9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
The Introit shows us the high priest, Christ, at the foot of Calvary. We join Him as He cries
out in anguish: “Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy”
and that is trying now to destroy me. We who are faithful are not mere spectators, for we know
that we are one with Him. We unite ourselves with Him and with the whole Church and make
His distress and prayer our own. The result is the mighty plea for mercy which surges up to
heaven through the somber strain of the Kyrie and the Collect.
Christ now turns His steps toward the altar of sacrifice. He does not walk now as the high
priest of the Old Law, who brought only the blood of animals into the holy of holies, but He
goes clothed in His own priestly robes, and offers His own blood to the last drop. He offers
now, not an animal as a victim, but Himself as the unspotted and holy victim; He reconciles
man with God and establishes a new race, a holy Church. The way is not an easy way, but a
way of pain and sorrow. As we accompany Christ, we pray with Him the stirring words of the
Gradual and the Tract: “Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies. . . . Often they have fought
against me from my youth.” In the Gospel we see His enemies surrounding Him, reviling
Him and ridiculing Him. They take up stones to cast at Him; but “Jesus hid Himself, and
went out of the temple.” The incident is full of meaning. He forsakes the Synagogue, which
despised and rejected His person and His doctrine, and turns to the Church of the New
Law. This new Church gladly hears His word and shares His life. “If any man keep My word,
he shall not see death forever” (Gospel). We are a holy Church, and we keep His word. We
express our determination to do this in the Credo of the Mass. We believe and we will live
as we believe. “I shall live and keep Thy words” (Offertory).
Christ approaches our altar to renew His redeeming sacrifice in an unbloody and mysterious
manner. Spiritually and mysteriously we follow Him and take part in this redeeming
act. With thankful hearts we await the coming of our pure, holy, and unspotted victim.
We offer it to God with our thanks, our adoration and petitions, and as a satisfaction for
our sins. But we do more. We do not allow Christ to offer Himself alone. We enter with
Christ into the holy of holies to offer our own blood before the face of the Father. As the
substance of the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ, so we, too, are
made one with Christ. We put off the old man and put on the new man; we think new
thoughts, we strive for a new goal, we live a new life. We have been lifted up and out of
the world, and now we belong to God. We have been crucified with Christ, and now we
are dead to sin and evil; we have been made an offering with Christ, and now belong to
God (Rom 6:11). When we depart from Mass, we are new men, for we have been joined
in the closest union with God. We pray with childlike confidence, for we pray with Christ
the “Our Father,” a prayer which expresses childlike confidence and self-surrender. “Give
us this day our daily bread.” How can He refuse us now that we have been so intimately
united to His Son? As a proof of His fatherly care and friendship, God gives us the very
essence of all good, His only Son, and with Him, His holy and divine life. “This is My
body. . . . Do this, as often as you receive it, in commemoration of Me” (Communion).
We must share this action with Him by living with Him and dying with Him. Full of confidence
we await the fulfillment of the words of the Gospel: “If any man keep my word,
he shall not see death forever.”
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