The romance of a cloistered Easter
As the Easter Octave comes to an end, it is with a kind of reflexive surprise that I realise that this is actually what Christianity is supposed to be like all the time. I am supposed to be suffused with the joy of the Resurrection each day because it is not just an event that happened long ago. It is what constitutes my whole identity as a Christian and as a priest.
This “day which the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24) is the first day of the new creation into which Christ has drawn us by baptising us into the life of his Resurrection and making the dynamic of his Paschal Mystery real in us through its representation under sacramental signs. This is the new life hidden with him in God which St Paul speaks of in his Epistle to the Colossians. The radicality and newness of it can easily be obscured.
