Easter is a feast of great joy! Alleluia, He is risen, as He said! I've written before about the beautiful, laudatory theology nested in the prefaces for Mass; the Easter season is a very fitting time to write about them again.
There are 5 prefaces for the Easter season. Here is the first:
It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
at all times to acclaim you, O Lord,
but [on this night / on this day / in this time] above all to laud you yet more gloriously,
when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.
For He is the true Lamb Who has taken away the sins of the world;
by dying He has destroyed our death,
and by rising, restored our life.
Therefore, overcome with paschal joy,
every land, every people exults in your praise,
and even the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts,
sing together the unending hymn of your glory, as they acclaim...
Note in the third line that the preface can be used for the Easter Vigil ("on this night"), Easter Sunday ("on this day"), or during the rest of the Easter season ("in this time").
I really love how the preface reflects the heightened celebration. While every Mass celebrates the resurrection of the Lord, the Easter liturgies do this par excellence. The Easter Vigil has the Exultet and 9 readings, guiding the faithful in the story of salvation history. The Easter Sunday Mass has the sequence "Victimae Paschali Laudes" inserted between the second reading and the long-awaited alleluia. In short, there's extra. If one foreign to Catholic liturgy were to go to a Sunday Mass in ordinary time, and then go to Mass on Easter Sunday, he/she would see lots of extra. Extra servers; infrequently-used incense; brighter hymns (hopefully); the giant paschal candle in the sanctuary; and all the rest. By all those touches, the Church is telling us just how important this celebration is. Pull out all the stops! There is something incredible here that we're celebrating!
The preface picks up that tone--we praise God like we usually do, yes, but at Easter "yet more gloriously"! Yes, the fruit of the Spirit is joy, and Christians ideally display that, but at Easter we are "overcome with paschal joy"!
Lastly, we need to highlight the title that is given to Jesus: Lamb. This carries with it multiple scriptural allusions: John the Baptist naming Jesus as the Lamb of God (John 1:29), the many references in the book of Revelation. Most of all, however, a lamb is one of the most important parts of the Passover (Exodus 12). Hebrew families in Egypt were to buy a lamb, kill it, eat it, and then spread the blood on the doorposts of their house.
The Eucharist that we share in fulfills the Passover meal! Like the ancient Hebrews, we, too, eat the Lamb Who was slain. And, only by the shedding of the lamb's blood were the Hebrews spared. By the shedding of Jesus the Lamb's blood, humanity was redeemed and spared the eternal punishments we would otherwise deserve.
SANCTUS, SANCTUS, SANCTUS!!!
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