Homily for Tuesday, 3d Week of Easter

Homily for Tuesday
3d Week of Easter

Prayer over the Gifts
April 20, 2021
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Have you noticed how often the Easter Mass texts speak of our exultation, or use similar words?  In today’s Prayer over the Gifts, for instance, we’ll call ourselves God’s “exultant Church,” note our “great gladness,” and pray for “perpetual happiness.”  These are the Easter effect on us and our Easter hope.

(Bollettino Salesiano)

Our Easter effect and Easter hope are linked liturgically to “the gifts we bring,” which by God’s power become the source of our joy and our hope, “the true bread from heaven” that “gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33).  We rejoice to participate in the mystery of the Lord’s rising and his presence, and we pray that our participation may be fruitful now and forever, that our happiness in Christ’s resurrection may never end.

We pray that our exultation may be like Stephen’s, who bore witness in life and in death to “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56), so that “the gates of the heavenly kingdom” may be opened for us (Collect) and for those to whom God sends us as witnesses.