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From Stabat Mater to Regina Coeli
User’s Guide to Sunday
BY Tom & April Hoopes March 16-22, 2008 Issue |
Posted 3/11/08 at 1:48 PM
Sunday, March 23, is Easter Sunday. Pope Benedict XVI will
celebrate the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night in St. Peter’s Basilica at 9 p.m.
He will celebrate Holy Mass of the Day with the Resurrexit
Rite at 10:30 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square.
The Holy Father will also give his message and blessing urbi
et orbi (to the city and to the world) from the central logia of St. Peter’s
Basilica at noon.
Family
On Good Friday, Tom takes down the few religious images we
have on display in the house and places them in a bag in the fireplace.
We put burlap bags over the screen of the fireplace to make
it like a “tomb.” We remove them and put them on the table after the Easter
vigil.
We also have an egg hunt for friends nearly every Easter.
Lynn Wehner, who with her husband, Tom Wehner, copy edits Faith & Family
magazine and helps with the Register, introduced us to a new kind of egg hunt:
a Scripture Shape Egg Hunt.
Details and materials are available at NCRegister.com (under
“Resources”).
FamiliaUSA.net offers additional “Next Sunday Ideas.”
With Mary
For Holy Saturday, the Vatican’s directory on popular piety
mentions the custom of focusing on Mary’s attitude at Easter.
“According to tradition, the entire body of the Church is
represented in Mary,” says the directory. It explains the Ora di Maria (Hour of
Mary). “While the body of her son lays in the tomb and his soul has descended
to the dead to announce liberation from the shadow of darkness to his ancestors,
the Blessed Virgin Mary, foreshadowing and representing the Church, awaits, in
faith, the victorious triumph of her son over death.”
Then, for Easter Sunday, the directory describes “the
meeting of the Risen Christ with his mother: on Easter morning two processions,
one bearing the image of Our Lady of Sorrows, the other that of the Risen
Christ, meet each other so as to show that Our Lady was the first and full
participant in the mystery of the Lord’s resurrection.”
UDayton.edu
To approximate this in your home, gather the family on Holy
Saturday to sing Stabat Mater at an image of Our Lady (we’ll do it at the
“tomb” of the fireplace!). That’s the title of the familiar hymn, “At the cross
her station keeping …” To find the hymn, type stabat mater into the search
engine at the University of Dayton’s website.
Then, on Easter, gather at the image of Mary again to sing
or say the Regina Coeli. That hymn is also at the University of Dayton website.
(The university has an excellent Marian Center.)
Readings
Acts 10:34, 37-43; Psalms 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians
3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6-8; Gospel: John 20:1-9
EPriest.com offers free homily packs for priests.
Our Take
Today’s Gospel is packed with lessons.
Mary Magdalene, who has a reputation as a sinner, finds the
tomb first. So often it is the ones the world considers lowly who receive
special favors from God.
Next, she goes to tell Peter and John. They don’t just walk,
they run to the tomb — an example of the “right-away obedience” that we should
give to God.
John ran faster than Peter, but he waited for Peter to go in
before him. This has been traditionally noted to show the deference the
faithful should show to the Church.
John may be holier, he may be closer to Jesus, he may be
free of the sin of denying the Lord, but he still allows Peter, to whom Christ
gave the authority, to be the one to inspect the tomb first.
We also have here what many consider the first record of the
venerated shroud that is now in Turin: Peter “went into the tomb and saw the
burial cloths there.”
Last, we have the example of the faith of John. “He saw and
believed.”
His faith came from the experience of the resurrection, not
from wishful thinking, says the Gospel:
“For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to
rise from the dead.”
The Hoopeses are
editorial directors of
Faith & Family magazine (FaithandFamilyMag.com).
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