Coming up on this episode, a Happy Easter to everyone. We welcome back Father Richard Hinkley as we discuss what it means to be an Easter people and how we can live lives that truly embrace and reflect the joy of the resurrection. Welcome to Around the Archdiocese. Sharing information, insights and stories about our Catholic faith from across the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston.
You're listening to Around the Archdiocese. Here's your host, Sean O'Driscoll. Hello and welcome. Again, a very happy Easter to all of you.
I pray that you all had a holy and prayerful true to him. And here we are now, in the season of Easter. We live our lives in the knowledge and truth of Christ's victory over sin and death. But we know that it isn't enough to simply proclaim Hallelujah with our lips.
We also have to proclaim it in our deeds. So how can we live out the joy of Easter when things aren't as delightful as a basketful of fluffy baby chicks, or as beautiful as decorated eggs, or as decadent as a giant chocolate bunny? Today I'll be talking with Father Richard Hinkley to discuss what it means to be an Easter people, what that should look like in our daily lives, and how we can continue to strengthen our faith for those times when we have difficulty finding that joy. So without further ado, let's start the show.
Father Richard, welcome back. Thank you for joining us again. Happy Easter to you, sir. Happy Easter.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Amen, Hallelujah. You know, I miss saying that word at Mass. I miss not singing the Hallelujah as the gospel acclimation every week.
Eastern Christians, when they look to us Westerners, they are a bit perplexed that we can go the whole of Lent without saying Hallelujah to them. That is as strange as their fasting from the Eucharist during the week is to us. Hallelujah is the word. You know, often at this time of the year, I'm reminded of the words of Saint Pope John Paul II, who I think was actually paraphrasing Saint Augustine when he said, we are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song.
There you go. Yes. I love that phrase because it's a reminder that this joy of Easter is something that continues. It's a reality that we now live in.
In fact, just like Christmas doesn't end on December 25th, Christmas as a season actually begins December 25th. Today, we begin the Easter season, which actually lasts for the next 50 days where we get a chance to truly embrace and celebrate the most amazing event in all of history. What do you think John Paul II meant when he referred to us as an Easter people? It is a metaphysical statement.
It's a statement that for us who have had an encounter with a risen one, albeit mystically sacramentally through baptism confirmation in Eucharist, we have encountered him. He has changed us at the core of our being. And as a consequence, now life can never be the same. Life our experience of ourselves, of others, of God, completely different.
And so, you know, from the opening of the Easter vigil and the lighting of the Easter candle and the spread of the light of Christ and the beautiful hymn of the exultate that is just a beautiful poetic and theological explanation that Christ has resolved the fundamental problem of our lives, death, physical and spiritual. All that separated us from our origin and our end. All that challenges our ability to love and live and share and exchange and receive and know and be known by others lays obliterated by the perfect act of obedient love that was Christ, suffering, dying, descending to the realm of the dead, being raised from the dead, and ascending to the right hand of the Father. So all of this, all of this is now ours.
And through the tridogum, we have accompanied the Lord again this year in this, again, sacramental in mystery, allowing the Lord to remind us and renew us again in light of how in a sense the priorities of life now are forever changed. What does it mean to be an Easter people? It means that we have encountered Christ and being encountering Him and being changed to that encounter. We then are sent to share really the only news that can truly and properly be called good news.
As the Greeks will say, Christos a nesti, Christ is risen. And then the traditional Greek response is, Christ is risen, truly He is risen. With that exchange, we go on beyond just a 24 hour period is insufficient, is insufficient to consider, to meditate on, to celebrate the definitive pivotal, you know, throw on all the super-valliative adjectives you want, action of Christ in His passion, death and resurrection and ascension. And so again, we have time bending to times Lord, you know, we have the tridogum that kind of expands upon our Lord's passion, death and resurrection, his posk.
But then Easter and the glory of Easter is extended over a period of eight days, an octave, you know. And even then after that octave, the Easter season, the queen of seasons extends all the way to Pentecost Sunday, where the second mission, you know, the mission of the sun to redeem the world, incarnation and his posk, then the mission of the spirit, taking all that the sun has accomplished and applying it to us. You know, there was a professor in Rome who used to teach with regard to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit has only one job to make other Christs, so that everything that Christ experienced, we are meant to experience as well. And so the Easter season.
Again, it's a gift, it's an opportunity. It gives us the time which we need because for us in our lives, you know, change generally is hard and change requires time. And so having 50 days to feast, you know, our own ordinary carnal, the nardo loves to remind us, you know, we fast for 40 days, we feast for 50. Easter is a season of 50 days.
And that requires its own discipline, you know. In many ways, we're more comfortable with Lent and its disciplines, you know, give this up, pray more, fast more, sacrifice more, punish myself, etcetera. Go to the cross, go to the fish fry, etcetera. Then what do we do during Easter, you know?
And just as we were refraining from certain goods during this preparatory season and season of penance, it's incumbent upon us. We need to be intentional about marking the season of Easter as a seaser of joy, as a festival of faith. And you know, part of the way we do that is by maybe accenting the way we eat, you know, but we have to do it with discipline. We can't just go to golden corral every day of Easter, otherwise, you know, by the time we get to eat, we too will, you know, dive a heart attack or something.
But you know, any of the various ways, you know, the use of allaluia, of course, becomes not just restored, but at times, especially in the literature, the hours amplified during the Easter season. And in any which way in which, especially as a family, we can find ways of intensifying our joy and our ability to celebrate, you know, having perhaps extra gatherings of family and friends. Remembering, of course, that the angeles that we normally pray three times a day is changed to that beautiful Marian Antifon of the Regina Chalei, which I can only pray in Latin, and usually when you sing it. I know, you know, the English or Spanish or Vietnamese versions, I'm sure are beautiful, but it's just so simple in Latin that I think most people just remember it that way.
But again, all of these different ways to mark Easter as a season is, I think, to be encouraged. As we enter into the church at Easter, liturgically, we see that beauty reflected, you know, in the white vestments, in the art and environment, all the flowers throughout the sanctuary and around the church. Yeah, bring your Clariton, folks. You're going to need it.
But there's another part of the Mass that I think in many of our parishes, we only see during the Easter season, and that is the sprinkling right. Yes. And this beautiful opportunity for us to renew and recall our baptismal promises, to be blessed again with those waters and reminder that, yes, we believe, we believe in his life, death, and resurrection, that in that Haskell mystery, all of his claims of who he was, of who he is are validated, are vindicated, that he truly is the Son of God. Why do we often have the sprinkling right during the season of Easter?
And to be fair, you know, the sprinkling right can be used at any Sunday, you know, before, or at the introduction of any Sunday throughout the year. But Easter is a special opportunity to do that. In fact, the prayers for the blessing of holy water prior to the sprinkling right, there are prayers that are specific to the Easter season. But again, from the side of Christ, you know, who slept the sleep of death upon the cross, like the old Adam, and his bride was taken from the old Adam's rib inside.
So from the new Adam and his side, poor forth, pours out the sacraments of all the sacraments, but especially we see in the water, the sacrament baptism in his blood, the sacrament of the Eucharist, that make the church. And so the sprinkling right for those of us who have already been regenerated by, we've been terraformed already, you know, the arrakis of our hearts has been made anew to all you doing junkies out there. The desert has been terraformed, you know, and so we've been baptized. And now the recalling of that transformation as well as, you know, holy water, if there's penance or excuse me, if there's contrition, you know, even venual sins is taken away through the exercise of that sacramental.
And so it takes the place of the penitential act at the beginning of Mass as we call to mind, obviously our sorrow for our sins and our abiding joy in Christ who, again, makes all things new. Many of us were blessed to have a good Friday off either from work or from school. And truly that was a blessing that we could spend that time on good Friday, you know, in prayer and, you know, the good Friday literature and really preparing our hearts and minds during those three sacred days. But now here we are on Easter Monday.
And for many of us, it's back to work, back to school, back to the routine that was there before. And we want to live in this joy. We want to maintain this joy. But in the midst of the busyness of our everyday lives, how do we make that joy a priority?
You know, one thing that you could do is again, go to go to the gospels and then go to the acts of the apostles, you know, following Easter, our Lord, of course, is appearing to his apostles and disciples in various ways and forms for 40 days. These appearances come to a solemn end at his ascension 40 days later. And then, you know, nine days later on Pentecost, we have the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And in a sense, the fullness of the reality of our Lord's resurrection is poured out into the hearts of the apostles.
So, so we are like the apostles in that sense. You know, we have had the fullness of everything that the Christ has done in his Passion, Death and Resurrection has now been transferred, downloaded, poured into our hearts through the sacramental life of the church. And so now, Easter Monday back at the office is like Pentecost. And so how did the apostles act?
Well, they were confused to be drunks, right? They were acting just so giddy and full of joy and so in a sense different, no longer, no longer fearful in the upper room, no longer muted. Living a life that really now fears there is no more fear. It's like, you know, the authorities and those who said, you know, shut up, stop preaching in that name.
And they're like, you know, whether you beat us, whether you persecute us, whether you throw us in jail, we're just going to keep on, we're going to keep on proclaiming Christ. And even if you destroy our bodies, you know, it's a life that is no longer dominated by any fear beyond being separated from Christ and his love. And you know, that an authentic joy like that. Now, you know, depending on our personalities, we all do that on a different to different degrees in the spectrum.
You know, some of us are more reserved, some of us are more garrulous, but in any event, you know, we have nothing to fear. We have nothing to fear that we who have been regenerated in Christ, what can happen to us, you know, we lose our job. Okay, that's awful, you know, I need to find some way to provide for my family, you know, God forbid some of my family gets sick, my wife, my kids, my mother, my father. All these, all these sufferings can still happen in a way they will happen.
But the power of Christ's cross is now within us. And the power of his resurrection is now within us. And so none of these trials have the final word and that abiding peace. And that doesn't mean we won't have, you know, darker days and struggle to maintain that, that faith, that Easter faith.
But being an Easter people is nothing different. It's, it is part of just the DNA of being a disciple of the Lord in this life. It means he's made all things new. And eternal life is not something that happens later.
It is already now. Eternal life is now. The revolution is now within us. I think that in order to truly live that fearless life, I think it involves a deeper level of prayer and knowledge of the faith.
You know, I'm reminded of the first letter of St. Peter, you know, where it says, always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason, for your hope. You know, because when, when those obstacles come, when, you know, there is a sickness or job loss or any sort of roadblock or any other storm in our life, we need to be able to be grounded in, in, in prayer, in the sacraments, in the life of Christ, in the scriptures to give us that foundation for that hope. Absolutely.
For someone that wants to go deeper, that wants to gain more knowledge, that wants to grow in prayer so they can more fully understand and live out that joy, where do you recommend they start? I remember the story of one of the brothers of Tom's Aquinas asking him, you know, brother, how, how do I become holy? And Aquinas' responses just do it, you know? So many of us, you know, it's taking the stuff in our head and moving it to the heart so that the heart can move the body and we can progress.
In terms of things to read, you know, there, we are, in a sense, living in a time of a bit of a catacadical renaissance, you know, there are just so many really good resources out there in terms of videos and programs and podcasts and books and, and movies. But, you know, it seems at this point kind of Ho-Hum and pedestrian, but the catacism, just go to the catacism and, and just go through the section on, in the first part of the catacism, going through the section on the creed and specifically the Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord. And when reading it, half of the treasure of the catacism is in the footnotes, you know, mine those footnotes, you know, when you come across a line in one of the paragraphs of the catacism and you see the footnote number jump down there. And that's going to give you then another resource that you can jump to.
And you know, if you don't recognize, okay, I don't know what's going on here, just throw it into Google and see, you know, where that leads. In addition to that, you know, especially on the USCCB website, looking up the daily readings and reading the Gospel and especially actually the Apostles, remember we go through actually the Apostles throughout the Easter season. And it reads like an adventure novel. In fact, Luke kind of styled it after Hellenistic, you know, romances and adventure, epics of that time.
And it's just an amazing story of the work of the Holy Spirit, you know, and Luke, again, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's just a genius, you know, it's a two-part, the two-volume work, you know, the Gospel and actually Apostles and everything that is accomplished by the Word and the Gospel is accomplished by the Spirit and Acts. So becoming familiar with the narrative arc of actually Apostles is something that can be done. And then the Gospels, the Gospel readings throughout Easter, you know, many of them, you know, in the octave are appearances of the risen Lord on Easter Sunday to various individuals. Again, a prolongation of the Easter celebration.
And then especially as we get towards the end of the Easter season, you know, more and more from the Gospel of John in preparation for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So familiarity with the Scriptures and using them in our prayer, our daily Lexio Divina. And it doesn't, we make it too complicated, you know, what is, how do we pray with Scripture? And we read it, we allow it to sink in, we speak from our heart to the Lord, and we listen to his response.
Those are kind of the four movements in traditional Lexio Divina. And as long as you're orienting your mind and your heart to God, not as some subject to be studied, but as another eye, as a you, as we, we, if you're directing yourself to him, putting yourself in his presence, so to speak, recognizing his presence before you within you, then you're, then you're doing prayer right. So Father Richard, we now have 49, I guess more days in order to celebrate and live out this joy of the Easter season. Any words of advice of how to maintain this over the next several weeks?
Here's a challenge for you. Here's a challenge. Does day 49 of the Easter season, does day 49 look like day two? I think that can give us a good kind of metric of how consistent we are in terms of exterior really, and then using the exterior as a tool, the interior celebration of Easter, you know, does the very end, the penultimate day of the Easter season, to what degree does it look like it's very beginnings?
And I think the more that the two approximate one another, the more fruit ultimately will receive from the Lord in celebrating, you know, the most beautiful, the most true, the most good of all things. You know, it reminds me of the Saint Paul, you know, talking to the Corinthians. You know, in his first letter, we run the race, not just to complete it, but as he tells them, run so as to win. Absolutely.
Again, a big thank you to Father Richard Hinkley for joining us today. You know, I'm reminded that even though we live in this reality, in this truth, this knowledge of the resurrection, it doesn't mean that all of our problems, all of our difficulties simply vanish, that they go away. And I'm also reminded that we don't simply offer up our allaluya to the Lord in the good times when things are easy. But we're called to praise God in all times and in all circumstances, simply because of who he is, what he did and continues to do for us and because we belong to him.
And especially during this Easter season, as we look upon the Paschal Candle, we are reminded that we received that light of Christ at our baptism and we are called to be that same light in the world today, a light of hope, a light of faith, a light of joy in a world that quite honestly is filled with so much darkness. So let's all find a ways to be an Easter people, people of faith, people of forgiveness, people of love, people of hope and people of joy. Know that you will be in our prayers. We'll talk to you again soon, here on Around the Archdiocese.