The color of Easter is white, but it is set in the natural green of spring. The tone is a joyous Alleluia but there are still echoes of Friday’s lament. It is a day of joy but it moves us, as all feasts move us, one day closer to our own death.

The layman and his family, a little weary of Easter commercials, are especially dressed for Easter, notably wife and daughters. The daily newspapers can hardly be read these days without being lured by the massive advertising. The layman is relieved to know that, if honest, there is nothing evil in an ad. The evil is in us, in our lack of resistance, in our failure to measure what we give those in need by what we buy that we don’t need.

EASTER is the feast of giving. With Christ’s passion and death, it forms the single mystery of our faith. On the night before His death, John saw what He was doing: “He still loved those who were His own…He would give them the deepest proof of his love.” Paul later said: ‘Christ died for us all…when a man becomes a new creature in Christ, his old life has disappeared.”

When the layman comes to know and treasure his Bible more, he will be better prepared for this God-giving. He would see the trivial gifts that we give and contrast them with the Easter gift. In his new reading, he would not be shocked by words of the German theologians, Karl Rahner: “Christ has poured out all over the world: He became, in His humanity, what He had always been according to His dignity, the heart of the world, the innermost center of creation.”

The resurrection of the dead body of Jesus, the coming alive again of the Son of Man—these are the essence of our faith. They happened; the act occurred. History knew the happening, the occurrence. But the mystery still lives on, not as a sentimental memory, nor an anniversary. Lifted out of our history, it exists in a new way…under signs and symbols which convey the reality of what Christ did long ago. Every Mass recalls the passion, resurrection and ascension of Our Lord, making present to us here and now the saving power of His redeeming work.

EASTER is but the more solemn proclamation of what takes place in daily Mass, just as the Vigil of Saturday night, with its prophecies, paschal candle, the Exultet, is called by the Church the “mother of all vigils.’ The layman today, in our post-Vatican age, must read and pray more. Now, reclaiming his role in the People of God, he takes on greater responsibilities. Now touched by the priesthood of all the faithful, he learns to know better the priesthood of all the faithful, the priesthood of those consecrated to serve.

If he does not understand what Easter is about, what the Church with the apostles and deacons was established for, what his own precise role is, his prophetic voice will sound only in a desert, and his whims or adventures may be mistaken for a charism.

The meditation on Easter begins not with our preferences and prejudices. It begins rather in the Preface of the Feast:

“Dying he destroyed our death, and rising he restored life.” Paul’s whole theme is dying and rising, a dialectic of human crisis. Need we expect our lives to be different? To partake of the Paschal Mystery, on Easter or any other day, is to partake of Christ, the French liturgist Louis Bouyer has said.

Bishop Bernardin, our priests and I humbly ask that you become part of Easter, part of this mystery—especially the suffering and sick; especially fathers and mothers who are facing a generation that is not easy to understand; especially young people who in straining at leashes of the past often rebel at the Word of God. His Church, the faith. And we address ourselves particularly to all who are troubled as they find it difficult to guard the faith that alone sustains the weak men that we all are.

Those who nostalgically look back at a church whose note was immobility, whose language was obscure, whose altars were ornaments are not on the right path. Those who carelessly seek the new, without regard to the scared tradition that was so dear to the man they call their patron, Pope John XXIII, will not find a refreshed, revitalized faith.

Easter, the central mystery, the event that completed our redemption, has clear-cut lines for the living. Be humble. Be just. Be generous. These are the lineaments, for every layman, of that supreme virtue of love.

May the Risen Christ raise us to be new men! A holy Pasch to all of our homes!

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta