The Mystery of Paschal Time by Dom Prosper Guéranger O.S.B.

Of all the seasons of the liturgical year Eastertide is by far the richest in mystery. We might even say that Easter is the summit of the Mystery of the Sacred Liturgy. The Christian who is happy enough to enter, with his whole mind and heart, into the knowledge and love of the Paschal Mystery, has reached the very centre of the supernatural life. Hence it is that the Church uses every effort in order to effect this: what she has hitherto done was all intended as a preparation for Easter. The holy longings of Advent, the sweet joys of Christmas, the severe truths of Septuagesima, the contrition and penance of Lent, the heartrending sight of the Passion - all were given us as preliminaries, as paths, to the sublime and glorious Pasch, which is now ours.
 

And that we might be convinced of the supreme importance of this solemnity, God willed that the Christian Easter and Pentecost should be prepared by those of the Jewish Law - a thousand five hundred years of typical beauty prefigured the reality: and that reality is ours!

 

During these days, then, we have brought before us the two great manifestations of God's goodness towards mankind - the Pasch of Israel, and the Christian Pasch, the Pentecost of Sinai, and the Pentecost of the Church. We shall have occasion to show how the ancient figures were fulfilled in the realities of the new Easter and Pentecost, and how the twilight of the Mosaic Law made way for the full daylight of the Gospel; but we cannot resist the feeling of holy reverence, at the bare thought that the solemnities we have now to celebrate are more than three thousand years old, and that they are to be renewed every year from this till the voice of the Angel shall be heard proclaiming: "Time shall be no more!" The gates of eternity will then be thrown open.

 

Eternity in Heaven is the true Pasch: hence, our Pasch here on Earth is the feast of feasts, the solemnity of solemnities. The human race was dead; it was the victim of that sentence, whereby it was condemned to lie mere dust in the tomb; the gates of life were shut against it. But see! the Son of God rises from His grave and takes possession of eternal life. The holy Fathers bid us look on these fifty days of Easter as the image of our eternal happiness. They are days devoted exclusively to joy; every sort of sadness is forbidden; and the Church cannot speak to her divine Spouse without joining to her words that glorious cry of Heaven, the Alleluia, wherewith, as the holy Liturgy says, the streets and squares of the heavenly Jerusalem resound without ceasing. We have been forbidden the use of this joyous word during the past nine weeks; it behoved us to die with Christ - but now that we have risen together with Him from the tomb, and that we are resolved to die no more that death which kills the soul and caused our Redeemer to die on the Cross, we have a right to our Alleluia.