The celebration of Our Lord’s Resurrection continues in the Church for eight days, called the Octave of Easter. Each day of the Octave is ranked as a Solemnity in the Church’s liturgical calendar, the highest ranking of liturgical feasts. At Masses during the Octave of Easter, as on Sundays, the Gloria, is recited or sung.
The idea of an Octave of a great feast has its roots in the Old Testament. There are many Jewish feasts that lasted for eight days, for example, the feast of Passover and the feast of Tabernacles. In the Catholic Church, we celebrate eight days of Christmas as well as eight days of Easter.
The Gospel readings at Masses during the Octave of Easter include passages from the Gospels that relate various appearances of the Risen Jesus. Reflecting on these Gospel texts is a wonderful way to prolong the celebration of Easter. Each day during the Octave, we proclaim in the Gospel Acclamation: This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.
The Octave of Easter ends on the Second Sunday of Easter, the Sunday of Divine Mercy. In the Jubilee Year 2000, at the Mass in which he canonized the humble religious Sister Faustina Kowalska, Blessed John Paul II declared that from then on throughout the Church the Second Sunday of Easter would also be called the Sunday of Divine Mercy. This is entirely appropriate since, as Blessed John Paul II reminded us, “Divine Mercy is “the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity….”
At Mass on the Sunday of Divine Mercy, we will hear the Gospel account of Our Lord’s appearance to the apostles on the night of the first Easter Sunday. When He appeared to them, the Risen Jesus showed them his hands and his side. He showed them his glorious wounds. These wounds reveal the divine mercy. And then Our Lord imparted to his apostles his own power to forgive sins and entrusted to them and their successors the ministry of reconciliation when he said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.
At Mass on the Sunday of Divine Mercy, we will pray Psalm 118 (the responsorial psalm that day). Jesus himself would have prayed this psalm at the Last Supper. When we pray it, we remember Christ’s passion and death and we thank God for raising Jesus from the dead. It reminds us to trust in the Lord and his merciful love. It truly endures forever.
From: todayscatholic.org
