The Sacrament of Easter

Neither a theological study of our Redemption nor a devotional commentary of the Cross and Resurrection, but rather an introduction to the liturgical celebration of Holy Week and Easter, this book is written in the double conviction that the depth of meaning of the Paschal Mystery is seriously weakened if it is not given its full liturgical and sacramental expression, and that the Holy Week liturgy demands from all who participate in it a more profound awareness of its biblical background and of its central place in the Church's life. The journey we begin on Ash Wednesday is a unity, or rather a series of interrelated unities, controlled by the metaphor of Exodus, Passover or Transitus, which slowly but surely coalesce and intensify through Holy Week to the climax of the Easter Liturgy and the Triduum, the commemoration of the single act by which Christ passed over from death to life, the transitus Domini. The season is a time of incomparable liturgical richness whose rites and ceremonies are an unsurpassed treasury of instruction and devotion for those who immerse themselves in them. These rites and ceremonies, rediscovered, rationalised, reformed and re-ordered, are essentially something of the most profound significance. This study, so enthusiastically received when first published, is now extensively revised and updated in this new fourth edition, fully reflecting change and reform of the liturgy in both the Anglican and the Catholic Church over the last sixty years