Daily Readings for:April 11, 2015
(Readings on USCCB website)
Collect: O God, who by the abundance of your grace give increase to the peoples who believe in you, look with favor on those you have chosen and clothe with blessed immortality those reborn through the Sacrament of Baptism. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
RECIPES
ACTIVITIES
o Liturgy of Easter Sunday and the Octave of Easter
PRAYERS
o Book of Blessings: Blessing Before and After Meals: Easter Season (2nd Plan)
o Prayers for the Easter Season
o Easter Prayers (for the Octave of Easter)
o The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy
o Book of Blessings: Blessing Before and After Meals: Easter Week (1st Plan)
o Book of Blessings: Blessing Before and After Meals: Easter (1st Plan)
o Victimae Paschali: The Easter Sequence
· Easter: April 11th
· Easter Saturday
Old Calendar: Easter Saturday
"Lastly, He showed himself to the Eleven themselves while they were at table. He reproached them for their incredulity and obstinacy.... And He said to them, 'Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.'" (Mark 16: 14-15)
On coming out of the baptismal font on Easter Sunday, the neophytes (newly baptized) were given a white symbolic garment, which they wore throughout the Easter Octave. Easter Saturday was known as "the Saturday on which white vestments are laid aside," or Saturday "in albis (depositis)." It was also called "Low Saturday." The octave ends tomorrow, but the Easter Season continues for five more weeks.
Meditation: The Power that Regenerates the World
Earthly history and the workings of the cosmos undoubtedly continue their course and are not identified with the rate at which the Kingdom of Christ develops. In fact, pain, evil, sin, death, yet claim their victims, in spite of the resurrection of Christ.
The cycle of one thing succeeding another, the cycle of becoming, is not at a standstill. If it were, history would be at an end! And so facts and events are continually being repeated and give rise to thoughts of an irremediable conflict here on earth between the two kingdoms, or, as St. Augustine said, between the two cities. Think, for example, of the contrast which is to be found in this Holy Year between celebration of the Redemption on the one hand and on the other hand the offenses against God, the misdeeds committed against man and, at bottom, the challenges to Christ which are continually being launched.
This is the most impressive aspect, the most mysterious dimension of the historic dialectic between the forces of good and the forces of evil: the fact that obstacles are raised or indifference is shown to the forces of Redemption let into the world by Christ through his Resurrection as the principle which resolves the conflict between death and life.
The world is in need, today as yesterday, for the "new people" to remain in its midst, among the vicissitudes, the conflicts, the variations which not seldom lead to situations which are so difficult, sometimes even dramatic. The world has need of this people which will dedicate itself with humility, courage and perseverance to service of the Redemption and give concrete form, in good Christian conduct, to the regenerating power of Christ's resurrection.
This is the function which Christians have as evangelizers and witnesses to the Resurrection in history.
Excerpted from Prayers and Devotions from Pope John Paul II, edited by Bishop Peter Canisius, 1984.
In Rome, the Station is at the church of St. John Lateran, the mother church of Christendom. Eight days ago the Easter vigil liturgy took place in this basilica. Today the neophytes return a final time to the place of baptism.