The month of April is dedicated to The Holy Spirit. The end of Lent, the Sacred Triddum, and the beginning of the Easter fall in April this year. During the first twenty days we are in Lent which is represented by the liturgical color purple — a symbol of penance, mortification and the sorrow of a contrite heart. Then we enter into the Easter in which the color changes to white, the color of light, a symbol of joy, purity, and innocence.

After our solemn commemoration of the last days and death of Our Lord we will spend the month of April celebrating. As Spring breaks forth even nature will join us as buds and blooms begin to surface and we spend this month basking in the joy of the Resurrection. We continue throughout the entire month our cry, "Christ is risen, Christ is truly risen." The Feast of Divine Mercy offers us the opportunity to begin again as though we were newly baptized. The unfathomable mercy of God is made manifest today if we but accept His most gracious offer. Easter is the feast of feasts, the unalloyed joy and gladness of all Christians. This truly is "the day that the Lord has made." From Sunday to Sunday, from year to year, the Easters of this earth will lead us to that blessed day on which Christ has promised that He will come again with glory to take us with Him into the kingdom of His Father. The saints that we will focus on this month — those who have already shared in the rewards of the Resurrection — are St. Francis of Paola (April 2), St. Isidore (April 4), St. Vincent Ferrer (April 5), St. Stanislaus (April 11), St. Martin I (April 13), St. Bernadette (April 16), St. Catherine of Siena (April 29) and St. Pius V (April 30). The feast of St. John Baptist de la Salle (April 7) falls on Sunday so is superseded the Sunday liturgy. The feasts of St. Anselm (April 21), St. George and St. Adalbert (April 23), St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen (April 24), St. Mark (April 25), Our Lady of Good Counsel (April 26) and St. Louis Mary de Montfort and St. Peter Chanel (April 28) are superseded by the Easter Week liturgy.

April boasts the most solemn and sublime event of human history: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – the Paschal mystery. Though the way to the Resurrection was the Via Crucis, the Sacrificial Lamb of God is now and forever Christ our Light, the Eternal high priest of the New Covenant. And his sorrowful mother, the Stabat Mater of Good Friday, is now the jubilant Mother of the Regina Caeli. We the members of Christ’s Mystical Body exalt in the mystery by which we were redeemed. If in Baptism we were buried with Christ, so also will we share in his resurrection. By his death we were reborn; “by his stripes we were healed.” (Is 53:5) Easter, the epicenter of time, is the event that links time and eternity. It is indeed “the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.” (Ps 118:24)