.  You can go back and relive them all.  Whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on how you lived your life, the choices you have made.  So consider that as we celebrate Easter today.  Jesus Christ is risen TODAY.  This is the day - TODAY - that the Lord has made.  Live it, and every day, the way you want to live forever.

God bless, and Happy Easter!

--

WCU Catholic Campus Ministry

Matthew Newsome, MTh, campus minister

www.WCUCatholic.org

  

(828)293-9374  |   POB 2766, Cullowhee NC 28723

Join our FACEBOOK Group!

From Davidson: CCM bulletin for week of March 25

FAQs about the Triduum….

• “Triduum” is Latin for “three days.” Lent ends at sundown on Thursday (the day ending  and beginning at sundown is a holdover from our Jewish past). The Triduum goes from Thursday evening of Holy Week through Sunday evening, at which point the Easter season begins.
• You can think of the three days of the Triduum as really being one 3-day Day; or one celebration (of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus) that’s spread out over three days.

• On Holy Thursday, in the evening, we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. This marks the beginning of the end of Jesus’ earthly life, the last meal he shared with his friends. We commemorate the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper; some churches observe Eucharistic Adoration after this mass.
• Many churches practice the rite of foot washing. Holy Thursday is often called “Maundy Thursday” in the Anglican church (and others) because it was after this foot washing, as John’s gospel tells us, that Jesus gave the mandatum, the command, “As I have done for you, so you should do for others.”  Mandatum became ‘maundy’ in English.

• Good Friday is a day of abstinence and fasting for Catholics. But this fasting is not the same as Lenten fasting (to repent and reform); rather, it’s Paschal fasting (in anticipation and preparation for Easter and the resurrection). It’s the day we observe the Passion of Jesus, so the liturgical color is red (like last Sunday, Palm/ Passion Sunday). The service is traditionally held at 3pm, the hour when Jesus died.  At this service we also observe the Veneration of the Cross.
• Eucharist is never celebrated, but instead a communion service using bread consecrated at Holy Thursday is offered instead.

• The Easter Vigil on Saturday night plunges us into the whole story of salvation history, God’s plan for the world and for us. It’s a long service—in the early church, it used to last all night, till dawn, as Christians kept vigil during those dark hours Jesus’ body lay in the tomb, as he passed from death to life. Nowadays it lasts a few hours.
• It begins with the kindling of the new flame, the lighting of the Easter candle, and the singing of the Exultet (the Easter proclamation). Then there is a series of readings (from five to nine) from the Old and New Testaments that trace God’s saving actions in our history. Then we sing the Gloria and the Alleluia (which we haven’t done since Lent began) and we hear the gospel of the resurrection proclaimed. After this, new members might be baptized or received into the Church, and everyone renews their baptismal vows. Finally there is the liturgy of the Eucharist. And with any luck, after all of this, there are refreshments in the church basement!

• Easter Sunday is the Easter service most folks actually experience, and it’s full of light and lilies and trumpets. Easter is the most important celebration in the Christian churches, the “Great Feast.” Just as Eucharist is meant to be the ‘source and summit,’ the foundation and goal of our Sunday worship and our daily lives, so Easter is the source and summit of all our worship throughout the year and of our whole lives as Christians.
• The Easter season comes to an end with the Feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given to the Church to continue Jesus’ mission and ministry. After that, Ordinary Time begins again.

___________________________

Karen Soos
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423