Liturgy: The Church's Spirituality
Bruce T. Morrill, S.J.

The source of our salvation lies in the belief that God raised the executed Jesus from death into an utterly new form of life, a life available to all people. But where might we look to encounter this Risen Christ? How can we know him now? In his account of Jesus' ascension to heaven Saint Luke describes two men in white robes asking his disciples why they stand looking up toward heaven. This Jesus, who has gone, will come again (see Acts 1:11). In Saint Matthew's account, on the other hand, Jesus commissions his disciples to teach and baptize in all lands, while at the same time promising to be with them always until the end of this age (see Matthew 28:20). The Risen Jesus is at once both gone from us to his heavenly Father and yet present to us in the power of the Holy Spirit. To speak of the Spirit of God raising Jesus up (see Romans 8:11) and the Spirit of the Risen Christ coming down to make the Church Christ's body in the world is to describe two aspects of one mysterious reality. It is this great mystery that the Church celebrates liturgically across the fifty days of Easter, spanning from Easter Morning to Pentecost Sunday. The Easter Season celebrates the sacramental presence of the Risen Christ in our midst. We encounter Christ now in the living sacraments that are the Church, namely, the men and women, girls and boys, young and old, who altogether comprise the body of Christ now in the world.

Do you want to see the Risen Christ? Go to the great Easter Vigil and see people profess their faith in him, descend into the baptismal waters that sacramentally represent his death, and rise up from those waters in a new birth that promises a share in his resurrection. The climax of the Vigil is the celebration of the Easter sacraments—the baptism, confirmation, and first sharing in the Eucharist whereby women and men become living members of the body of Christ, his Church. Robed in white, anointed with the Spirit, feasted at the banquet table of the Lamb, the neophytes are God's precious gift to the assembled church community, living signs that Christ continues to live in our midst, even to the end of this age.

The Easter Season flows from that most holy night into fifty days of sacramental revelation. For each of the consecutive Sundays of Easter, if parishes celebrate the liturgy well, the priest opens the Mass by drawing water from the Easter font and sprinkling the assembly, reminding them that they have been baptized. They need not look up towards heaven but, rather, look within and among themselves to see and remember that Christ is with them now. The Liturgy of the Word teaches us how this is so. The first reading includes accounts of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles. The second reading, from either the letters of John or Peter or the Book of Revelation, is instruction on how we can live as Church. Finally, Christ himself reveals to us in the Gospel of John how he shares God's life now in and among us.

The truth of God's Word comes further to us in Sacrament. In the Easter Season the sacraments are to be celebrated robustly. Children who were baptized as infants and now have reached the age of reason are sealed by the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Confirmation and welcomed to share fully at the Table of the Eucharist. Celebrations of Confirmation and First Communion are a great gift to local church communities. Far from being something given or done to children, these sacramental celebrations are living, bodily signs of the new form of life the Risen Christ shares with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, these events best take place during the great fifty days of Easter. In addition, pastors should encourage parents of new babies to share their joy by celebrating the sacrament of Baptism during Mass on one of the seven Sundays of Easter.

Through this rich variety of sacramental signs we receive the grace of knowing that, despite any appearances to the contrary, the Risen Christ continues to live in our midst. Yes, our faults and imperfections, our fears and failings, are often all too evident to ourselves and one another. Easter, however, is the Holy Spirit's gift to us as Church to know that Christ is present in our midst. The same Spirit who formed Jesus in Mary's womb, commissioned him in his baptism, and raised him from the dead now forms us in baptism and feeds us in Eucharist. The Spirit of the Risen Christ is working powerfully through our lives, leading us to follow the pattern of Jesus' life of loving and selfless service so as finally to share fully in his resurrection from the dead.

Jesuit Father Bruce Morrill teaches in the Department of Theology at Boston College.