Toward Easter - Daily Readings & Meditations for Easter 2025 - Easter Sunday

Christ is risen! The glorious transformation we've been preparing for through forty days of Lenten sacrifice has arrived, but what happens to our spiritual journey now? 

This meditation explores the profound significance of Eastertide—not merely as the end of Lenten disciplines but as the beginning of a new way of living. From the triumphant moment when "light has triumphed over darkness," we are called to understand that Easter isn't about abandoning our spiritual progress, but redirecting it toward a fuller expression of our life in Christ.

As St. Paul reminds us, being "risen with Christ" means elevating our desires toward heaven while detaching from mere earthly satisfactions. For newly baptized Catholics, this season marks their first days in the faith, while for all believers, it offers a time to balance joyful celebration with continued spiritual growth. The Easter octave specifically highlights this transition as we learn to live out the new life received in baptism.

The meditation offers five practical Easter resolutions to help navigate this season properly: making a fervent communion, reciting the Haec Dies prayer at meals, sincerely greeting others with Easter joy, celebrating with family, and marking the end of Lenten austerities with small gestures of generosity. These simple practices help us maintain the proper perspective—celebrating fully while continuing to make spiritual progress.

Join us throughout the Easter octave as we explore what it means to live as new creations, clothed in the victory of Christ, who has conquered death once and for all. How will you carry your Lenten transformation into this season of uninterrupted joy?

Chapters

• 0:00 Easter Greetings and Introduction
• 3:37 Understanding Eastertide's Significance
• 6:25 Easter Sunday: Glory and Triumph
• 8:57 Prayers and Daily Thoughts
• 10:42 Five Easter Resolutions
• 13:48 Continuing Our Spiritual Journey

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Sancte, sancte, amare morti, decadas nos In teisper avert. Good morning everyone. Happy Easter. Happy Easter to all of you who have been watching these readings of meditations through all of Lent and today Christ is risen. We will be continuing these meditations here through the octave of Easter, from today through next Sunday. I believe they go all the way through. Well, from today through Easter Saturday. Anyways, I do not see one for uh, for low sunday, but uh, but yeah. So for the next week we will be continuing these and we're going to start off with a little reading on easter tide itself, and then we have a a reading and meditation for Easter Sunday. So, without further ado, I'll throw up an image on screen and we're going to get going today. And for any of you who came into the church last night at the Easter Vigil, congratulations. We are very happy to have you, and today is your first full day as a Catholic, so I'm not sure why you're starting it off listening to me, but hopefully you find this fruitful. So give me a second here and we're going to get going.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Eastertide, eastertide From the Mass of the Easter Vigil until Saturday in Pentecost week. For seven weeks, the Church celebrates Jesus risen, easter, going up to heaven Ascension and sending the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles. Pentecost, the Easter season is the time of new life, the new life of our Lord, now alive forever, of a life that no longer belongs to the earth, in which we will one day share in heaven with Him and also our own new life. Indeed, we have the certainty of joining Jesus one day in heaven if we are faithful to his grace. Snatched by him from the power of Satan, we belong to him as his conquest and we participate in his life. The Easter octave is the week of the newly baptized. They have passed from death to life, from the darkness of sin to the life of grace and the light of Christ Gathered in his church. They share her faith, they pray and offer with her the sacrifice of the redeemed in thanksgiving, and they find in the sacred body of Jesus the nourishment of a fraternal life which unites them in charity. As for all other Christians, their Lenten efforts must not be scattered to the winds in 24 hours. It is therefore necessary that they pursue them today, but now in a new perspective. It is no longer a question so much of making the old man die away as of living the new life received in baptism.

Speaker 1: 4:39

The moral requirements of the new life will be called to mind throughout Eastertide. They obey the principle expressed by St Paul Risen with Christ, the Christian ought to raise his desires toward heaven, detach himself from earthly satisfactions and acquire the taste for things on high. It will be the work of the Holy Ghost to finish forming in those who were baptized the new man who, by the holiness of his life, bears witness to the resurrected Christ. During these fifty days of uninterrupted joy, the Alleluia is continually resounding, attaching its triumphant exaltation to all of the chants. Until Pentecost, we use white vestments, sign of joy and baptismal purity.

Speaker 1: 5:33

And now Easter Sunday, glory and triumph. From today's introit, psalm 138, 18. I arose and I'm still with thee. Victory, that which we awaited with fervent desires for the forty days of Lent, as we set aside our sin in order to clothe ourselves in purity. The goal that we have sought since the beginning of Advent has finally been reached.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Light has triumphed over darkness. The divine sun shines above us with all its warmth and with all its brilliance. At his birth, like light passing through crystal, he preserved the virginal integrity of Mary's womb. Today he passes in the same way through the rock of a sealed cavern. Everything remained intact. He is free, the author of life, the source of our existence, he who triumphs over death. He is all-powerful because he is death. He is all-powerful because he is. No mortal being was present to see with his eyes the resurrection of our Lord.

Speaker 1: 6:52

The first event which happened just after is recounted by Saint Matthew. There was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, drawing near, rolled back the stone and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning and his raiment like snow. The face of the angel reminds us that of our Lord himself on the day of his transfiguration. The fact of sitting down on the stone echoes the attitude of a conqueror trampling upon his vanquished enemies. The angel is a figure of Christ resurrected, and even of Christ such as we will see him when he comes back at the end of time. He will then be the source of a great confusion for sinners and of great joy for the just. Thus, the victory of Easter already prefigures the definitive victory of Christ over his enemies. Lord Jesus, I associate myself with all my heart to thy joy in seeing thee take back up thy body, henceforth immortal. Help me to receive communion today in the greatest recollection in order to receive the grace which thou desires to communicate to me in abundance. And now a prayer from the Vespers Hem for Eastertide, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen At the royal banquet of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen At the royal banquet of the Lamb.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Let us celebrate Christ, our leader Vanquisher, overthrowing the power of hell. Christ displays his trophies, opens heaven, drags after his chariot the subjugated king of darkness. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen. Our first thought of the day is from St Teresa of Avila. How he shone with splendor, how beautiful and majestic, how victorious, how joyful he was. What spoils he brought away from the battle where he won a glorious kingdom that he wishes to make all your own. And our second thought of the day is from Saint Padre Pio. Let us love Christ for his divine glory and his infinite merits, because he is all-powerful in heaven and on earth, but also, and above all, because of the gratitude we should feel toward him.

Speaker 1: 9:47

And now, we have five resolutions today One, to make a fervent communion. Two, to recite at the blessing before and after meals, the prayer Hach Dies. Three, to make an effort to communicate with everyone, particularly as Mass lets out, to wish them sincerely a happy Easter. 4. To make of Easter a great family feast day and spend the day in joy with those near and dear to us. And five, to mark the end of the austerities of Lent by offering a little surprise to family and friends. And there is our reading and meditation, and the prayer that it says to recite at prayer before and after meals is this is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Let me go back here. Okay, so, as the, that little reading for the, the Easter tide, the Easter season, said um lens over, but we can't go back, right, we can't go back to, to the old man that we were, that we were. Um, we have to, you know, we have to live a new life in Christ. So you know, whatever, whatever progress you've made in the spiritual life this Lent, you have to, you have to continue progressing, you have to continue moving it forward. Um, you know, and this is something I struggle with every, every Easter season, you know, um, all the fasting I do during Lent suddenly is replaced with uh, you know well, rightfully so with feasting, but, but I overdo it.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Every Easter, um, every Easter season, I should say so, whatever progress you've made, whatever, whatever you know things you've given up, whatever, um, extra prayers you've been doing, you know, whatever spiritual reading you've been doing, we have to keep progressing. We can't, you know, we can't let it all go now that it's Easter. So celebrate Easter feast, but we have to continue progressing in our spiritual lives. We don't just give it up now that Lent is over. Let's see here. So, yeah, the resolutions for today.

Speaker 1: 13:08

You know Easter is a season of joy, so be joyful, like it says. Communicate with everyone, especially as mass lets out. Wish them a happy Easter. Um, go spend the day with family. Um, you know, feast today. Uh, I'm making a prime rib. Um, you know a lot of people will make lamb or ham or whatever. Uh, but feast, celebrate, be joyful. You know Christ is risen, christ has defeated death. So let's celebrate, with keeping in mind the need to continue progressing in our spiritual life.

Speaker 1: 13:49

But I hope you all have a blessed Easter. Thank you all for being with me throughout the 46 days of Lent. It's really encouraging to have as many people, as we did, watch and listen to these and seem to really enjoy them and find them fruitful, and that makes them more than worth it for me to do. So thank you all. I do really appreciate it and, if you want, you're stuck with me for another week here through Easter Saturday and then, like I said, maybe throughout the year on special feast days we'll do some, but then we'll get back into it again for Advent. But then we'll get back into it again for Lent, or not for Lent, for Advent. But that's for us to think about after the Easter season. So, happy Easter everyone. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow, thank you.