This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia. Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen, Alleluia
Finally, we can sing that word again. Alleluia. It’s one of our best attempts to give verbal expression to the joy of Easter that is beyond words. Alleluia. it’s a jubilant cry of exultation, it’s an exclamation of the heart directed to God whose greatness and love are beyond words.
The word “Alleluia” comes from two Hebrew words meaning “praise the Lord”. So every time we say “Alleluia” we are saying “the Lord be praised...for his goodness...for his greatness...for his gifts to us”. And this word is especially associated with the Easter season because the greatest gift that God has given us is the gift of new life through His Son’s death and resurrection. “If Christ had not been raised, our faith would be in vain”.
But he did rise, just as he said he would Alleluia. St. Augustine said, “"We are Easter people and Alleluia is our song!" What that means is that our entire life is meant to be a joyful song of thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection is meant to change everything about us.
Easter is the most significant feast of the Church year. In fact, Easter is so great, it’s not merely one day; it is an entire season, lasting 50 days until Pentecost. St. John Chrysostom said that we should celebrate the entire Easter season as one LONG Sunday lasting 50 days. So we don’t just stop for one day, and say, Jesus rose from the dead, alleluia, now let’s get on with our lives back to normal. Easter joy should fill our hearts more and more and more and more.
I want you to try something. For the next 50 days, every morning when you wake up say those words, “Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen, Alleluia”. Let those be the first words from your lips every day. If you are married, let those be the first words you speak to your spouse in the morning, “Jesus is risen.” Or the first words you speak to your children or to your brother or sister: “Jesus is risen, he is truly risen, Alleluia”. If you do that, I promise, you will be blessed joy.
One of the focuses of this Easter season is to simply celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus with great joy and to allow that joy to permeate our lives. Certainly we hope that as you gather with family and friends today for your Easter meals you recall the reason for your gathering: “Jesus is risen, he is truly risen, Alleluia”.
Another focus of the Easter season is the strengthening of the faith of the newly initiated. Last night, here at St. Clare, 5 adults received with great joy the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. In fact, in the United States alone, 100,000 adults became neophytes in the Catholic faith.
Why do we call them neophytes? The word ‘neophyte’ comes from two Greek words; “neo” meaning “new”, and ‘phyte’ meaning “a shoot or stem of a plant”—so, neophyte, is a sapling, a baby plant.
Recall the image we heard on the fifth sunday of Lent. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a seed. But if it is planted in the ground and dies, it will grow and flourish and bear new life. The neophytes are like those seeds which now have been planted and have sprung to new life.
Notice the baptismal fount here at St. Clare looks like a garden, a place of new life. Going down into the waters of baptism, the neophytes received the new life of grace through the Easter Sacraments, the seeds were planted and now have sprouted. There is new life here at St. Clare because they heard Christ calling them to die to their old ways of life and old ways of thinking and acting. They heard him calling to hand over their lives to him, so that they might be raised with Him in eternity. They heard Christ calling, and they answered, Alleluia.
These next few weeks after easter, the neophytes will continue to meet, to pray and to learn more about putting their newly received faith into practice, so that the little saplings can become mighty fruit-bearing trees. But these next few weeks are very delicate, for saplings need time and effort to really take root.
Even though springtime has come, there is danger of that late frost which threatens to come cause the life in those delicate new saplings to wither. So we need to pray for the neophytes and encourage them. The deadly spring frost of worldliness endangers them just like it does to us.
If faith is not practiced and protected it is likely to be lost. We have to protect our faith by remaining close to the fire of Christ through prayer and good works. If any of you who join us today have been away from the Church for any number of weeks or months, we invite you to make a good confession, and rejoin us next week and every week, that the faith of Christ which God has planted in you, may be kept alive.
One of the things the Church invites all of us to do during the Easter Season is that all of us take on the mind and heart of the neophytes. We’re invited to live out the practices of the faith with new enthusiasm, as if we are living this easter for the first time; praying every day with the enthusiasm of those just baptized.
Those of you here who were baptized as adults know what I’m talking about here. Remember those first few weeks of extremely fervent prayer, of close attention to treating other with utmost charity, the enthusiasm with sharing your joy and the good news of your baptism with others, the joy of receiving Jesus in the Eucharist. Enthusiasm is another good greek word, meaning literally to be ‘filled with God’.
How do Christians lose their enthusiasm—how do faces of joy become faces of vinegar, as Pope Francis calls them. What happens? For one, we start to make excuses. Excuses start to creep in, and they douse the fire. Excuses to not pray, to not attend Sunday Mass. We start to justify giving into the gossip again, and the lust again, and the laziness again. We start to give in to all those dangerous voices of the world which seek to distract us from the life of holiness which we should be devoted to.
Brothers and Sisters, that voice telling us we do not need to pray is not the voice of God. The Voice which tells us that we don’t have to go to Mass except when it is convenient is not the voice of God. That voice that tells us it’s okay to give in to that instance of gossip, you know, because it’s really juicy, or to watch that inappropriate movie or visit that inappropriate website: not the voice of the risen Christ.
So this Easter, we are invited to become neophytes again, to sit again at the feet of the Lord Jesus and learn from him, invited to undergo the transformation of our minds and hearts by the power of his Resurrection.
Today, we renew once again the promises of our Baptism. Proclaim your faith as if it were the first and last time. For those of you are in a state of grace, receive the risen Lord in Holy Communion as if it were your first at last time, that you may be transformed by this encounter and filled with the life and joy of Jesus who is triumphant over sin and death for the glory of God and salvation of souls. “Jesus is risen, he is truly risen, Alleluia”
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