Resurrexit Sicut Dixit: Mary in the Liturgy of the Easter Season

Abstract

Easter is the most important of all the seasons in the liturgical calendar. A prolonged celebration of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday constitutes one great feast. As the Church celebrates this annual feast, it honors with special love and devotion, Mary, the Mother of God, who is inseparably connected with her Son, Jesus Christ. In her, the Church holds up and admires the most excellent fruit of redemption and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image, that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be. In recent years, as mentioned in the Pastoral Letter entitled, “Ang Mahal na Birhen” of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, one aspect that calls for renewal is liturgical instruction on the role of Mary in the history of salvation, for there is a lack of its doctrinal instruction. As a response, this paper seeks to discourse on the importance of Mary in the Liturgy of the Easter Season through the textual analysis of a Mass Formulary for Easter found in the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In presenting the said theme, the following topics are discussed: first Mary in the Liturgy by explaining her connection with the public worship of the Church, second is the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary by having an overview of the liturgical book and its significance, and third is Mary in the Liturgy of the Easter Season by analyzing one of the four-mass text under the said season focusing on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Resurrection of Our Lord.