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Alleluia Time: Celebrating the Easter season
by Kate Ristow

There’s something spine-tingling about the first “Alleluia’s” and “Gloria’s” we proclaim and sing at our Easter liturgies. At my parish, the assembly is encouraged to bring cymbals, chimes, or bells to the Easter celebrations and to join the musicians by “playing” our instruments as we proclaim in song our joy at the Lord’s Resurrection. After weeks of sacrifice, soul-searching, and solemn, almost stark, liturgies, it’s as if our elation knows no bounds. Never has the choir sounded better; never before have the brass instruments blared so brilliantly. It always seems to me that the church is about to burst from sheer happiness and pent-up longing.

Our Easter joy is so great that it cannot be contained to one day or even one week—we celebrate the new life won for us by the Risen Christ for fifty days. We rejoice with the newest members of our community: the former catechumens and candidates who have been received into full membership in the church and the families who will bring their infants to the font throughout the Sundays of the Easter season. We welcome those who come back home to us on Easter Sunday and pray that the Lord will touch their hearts in such a special way that they will want to celebrate with us every week. We exult in the wonder of our own initiation into the Church, knowing that Jesus has promised that we, too, as faithful followers, will one day pass from death to new and everlasting life through the waters of Baptism.We place flowers—a sign of new life—on the graves of departed loved ones with a renewed sense of hope that they are already sharing in the Lord’s new life and secure in the knowledge that we will see them again, reflected in the face of God when we, too, are risen.

My colleague and RCL’s National Catechetical Advisor, Jacquie Jambor, always says that we cannot do enough with water as we celebrate the Easter season! It must be our primary symbol during these fifty days because nothing else so vividly recalls the importance of Baptism in our lives and the meaning of Christ’s Resurrection. Here are some ideas catechetical leaders, catechists, liturgists, and even families can use to incorporate water into prayer and worship from now to Pentecost.

Invite catechists to place a small bowl of blessed water on a table near the classroom door for students to sign themselves as they arrive and depart from classes. As Pentecost approaches, the students can process with their classroom bowl to a central locationóthe school vestibule or the churchóand ceremoniously pour their water into a communal bowl. This reminds us that we are one community, joined together by one faith, one Lord, one Baptism.
Recommend that catechists use spring fronds (small lilac branches are ideal) for a water ritual in class. Invite them to thoroughly douse the frond in blessed water and sprinkle the students as they proclaim, ìRemember your Baptism, when you were given new life in Christ!î Have the students sign themselves or genuflect as the drops of water touch them.
Throughout these fifty days, provide opportunities for students and the community to recall and renew their baptismal promises and invite them to come to the font in church or a bowl placed on the classroom prayer table to ìsealî their commitment with water.

During this Easter season, let us come to the water, one and all! Let us rejoice again in the precious gift of new life.