Understanding the Day
Season
Eastertide
Week
Week 1 of Eastertide
Rank
First-class feast
Eastertide is the fifty-day season from Easter Sunday to Pentecost, a prolonged celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Day 3 within the Octave of Easter falls on the third day after Easter Sunday and remains fully within the Church’s immediate rejoicing over Christ’s rising. The rank "Double of the I Class" is a traditional way of indicating a very high liturgical importance: in plain terms, this day is treated with the same solemnity as the other principal celebrations of the Octave, with the Mass and Office reflecting Easter joy rather than ordinary weekday observance. An octave means the eight days beginning with Easter Sunday are liturgically one extended celebration; each day is a continuation of Easter, not a separate feast.
Daily Prayer
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Weekly Prayer
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Weekly Formation
Beatitude 9
The Beatitudes
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
This Beatitude applies the promise of persecution personally to those insulted, opposed, or falsely accused because of Christ. Their joy rests not in the pain itself but in union with Christ and the promised reward that earthly hostility cannot take away.
Saint & Feast
Principal celebrationCalendar title
Day 3 within the Octave of Easter
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Today in Church History
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Catechism
Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of faith in Christ, fulfilling what God promised to the fathers and standing at the heart of the Paschal mystery with the cross. The New Testament bears witness that it is a real historical event. The empty tomb, while not proof by itself, was an essential sign that led the disciples toward recognizing the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene and the holy women were the first to encounter the Risen One and to bring this message to the apostles; Jesus then appeared to Peter, the Twelve, and many others. Though the disciples were at first saddened, frightened, and slow to believe, their faith in the Resurrection was born, through divine grace, from their direct experience of the risen Jesus. As we reflect together, may we receive this central truth of faith with the witnesses who handed it on.
The Catechism teaches that faith in the forgiveness of sins is closely joined to faith in the Holy Spirit, the Church, and the communion of saints. The risen Christ gave the Holy Spirit to the apostles and entrusted them with the power to forgive sins. Baptism is the first and chief sacrament of forgiveness: it unites us with Christ, cleanses us from sin, and calls us to walk in newness of life. Yet Baptism does not remove every weakness or the ongoing struggle against the inclination toward evil. Through the sacrament of Penance, the baptized can be reconciled with God and with the Church. No offense is beyond the Church’s power to forgive when repentance is honest, for Christ desires the gates of forgiveness to remain open to all who turn away from sin.
¶ 639
The mystery of Christ's resurrection is a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified, as the New Testament bears witness. In about A.D. 56 St. Paul could already write to the Corinthians: "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. . ." The Apostle speaks here of the living tradition of the Resurrection which he had learned after his conversion at the gates of Damascus.