Celebrating Easter in the springtime helps us focus our attention on what it means to receive the gift of new life. There are signs of new life everywhere. The snow and ice, the cold days and nights, and the long nights have fled. Flowers are pushing up through the warming ground, while trees sport their new buds and blossoms. Baby animals are being born, and children are returning to the great outdoors to play again.



Easter is the Feast of New Life. We celebrate the gift of new life given to Jesus by God the Father when Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus was not given back his old life as he knew it when he lived and prayed on this earth. Instead God raised Jesus to a new and glorious life that will never end. By Jesus’ death and resurrection, we too have been promised the gift of new life. Already in this world our old selves have been put away, and our new lives, that will never end, have begun. We look forward with joy and hope to the kingdom of God, where we will live forever with God and one another.

Family Activity

	Discuss the importance of bread in our lives. We may have bread as toast, in sandwiches, and as rolls.

	•		Bake a favorite, or new, bread together. Then share it as your Easter bread.
	•		Explain that bread was such an important food in Jesus’ time that he chose bread as the way in which he would give himself to us in the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. We call the Eucharist our spiritual bread, because it helps us keep our spirits, or souls, close to Jesus.

See the Liturgical Calendar on this site for additional information.
See also Catechist—Lent or Teacher—Lent for Liturgy.