In the Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, the season of Easter goes from Easter Sunday right up to Pentecost.  Easter is by far the most important Feast in the Church’s liturgical year. For the Passion, Death and, above all, the Resurrection of Christ are at the very centre of our faith. Indeed it is the resurrection that makes the Gospel truly Good news. Were it not for what we celebrate at Easter, there would have been no point at all in celebrating Christmas.

What makes the resurrection so profoundly significant is that it promises the ultimate consummation of the desire that animates and motivates all religion: the desire for total union with the divine. In the resurrection we have the assurance that one of us, a fragile, mortal human being, has passed through the gates of death and is now totally and for always at one with the ultimate mystery of love and life which lies at the very heart of things and that not just in a purely mystical or spiritual way but in his very body – our fragile human flesh.