Most people think that Easter is over, but we celebrate Easter for more than one day. For 50 days we celebrate the Easter season, from the Easter vigil till the feast of Pentecost. Over and over in that time we pray: “This is the day the Lord has made.” 

The reason we celebrate Easter over this long period is because it takes time to grasp a mystery like this. It’s hard to take it in. It’s beyond us. Jesus spent 40 days with his apostles helping them understand. We see them struggling with this mystery in the gospels and readings for this week. In these days we believe the Lord helps us as we try to understand. 

We can see it today in Mary Magdalene searching for the One she thought was taken away, then finding him and wanting to hold him, then being told by Jesus “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go tell my brothers, ‘ I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Jesus had taken on a new existence. He does not return to his ordinary life, as she knew him. He has changed and become the first to enter a new life and a new world. He is “the first fruits” of those who die; others will follow him. Mary is told to go tell the others.

It will take Mary more than a day to grasp this and it takes us more than a day to grasp it too.

In one of his sermons Cardinal Newman has a beautiful meditation on the Day when God did his greatest work.

 “Let us rejoice in the Day that He has made… the Day of His Power. This is Easter Day. Let us say this again and again to ourselves with fear and great joy. As children say to themselves, ‘This is the spring,’ or ‘This is the sea,’ trying to grasp the thought, and not let it go; as travellers in a foreign land say, ‘This is that great city,’ or ‘This is that famous building,’ knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lord’s Day. 

s“This is the Day on which Christ arose from the dead; the Day which brought us salvation. It is a Day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of rest, the true Sabbath. Christ entered into His rest, and so do we. It brings us, in figure, through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham’s bosom. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness, and listlessness… 

“May we grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, season after season, year after year, till He takes to Himself, first one, then another, in the order He thinks fit, to be separated from each other for a little while, to be united together for ever, in the kingdom of His Father and our Father, His God and our God.”

John Henry Newman, “Difficulty of Realizing Sacred Privileges,”

Morning and Evening Prayer here.

Children’s Prayer here.