Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:02 Today Easter is the greatest feast on the church's calendar. We have in both in the mass today, the hake DAS, uh, which when we sing it, the divine office during this whole week, it's one big fees to Lockton. And the heck is this. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. It's from Psalm one 17. This is the day the Lord has made Christmas a great feast. But what does contrast and briefly to see why this is the greater fridge. Christmas has that note of sweetness and joy because what do we have? We have this little baby. God became a man. Two little baby Jesus. He's wrapped in swaddling clothes. There's his mother there. Saint Joseph, the shepherds, the animals. It's quiet it's night. And we're rejoice because God stooped down became man for us. And the angels of course are singing about his glory in the heavens.
Speaker 0 00:00:58 So that's Christmas. It has that note of sweetness and joy. But unlike Christmas, Easter doesn't have that same kind of thing about sweetness and joy. We're not talking about a little baby. All of a sudden, this is a triumphal feast in the literal original sense of a Roman triumph. If you know what a triumph was, when the Romans would win and war there's a great ceremony, held in the army, got back to Rome and among other things, they come marching in. When the triumph was being held, there were all kinds of things with naked short, the Roman army would come marching in here. They'd have all the treasures, all the booty, the war, booty that they brought back. They're carrying it in front of the people that see, see what we did. This is what we've done. So it'd be doing this and we've been victorious like that.
Speaker 0 00:01:44 Then they'd have all the prisoners chained up as slaves and find the enemy general. He'd be, he'd be at the packet. And then after that, here would come. The, uh, the Roman general ride in a chariot led by white horses and so forth. There's so many is going on. They go up to the alter at the temple of Jupiter. There'd be both sacrificed. They'd handled the general, these blow, these bulls of blood. He poured on the alternative. He's the God. And then he take and swap the swipe off the head of the enemy commander. That was what a Roman triumph was. And it was triumphal. That's what Easter is like a few ideas of why I think what our Lord's just done during Holy week in the garden. He took all the students. The world upon himself was crushed down with all the sins, the sins, Adam, to the very last and before the crack of doom, he's been betrayed by a loved one.
Speaker 0 00:02:50 He's been abandoned by all his bishops, except one st. John, they all run away. His Pope denies him three and also fleas are Holy patron. Saint Peter he's been abused, arrested, attacked, and beaten by his own painful the Jews. And to make that even a worse installed, his leaders actually know and have known since the beginning of his public ministry, who he is and whom he represents that he's been beaten, mocked scourged and spit upon, and finally crucify by the rulers. The pagans, the Wellmans apparently on good Friday, same say ms. Triumphed, Holy Saturday, everything's quiet. It looks like the triumph of Satan. The victory of the forces of darkness and evil hell is overrun. The world.
Speaker 0 00:03:57 Somehow God has died. God died. He must have lost. God was killed by his enemies. He was killed, but on Easter Sunday for the first and only time in history, we see the dead general actually rise back to life. And when we see who really won, who really triumphed, who really cut the head off all of his enemies, he won our Lord. Really one as the Eastern Catholic saying at their Easter vigil at the end, Christ is risen from the dead conquering death by death. He's triumphed over death, over sin, over Satan, over betrayal, over abuse, over suffering. I baptism we've all been made members of his mystical body remembers in his body like cells and the mystical body. And it's his church of which he's the head we've been incorporated into it because he's our head because he's our general. That means that in this battle, we have also won. If we all portray him and go over to the enemy, we've won.
Speaker 0 00:05:37 If we don't betray him, he conquered Satan. He conquered sin. He conquered death. And now that's what we're celebrating that victory. The triumph of Easter is the secret of the martyrs. Every Catholic I've spent a long time pondering over the Myers. These are the men and the women that have such great faith that many of them go singing because they're horrible deaths. Why? Because they realize what Easter really means. It means if we've been faithful to him, we share in that same triumphal victory, even though it looks like a complete disaster, even though it looks naturally speaking as if the forces of hell and the enemies of God and the people that hate the church have won the martyrs, know that we should have a great devotion to him and pray for them to give us that kind of faith and that kind of belief and what our Lord is and what he's done. They'd go, they'd be filled with spiritual joy in spite of their suffering. They're filled with the Holy zeal to follow in a bloody footsteps of their general and a Cocker with him.
Speaker 0 00:07:11 During these troubled times, as we all enter deeper in to the mystical passion, the passion of the mystical body of Christ, or before our eyes, it seems to die. Suffered mangled, crucified, attacked spit upon abandoned by the bishops and priests and the faithful. During these troubled times, we need to have that kind of Easter faith that the Myers had. <inaudible> we need to pray for that during this whole UMass. And every time you hear the Holy sacrifice of the mass at the elevation of the precious blood, ask God to give you the faith and the zeal of the martyrs, ask him to give you the grace to live as a martyr. We don't ask for the grace to as and modern. That's a special God grace that God gives to whom he will. We ask for the grace to be faithful witnesses. That's what modern means to be faithful witnesses, to the truth that Christ is risen. Indeed. He has a resume.
