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April 23, 2025Of course, Easter Sunday is the day of our most glorious celebrations – our favorite Foods, our sharpest new outfits, our blessed indulgence in sweets and flowers and music.
Easter for us, most happily, continues all the way to Pentecost, which this year is June 8. So, in our families and homes, let’s keep our inheritance of joy alive throughout this blessed season.
Have you heard the expression that every Sunday is a “Little Easter”? Easter is the perfect season to consecrate our Sundays. If we have developed routines that diminish our true sabbath, let's use Easter to renew and refresh. Let's make Sundays special! Here are some ideas:
Pray:
Today is Divine Mercy Sunday. The second Sunday of Easter has been known as Divine Mercy only since 2000, when Pope John Paul II renamed the day on the occasion of the canonization of Saint Faustina. Here is the history of the day and the Divine Mercy Chaplet, a special set of prayers Faustina received: thedivinemercy.org/message/devotions/chaplet-history
The chaplet is easy to pray, and while prayed on a regular rosary, it is a shorter prayer, perfect for families with wiggly children and perfect for the Easter season! Watch a video or hear a recording of the chaplet being prayed here: thedivinemercy.org/message/devotions/chaplet
This Easter season, try adding a Divine Mercy Chaplet to your Sunday routine. Pray together as a family before or after dinner, or at bedtime.
Eat:
Do you have a favorite dish or special dessert in your family? The Easter season is the perfect time to pull out the recipe, shop for the ingredients, and make it from scratch. If the family is not in the habit of making Sunday meals special, the Easter season is the perfect time to build the practice.
Complicated or expensive meals are not in keeping with the spirit of rest on Sundays, but an occasional Sunday spent baking bread, or making homemade pizzas, or whipping up a favorite luscious cake, especially if we involve the whole family, can make a spirit of celebration alive and real.
Even a simple dessert, created and shared intentionally, reminds everyone of the sweetness of Life secured for us when Jesus secured our freedom from sin. Serve a strawberry shortcake or Lemon bars for Sunday dessert!
Do:
Make Sunday special not just by eating and praying together but by playing together, as well. Pull out the wiffleball set and get a game going in the yard. Or plan ahead for an inexpensive and pleasant family outing: visit the Como Conservatory, take a walk in one of our many beautiful parks, or visit the art museum over in Minneapolis. Invite grandma and grandpa, or some cousins or neighbors.
Ensuring time for enjoying our rich cultural offerings and beautiful natural settings is a way of ensuring strength in our important relationships.
Within this Easter season, we have so much to be grateful for. As we look ahead to the graduations, weddings, ordinations, and other traditional celebrations of spring, let us also look to the Feast of the Ascension (May 29) and Pentecost (June 8). Let us slow down and breathe the fresh air of springtime and remember the many reasons for our Alleluia!