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For this reason we frequently repeat on this day an<i
throughout the octave the words of the Psalmist,
"
This
is the day which the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and
"
The day of our Lord s Resurrection
be glad therein.
is the day of our passage also ; following our leader,
we shall pass from death to life, of this we are firmly
assured. In the Roman Martyrology this Feast is called
the Solemnity of Solemnities.
The object of the Christian Pasch is to adore our risen
Lord, as we adored Him in the crib and on the Cross.
In these different states, the Man-God is ever worthy of
our adoration. More than ever is He so in the hour of
His triumph over death. The lifeless Body of our divine
Lord, having been reverently taken down from the Cross,
was embalmed and laid in the sepulchre where it re
mained from Friday evening until the early morning
of Sunday. His soul immediately on leaving His sacred
Body descended into hell, that is, into the place called
limbo where the souls of the patriarchs and of the just
of the Old Testament were waiting for the coming of
their divine deliverer. But the Body and Soul of our
Lord never ceased to be united to His divinity.
According to the prediction of the prophets and conform
ably to His own words, our Lord rose again to life on
the third day after His death. The Evangelists do not
tell us the exact moment at which His Resurrection took
place. Our Lord s Body thus remained in the tomb
about thirty hours, or a number corresponding to the
number of years He had lived on earth. According to the
tradition of the Church, the RESURRECTION, like the
Birth of Jesus Christ, took place ABOUT MIDNIGHT.
Finding the world in darkness, our Lord would inundate
it with His light. Just as He had laid down His life of
His own free will, so did our divine Redeemer of Himself