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The Easter Cycle
Sunday within the Octave
The Mass
Christ ascended into heaven to enter into His glory. The Church which He left behind on earth
gazes fondly after Him and longs to see again and be united with the one to whom her heart
and her love belong. Without Him she is desolate and lonely, for she still lingers here on earth.
This mood causes her to cry out to her absent bridegroom in the Introit of today’s Mass: “I have
sought Thy face, Thy face, O Lord, I will seek; turn not away Thy face from me, alleluia, alleluia.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Introit.) It is we, the Church, who
prays thus. Each of us says, “I have sought Thy face.” Our incessant search for the absent Lord
is expressed eloquently in the repeated Kyrie; the same idea is expressed in the Collect. Our
life should be the expression of our devotedness to God, and of our longing for purity of heart
and for freedom from all that may displease Him. “Thy face, O Lord, I will seek” in earnest
prayer, in patient and merciful love, in selfless devotion to others, in loyalty to the Church, in
zeal for souls, and in the quest for the grace of God (Epistle). “As long as you did it to one of
these My least brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt 25:40). Thus the longing of the Church and of
Christians for heaven will draw down the grace of God and of Christ upon the world. When a
soul is fired by such a noble aim, it will not seek the face of Christ in vain. “I will not leave you
orphans; I will come to you” ( Jn 14:18) in the person of the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, “whom
I will send you from the Father” (Gospel). We receive this promise gratefully and profess our
belief in Him in the Credo.
In the Offertory we are reminded of the triumphal entry of Christ into His sanctuary in
heaven. This triumphal entry symbolizes the approach of the eternal high priest to the heavenly
altar, upon which Christ offers Himself for our eternal union with the Father (Offertory).
Together with our gifts of bread and wine we also offer to God ourselves: our wills, our inclinations,
all our faculties, and all our actions. We make an all-embracing holocaust of ourselves,
we make our action a living sursum corda, imitating the ascension of Christ.
The moment of consecration approaches. What Christ has promised now becomes a reality:
“I will come to you.” What a blessed coming! “I have sought Thy face.” Now He descends
among us, enters into a most real and intimate union with us, a union of prayer and spirit, a
sacrifice offered to God. Here in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass He unites us to Himself in His
sacrificial mission. Just as He, through the almighty power of His word, changes the substance
of the bread into that of His body, so, too, if we allow Him to make of us a holocaust, He will
penetrate our inmost depths with His life and His spirit. Thus through an intelligent and active
participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, our lives become ever a more certain expression
of the spirit of Christ in us. If we participate in the Holy Sacrifice in spirit and truth, if daily we
die and rise with Christ, we shall become living and invincible witnesses of Christ, a personified
testimony of Him (Gospel). That is the prime fruit of the sacrifice of the altar.
The daily devout celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass emphasizes ever more and more,
not only the opposition between the Christian and the “old man” within him, but also between
the Christian and the world about him, between the Christian and the enemies of the cross.
“They will put you out of the synagogues; yea, the hour cometh that whosoever killeth you will
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