Reflections for Living the Fifty days of Easter

During the Season of Easter, Catholic Online will be publishing excerpts of the Fathers taken from the Office of Readings.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - Easter is more than a day. It is a season of Resurrection as the Church prepares for the Feast of Pentecost, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Christian Church.

This is a wonderful time to read the Fathers of the Church, the ancient expositors of our Faith, as they encourage, challenge, and call us to a deeper life in Christ. Listen to them as they speak to the Church from across the continuum of history.

During the Season of Easter, Catholic Online will be publishing excerpts of the Fathers taken from the Office of Readings. We want to help our readers enter fully into the life and faith that is ours in the Catholic Church.

The early development of the Church of Jesus Christ took place in a time of extreme persecution. Christians had to make decisions based on the life and death aspects of their love for Christ. As such, their faith was developed deeply and quickly through suffering and, sometimes, martyrdom.

Apostolic letters and Old Testament teachings formed the content of the early church until the formation and acceptance of the canon of Scripture. Each message, however, was treated as pure gold... pure water for the parched soul. Churches eagerly awaited words from the apostles and prophets as they traveled by letter and oral tradition.

The inspiration for generations of believers have come from two places, the readings of Holy Scripture and the readings of the Church Fathers - heroes of the faith.

These writings from such great men as Iranaeus, Ignatius, Clement, Tertullian, and many others have also been joined by the writings of bishops, priests, deacons, laymen and women, those from the brotherhood and sisterhood. Together they form a treasure house of teaching and inspiration.

We are inviting you to spend your Easter Season with the Fathers of the Faith. The great voices that have sounded through Church history have a lot to say to us today. In this particular series we have digested just a few messages - 50 from the Office of Readings - for you to savor.

With a selection from a saint, we will also include Scripture passages to read and some reflection questions to answer from the selection.

We want to encourage you to use a journal and record your journey. Include ways that the readings affected you, questions you had and other thoughts. Also include any promptings for prayer or further study that the readings brought forward.

For He is Risen... He is Risen, Indeed!

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online. A former Bishop of a Protestant community, his lifelong reading of the early Fathers were part of what led him into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

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