This Blog as a Celebration

Photo by: www.catholicmemes.com 

Tonight was the celebration of (basically) the Mass of all Masses: the Easter Vigil. As I was serving at Mass, in between the complications of Altar Serving at such a great and long occasion, I realized how much I love Easter Vigil. Even with off-key chanting by deacons, awkward improvisations, crowded Altars full of catechumens, finding thrown away baptismal candles, or my own distracted mind, the Vigil was so amazing that it's joy cannot be compared, in my mind, with any other celebration in the Church.
For me, the Mass every Sunday will remind me of the Vigil, not the other way around. That is its heart: that, every Sunday, we celebrate the day between Christ's sorrowful death and his joyful resurrection in an hour.

Our communion with Christ, during the Mass and during our whole life, is not primarily, I think, one of union with Him on the cross, nor is it union with Him on his resurrection day, but rather it is a communion of waiting, of patient, somber, accompaniment. St. Paul said in one of the (many) readings today that:

"We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life."
~Romans 6:4

If we were born again into Christ's death through our Baptism, and if we live "in the hope of the Resurrection" after death, then our whole life consists of our adoration of Christ entombed. Christ, through the Eucharist, is entombed in our hearts; just as he is hidden -yet alive- behind stone, so is he hidden -yet alive- behind the forms of bread and wine. 

And this is simply something, celebrated most centrally on Holy Saturday, that we keep coming back to every Sunday of the Year.


This blog of mine, yet new, is, for me, a channel for the graces that God has showered upon me, the philosophical beauties that are sometimes realized, or the poetic thoughts given to me by beauty, or the hardness of war that is begotten by the absence of beauty. It is something, like Holy Saturday, that I keep coming back to.
That, dear reader, is the meaning of celebration. Celebration, in its root form, is originally from the Mass, is from the Latin celebratus meaning "much-frequented; kept solemn" (courtesy of www.etymonline.com).
Through this blog, I intend to elaborate that which I much-frequent, that solemnity which I keep coming back to, which I find that I cannot live without.

Easter is here, my friends, Easter is here.

"At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn comes rejoicing"
~Psalm 30: 6