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The Easter Cycle
holy body. Men thus reborn are worthy to become the sons of God and merit eternal life
and eternal glory.
Christ died for us on the cross. What a mysterious dispensation of God’s providence!
The unjust man commits the sin, but the Just One satisfies for it. The guilty one escapes
the penalty of sin, but the Innocent One pays the penalty. The Lord and Master pays the
debts which were contracted by the servant. What a contrast between the wickedness of
man, and the goodness and justice and mercy of God! God has done all this for us; what
have we done for Him?
Prayer
We beseech Thee, O almighty God, to look down upon Thy family, for whom our Lord Jesus
Christ freely delivered Himself into the hands of sinners, and for whom He suffered the martyrdom
of the cross. Who liveth and reigneth world without end. Amen.
Holy Saturday
The impressive baptismal ceremonies, which were once performed on Holy Saturday night
before the Easter services, are now anticipated Holy Saturday morning. A distinctive feature
of the Holy Saturday services is the blessing of the Easter candle. The Church confesses her
amazement at the relationship between the miracles of the Old Testament and the events of the
New Testament. The miracles of the Old Testament were types of things that were to transpire
in the New Testament. “For it would have profited us nothing to have been born unless we had
also been redeemed. O wonderful condescension of Thy mercy towards us! O inestimable
affection of charity, that to redeem a slave Thou didst deliver up Thy Son! O truly necessary
sin of Adam, which was blotted out by the death of Christ! O happy fault that merited so great
a Redeemer!” (Exultet.)
“O happy fault!” In the light of the resurrection of Christ (symbolized by the Easter candle),
man finds a solution to a problem which had puzzled him for ages. Why has God allowed evil
to occur when He could so easily have prevented it? Even though evil is entirely the work of
man, it is still subject to the power and providence of God; He could prevent it. Why has He not
done so? Because by overcoming evil, God manifests His power. By destroying evil in us, God
demonstrates His love for us. His victory over evil is a more convincing proof of His power than
all the works of creation. In this victory the various aspects of the divine essence are revealed
to us. Without the existence of evil, we should never have known the depth of God’s wisdom
and mercy. It was the mercy of God that sent the Lamb to the sacrifice. Incarnate mercy offers
itself as a sacrifice, and the sacrifice is accepted by the divine mercy. Thus in the death of Christ
the greatest of all miracles was performed. Omnipotence itself made itself powerless; life was
given over to death. God permitted evil in order to bring about a higher good, namely, the
Incarnation, and through the Incarnation the kingdom of the redeemed. “O happy fault that
merited so great a Redeemer!”
Both in Holy Scripture and in the teaching of the Fathers there is a foundation for the
doctrine that Christ would not have become incarnate had not Adam sinned. This view
is also defended by the majority of theologians. The Credo, which we sing at Mass as the
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