Homily for Monday, Week 2 of Easter

Homily for Monday
Week 2 of Easter

April 13, 2026
Collect
Salesian HS, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Adam & Eve Expelled
from Eden
(OL of the Assumption, Bronx)

In the opening prayer a few moments ago, the prayer called the “collect” because it brings together the prayers and desires of all of us, we asked Almighty God to transform us.

1st, we credited God with renewing us “by paschal remedies.”  “Paschal” refers to Passover, and for Christians the Passover is Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection—by which he passed over from our human mortality to eternal life.  That’s a remedy for us—for our sins, which bring death, and his remedy of grace, which will free us from death, as he was raised up.

The prayer spoke of “the likeness of our earthly parentage.”  All living persons, from our most distant ancestors, are sinners.[1]  That’s what we’re like.  And because of sin, all of us die.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, as the saying goes.

But God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, transforms us “in the image of our heavenly maker.”  That is, grace will make us images of Christ, risen from death and living forever—free from sin, free from pain, free from sorrow.  Christ, of course, never sinned.  But we do.  Nevertheless, his grace has the power to transform us to be like him.

That’s what we prayed for in the collect.

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[1] With the exception, of course, of the Virgin Mary.  Jesus is not a “human person” but a divine Person who assumed a human nature.  This need not be detailed in a brief homily.