People of God, so dear to my heart, let us rejoice! EXALT!
For our Dearest Lord, Jesus Christ, has emerged victorious- for death cannot hold Him who is Life!
HALLELUIA!
For just as He has risen from the dead- so will we rise again in the Glory of the Father, all of us who has shared His Cross!
Let us then go, and proclaim the Good News of Christ’s Cross! For Christ revealed to us that we must Love Him to be with Him and to Love, we must be willing victims of His Inconsumable Fire of Love!
Ah! What sweet consolation it is, that our cross is to be suffered and carried for God! To suffer for God! What great, indescribable privilege is given to us, people of God!
Let us not let one more moment pass! Let us be willing victims to Christ’s Merciful Love! Let us give our lives, abandon our souls to the Hands of Our Beloved Father!
So that, in His own Time, He will raise us up- full of His Glory and His Love! Destined to share Eternal Happiness with Him!
Do not your hearts yearn very much at the thought of us being with our True Father for eternity? Do you not yearn- with tears in your eyes- to be with Jesus, at last, and for all eternity?
Do your hearts not ache with this longing? Listen to the aches of your heart, for it will give you the spring of repentance you so longingly desire- your tears- in union with the tears of Jesus and Mary for you, unworthy creature as you are.
Let us not let the happiness of Easter pass our hearts; Let us all EXALT!
—————————– + ——————————
You have brightened this night with the radiance of the risen Christ!
Let the heavens be glad and earth exult*. More brightly than the rays of the sun this day has shone forth for us from the brilliance of the tomb. Let the underworld cry out, for from this day on it has an offspring; let it rejoice because this is the day of its visitation; let it be glad because, after endless ages, it has seen a light unknown before and at last, in the darkness of its deepest night, has breathed again! O Radiant Light, now seen breaking from the heights of the whitening sky…, you have clothed with sudden brightness those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death (Lk 1,79). For at Christ’s descent, at once, the everlasting night of hell shone out with light and the cries of the afflicted were silenced; the chains of those condemned broke off and fell; the malicious spirits were seized with stupor as though struck by a thunderbolt…
No sooner does Christ come down than the grim doorkeepers, blind in the silence of their night, crouching in fear, whisper among themselves: Who is this mighty one, shining with whiteness? Never has our hell received such as he; never has the world cast such a one into our maw… Had he been guilty, he would not possess such temerity; had some crime blackened him, he could never have dispersed our darkness with his shining. Yet if he is God, what is he doing in the tomb? If he is man, how does he have the courage? If he is God, what has he come here for? If he is man, how can he set prisoners free?…
Oh cross, that undoes all our pleasures and give birth to our misfortune! A tree enriched us and a tree
has ruined us. This mighty power, so feared by the people, has perished!
[A homily of the 5th century attributed to Eusebius the Gallican
Homily 12 A ; CCL 101, 145]
*(Ps 96[95],11)