Monday of Easter Week

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the Figure of our spiritual resurrection.

Jesus Christ rose again for our justification. - Romans 8

Let us represent to ourselves anew the glory of the Sepulchre of Jesus.

Adorable Lord, bestow on us grace to rise spiritually, by leaving the tomb of indifference, to lead a life of fervour.


At Easter we recall the words God spoke to Moses concerning the Paschal solemnity: For it is the Phase - that is, the Passage - of the Lord. Now we celebrate the Passage of our Lord from Death to Life, and think upon our own passage from a life of tepidity to one of fervour, from an imperfect to a holy life. Jesus, in leaving the Tomb, disengaged Himself from the winding-sheet in which His Sacred Body had been wrapped; this should make us understand that we must extricate ourselves from the imperfections and bad habits, which for so long a time have kept out souls bound and motionless for good. If we rise with Jesus, and set ourselves free from the paralysed state in which our evil inclinations have retained us, they will infallibly disappear. Our Risen Lord was clothed with the power of agility to teach us to despise all resistance of nature, to pass quickly out of its reach, to triumph over every obstacle, and that our souls should tend upwards to Him alone. If we are indeed risen with Christ we shall seek the things that are above, and our whole being will be spiritualised, responding with agility to the promptings not of nature, but of grace. May we be enabled fully to enter into the Mystery of the Resurrection-Life of Jesus, and to receive the plenitude of His favours, offered to us at this time especially.

Jesus, in rising from the Sepulchre, clothed in light, wills that we should understand what is the beauty of a soul disengaged from the ties of nature, and renewed in the spiritual life. The soul, like Jesus, becomes luminous: the Holy Spirit enlightens it interiorly, by filling it with the knowledge of divine things; it is possessed of a lustrous beauty, and its virtues shine visibly, contributing to the edification of others. By the impassibility of the Body of Jesus, we comprehend that grace raises the soul, by means of holy courage, above temptations; it renders it invulnerable against the darts of the enemies of its salvation, and gives it the power of mastering its downward tendencies. Such are the happy privileges granted to His faithful ones, who lovingly enter into the spirit of the Mystery of Easter. Sufferings indeed we must still endure, for we are still on this side of the grave, but if they serve only to raise us near to Jesus, we may be said to share already in the effects of His impassibility. We range ourselves therefore around Him, to rejoice at the sight of the glory He received in His Resurrection, and to honour the marvellous capabilities of His Adorable Body, by rendering ourselves worthy, by our fervour, to participate in them spiritually.


O my Saviour, I thank You for the favour You accord me, permitting me to partake in the glorious privileges of the new life You began. Make me to be entirely renewed in the spirit of my mind so that, freed from the servitude of sense and natural affections, I may rise constantly towards You, with a pure and generous heart.


Aided by the grace Jesus bestows, I will endeavour to reproduce spiritually in myself, the capabilities observable in His Sacred Humanity after the Resurrection.


If by the Spirit, you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live.


- text from Growth in the Knowledge of Our Lord by Father de Brant, volume 2, 1882; it has the imprimatur of Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, England