By Christina Mastroeni • Posted April 5, 2013

Easter is a time of celebration. The day that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rises from the dead and conquers death is a day that we should always remember not just on Easter Sunday. In fact, the Easter season is 50 days long. We should be wishing people a “Happy Easter” for a while!

 

Everyone seems to celebrate Easter, but not so much the Easter Season. My family in particular has a family reunion. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family gets together and brings a dish that their mother was known for. The gathering is so big we rent out a hall every year … yes we are very Italian.

 

Since my dad’s side is always so busy, Easter has become the time when we all join together and catch up on the year. Although I cannot speak on behalf of the rest of my family, I must say that I find it a challenge to celebrate the Easter season after Easter Sunday.

 

Lent is easy. In one of my previous columns, I mentioned Lent has one theme: sacrifice. That’s it. After going to Catholic school for almost 17 years now, this is drilled into my skull. The school cafeteria never serves chicken fingers on Fridays, we say the rosary after lunch every day and have Mass as a school several times during the Lenten season.

 

Since we sacrifice for the return of our Lord, don’t we think we should rejoice for the next 50 days? It’s as if a couple prepares for a wedding and then after the Mass and reception is over, they pretend as if it never happened only to celebrate their time together on anniversaries.

 

Like a married couple, we need to celebrate constantly. Let’s continue to do more over the Easter season by praising God through Mass every Sunday. We can also do this through a weekly adoration, monthly confession, or religious discussion groups. The more we dig deep to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, the further we get in our intimate relationship with God.

 

We only have 45 days left to continue the celebration. Life is too short not to celebrate, so what better time to start than now? If we think the celebration will slip our minds then here’s a crafty idea:

 

I stole this off one of my teammates in college. To help her memorize Bible verses she wrote them down on index cards and taped them to her steering wheel in the car. So whenever you’re stuck in traffic or need a quick prayer to get you through the day, just use this Bible verse for the Easter season: John 11:25-26. Happy Easter!

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Christina Mastroeni is a senior at Holy Family University, Philadelphia, and an intern at CatholicPhilly.com.