On Easter Sunday, a parishioner asked me if I had ever heard an explanation why people often eat ham on Easter Sunday?  I am sure there may be a reason, but instead of making something up as I am sometimes tempted to do when I am stumped on a theological question, I simply admitted that I did not know.  This interaction was in my mind as I sat down to write this article on the Lamb of God that takes place at Mass just before receiving Holy Communion.

I am aware that lamb is a dish that often finds its way onto the dinner table on Easter Sunday.  In fact, the lamb is a symbol that you will often see associated with Easter.  The lamb is a symbol of Christ Himself, who was sacrificed for our sins on Good Friday.  He is referred to by St. John the Baptist as the Lamb of God.  In the Eucharist, we consume the Lamb of God who has taken away the sins of the world through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Therefore, eating lamb on Easter can serve as a fitting reminder of the gift of the Eucharist that Jesus left us on Holy Thursday before offering Himself in sacrifice on the altar of the Cross the following day.  

It is therefore providential for us to be reflecting on the Lamb of God on this Octave Day of Easter as we continue to rejoice in the glory of the Resurrection.  To help us with our consideration of this prayer, let us return to Venerable Bruno Lanteri and his reflections on praying the Mass, through Father Timothy Gallagher’s book: A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass: The Eucharistic Wisdom of Venerable Bruno Lanteri:

Venerable Bruno writes: “At the Lamb of God, I will seek the sentiments and the heart of one who is guilty and in need of forgiveness.”  Transferred to the spiritual realm, [this] is one who knows that he or she has acted contrary to Jesus’s teaching – through self-centeredness, impatience, lack of charity, anger, or through any of the seven capital sins and their unhappy expressions in act – and brings this awareness to Jesus, the Lamb of God, seeing that wonderful gift of mercy.

(p. 75 of Kindle version of book)

Historically, the triple request for mercy at this point was accompanied by the striking of the breast, as during the during the Confiteor at the beginning of the Mass.  Although the Church no longer calls for this outward gesture of striking the breast, the inner disposition remains the same – humility and contrition before the Lord, whose love and mercy is about to come into our souls.  Let us be particularly mindful of our need for mercy at this point in the Mass, increasing our gratitude for the healing grace the Eucharist is about to bring to us.

Speaking of mercy, the timing for our reflecting on this prayer is doubly providential as it coincides with Divine Mercy Sunday, always celebrated on the 2^nd Sunday of Easter.  Last Sunday, on Easter, we were invited to renew our Baptismal Promises, reminding us of that greatest day of our lives when Christ’s victory was applied to our souls.  On this Octave Day of Easter, we are reminded that, though we may fall out of our weakness after Basptism, God’s mercy is always available to welcome us back and restore us to that place of right relationship with Him.  This grace comes about in a most significant way through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, referred to at times as our “second baptism.”  The ocean of God’s mercy is infinite, and no matter how far we have wandered from the Lord, His Divine Mercy is always available to us to renew and restore us.  Having out sins washed away in the blood of the Lamb (in Baptism and Confession) makes it possible for us to share in the Lamb’s High Feast of the Eucharist where we are nourished and given a foretaste of the glory that awaits us in Heaven.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: April 7^th 

Born in Reims, France, around 1651, he enters the world the eldest son of wealthy parents. As the firstborn, he is set on the path of becoming a priest, and at the age of 11 is named a canon of the Reims Cathedral. Both his parents die when he was about 20, so he left seminary for a time to turn his attention to managing the family estate while his 6 younger siblings grow up, returning to seminary studies to be ordained a priest at 26. Gets his doctorate in theology, spends his first years as a priest serving as chaplain and confessor of a girls school, eventually getting involved in fundraising to build a new school and personally helping to train the new teachers.

So far, a pretty ordinary track for a young priest in 1650s France. But God had plans to make him a saint (turns out, the Lord has those same plans for all of us!)

Amid that oh so ordinary work trying to educate children, Jean-Baptiste is slowly moved by the plight of so many poor families who cannot afford schooling for their children. He has tried natural responses to the problem – fundraising, training, building, teaching – but God’s plans are so much bigger. He considers starting a religious community devoted to teaching and catechizing and after praying and considering and wrestling with the consequences of doing so he finally just goes all in. He leaves his comfortable position as a canon, moves in with a small group of similar-minded teachers, and forms them into the Brothers of the Christian Schools. 

As with any time we take a plunge into God’s plan, the world immediately pushes back. The secular schooling system lambasted his tuition-free schooling model – how impractical, wrong-headed, unworkable; it would throw into havoc the rest of the education system where honest people paid an honest price …  Meanwhile the Church could not see a place for an order merely dedicated to teaching and educating; this ramshackle group of half-trained teachers cannot become a religious congregation; there’s not even any priests in the order!… This his family got involved – How dare you use the family fortune to start this personal project (Jean-Baptiste gave his inheritance to the poor). How dare you bring this gaggle of people into the family home! (Which then got sold, so Jean-Baptiste rented a little place for his fledgling order.) 

At every turn, resistance reared its head, but like so many other saints, Jean-Baptiste wasn’t on a personal mission, and he wasn’t there to prove something, and he didn’t try to look too far down the path. He was simply following God’s will, and even if you don’t know where you’re going, if everything is against you, but God is for you, you just keep going forward. 

I had imagined that the care which I assumed of the schools and the masters would amount only to a marginal involvement committing me to no more than providing for the subsistence of the masters and assuring that they acquitted themselves of their tasks with piety and devotion …[3] Indeed, if I had ever thought that the care I was taking of the schoolmasters out of pure charity would ever have made it my duty to live with them, I would have dropped the whole project. … God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning.

Perhaps a final stamp of the Lord’s approval – besides the eternal fruit born by his efforts – came when La Salle died in 1719, on Good Friday.

– Fr. Dominic when applying for seminary felt entirely uncertain about the path ahead, afraid of the unknowns, overwhelmed by the commitment, the uncertain cost, and the turmoil within … and he received some of the best advice he ever received: just stay on the path that God had you on before the storm struck. He entered seminary, found God was behind Him all that time, and discovered the truth that St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle exemplifies for us, and a famous fish once said: just keep swimming. At least, if Jesus pointed you that direction. 

Alleluia!  He is Risen!  After completing our 40-day journey through the desert of Lent, and having once again entered into Christ’s Passion during Holy Week, we now rejoice anew in the victory of Christ risen from the dead!

There is a phrase in the liturgy that has caught my attention in a particular way over the past few years that serve as a sort of reference point for the entire Easter Season for me.  The phrase comes from the Easter Prefaces, which you will recall happens after the Offertory and before the Holy, Holy, Holy, leading us into the Eucharistic Prayer.  All of the Easter Prefaces begin their conclusion with the same phrase: “Therefore, overcome with Paschal joy.”

I think it is important to highlight that this joy is not just any joy, but it is Paschal joy.   How is Paschal joy different?  According to a quick search on an online dictionary, joy is generally defined as an emotion of happiness and delight.  Feeling joy is a great thing, and our faith can elicit very positive emotions.  But in the theological sense, joy is more than just an emotion.  Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  Monsignor Charles Pope, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, explains Christian joy in this way:

The joy referred to here is more than a passing worldly joy. It is deeper than an emotional experience. It is rooted in God and comes from him. Since it does not have the world for its origin but, rather, comes from God, it is more serene and stable than worldly joy, which is merely emotional and lasts only for a time.

(https://blog.adw.org/2013/01/a-brief-treatise-on-the-fruits-of-the-holy-spirit/) 

So, this helps us understand what joy is, but the Church is pointing out a specific kind of joy, Paschal joy.  Paschal joy comes from the glorious truth that Christ has risen from the dead!  Life is victorious, sin has been defeated!  On the day of our Baptism, we became partakers in this victory, and because of that, we have great hope that will shall share in the Resurrection at the end of our earthly journey.  This means that even if we are suffering, even if we are discouraged with how our life here on earth may be going, even if we feel sad at the circumstances of our lives or the world around us, we raise our eyes to God and see the victory that has already been won, and the hope we have for what lies ahead for us.  Therefore, despite how we might feel, we can and should be overcome with Paschal joy as we celebrate this greatest of all feast days.

In 50 days, we will celebrate Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the Church, but we do not need to wait until then to enjoy the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Remaining in the state of grace, receiving the Eucharist regularly, and keeping up our daily prayer with the Lord will fan the flame of the Holy Spirit within us and we will experience the abundance of those fruits in our lives, including joy.  If we begin to feel down and discouraged with what is happening in us or around us, we can simply cry out: “Come, Holy Spirit”, who will remind us of the victory Christ won for us through His death and Resurrection, and meditating on that, how can we not be overcome with Paschal joy?

On behalf of Bishop Paprocki, Fathers Paul Lesupati, Dominic Rankin, Dominic Vahling, Deacon Larry Smith, and the entire Cathedral Parish staff, we wish you all a very blessed Easter!

Father Alford