Daily Retreat 04/28/06

2006 Apr 28 Fri: Easter Weekday/ Peter Chanel, p, r, ms, mt/ Louis Mary de Montfort, p

Acts 5: 34-42/ Ps 26(27): 1. 4. 13-14/ Jn 6: 1-15

From today’s readings: "And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.... The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?... The Jewish feast of Passover was near...."

Church Chews on John 6

Most Catholics and many other Christians recognize Lent as the penitential season of 40 days leading up to Church’s celebration of Easter. And while everyone knows about Easter Sunday itself, far fewer people are familiar with Easter as a proper festive season stretching seven full weeks from the Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection all the way to the day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit on the nascent Church, the fiftieth day of celebrating Christ’s Easter victory.

As always, the lectionary Scriptures set the meditative tone for the Easter season. To recall and be inspired by the Easter transformation of the first disciples, the Church reads through essentially the entire book Acts of the Apostles. This is obviously noted in the weekday readings, but even the first reading on Sundays (normally taken from the Old Testament) also comes from the Acts throughout Eastertide.

During the initial week of this season, the Gospel readings first logically cycle through each evangelist’s account of the Resurrection, but starting in the second week of Easter, the lectionary returns to a number of pre-Resurrection discourses of Christ found only in the Gospel of John. These Gospel passages, which the Church thus considers anew, are among the most mystic teachings of the Lord, since none of them can be properly understood without the light of Easter faith.

So, for instance, the Gospel readings this week have been from chapter 3 (of John), the Lord’s introductory teachings on the baptismal re-birth of water and the Holy Spirit. Then today, the lectionary presents the entrée of John 6, one of the most crucial chapters in the entire Bible, since it provides us with the best taste of the topic which Jesus Himself saw fit to patiently preach about in savory details exactly one year before His Passion. So, open your Bibles to John 6, and let’s carefully chew on every word to insure that not even a fragment of the Lord’s loaves goes to waste....