An Introduction to the Season of Easter

The Great Fifty Days of Eastertide form a single festival period in which the tone of joy created at the Easter Vigil is sustained through the following seven weeks, and the Church celebrates the gloriously risen Christ. 

During Lent,  the Alleluia has neither been said nor sung.  The ancient and universal greeting of celebration for Easter, called the Paschal Greeting or Easter Acclamation, is:

Greeting: Alleluia! Christ is risen!                 Response: The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

But why 50 days? After the resurrection, Jesus spent forty days on earth before he ascended; and then there were ten more days after that before the Day of Pentecost.

Luke writes in the first chapter of Acts that Jesus “presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”

On the fortieth day the church celebrates Christ’s ascension. He commissions his disciples to continue his work, he promises the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then he is no longer among them in the flesh. The ascension is therefore closely connected with the theme of mission. 

The arrival of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost completes and crowns the Easter Festival.

So the Great Fifty Days are a celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and all that means for us, leading to the launching of the Christian Church and its mission on Pentecost.