April 14, 2024

In our secular culture we celebrate holidays in advance or only on the day itself, but as soon as the holiday passes we move on to other things. The Church takes quite a different approach. We prepare for major feasts in a subdued fashion, but then the celebration of the feast itself is prolonged over a period of time. The more important the feast, the longer the celebration. Thus Easter, our most important observance, is celebrated for fifty days, longer than any other feast in the calendar. The Great Fifty Days, as it is sometimes called, is observed as a single feast, although it is punctuated by specific celebrations that stretch from Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday.

During the Easter season the Church places before us Scriptures which talk about the new life of the Risen Lord that we experience in the sacraments of Christian Initiation. Just as Lent is initiatory in character, so is the Easter season as well. The RCIA tems this time the Period of Post-Baptismal Catechesis or Mystagogy. During this time those who received Easter sacraments are to be instructed on the deeper meaning of what they received at the Easter Vigil. Although the catechesis is ostensibly directed to the newly initiated, in fact this is an annual "refresher course" for the entire assembly regardign the meaning of their life as baptized disciples of the Risen One.

The Easter season is also a most fitting time for the conferral of Sacraments of Initiation on those who are already baptized into the Catholic Church as infants. We congratulate the children who will receive their First Holy Communion on Saturday, April 27, at 10:00 and pray that they may always have a deep and abiding appreciation of this holy sacrament. The Sacrament of Confirmation will be administered by the Most Rev. Michael G. Woost, Auxiliary Bishop of Cleveland, at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15, at St. Michael Church in Independence. We extend our prayerful best wishes that they may put to good use the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit they will receive. It is important that we keep in our prayers those who receive these sacraments as well as those who are assisting our young people by preparing them. May the good example we give to these young men and women be the inspiration for them to live fully the life of faith they are entering more deeply through the sacraments they are receiving.