During the Church's liturgical year, the Easter season is the time when the Church looks forward in hope to the promise of eternal life and the final resurrection of the dead.
It is a time when we recall the reality that death has been defeated and Jesus' victory endures for all eternity.
This is a beautiful reality to meditate on and to look forward to in our own lives.
Death might seem like a scary and unexpected event, despite it being something that will happen to us all, but the good news is that death does not have the last say.
God invites us to share in his resurrection and to join him in the New Heavens and the New Earth, where all of our tears will be wiped away.
Hope of the resurrection
Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the hope Jesus won for us in his Urbi et Orbi message in 2009:
Jesus rose again so that we, though destined to die, should not despair, worrying that with death life is completely finished; Christ is risen to give us hope.
He further expands on his reflection by reiterating the point that death does not have the last word:
Indeed, one of the questions that most preoccupies men and women is this: what is there after death? To this mystery today’s solemnity allows us to respond that death does not have the last word, because Life will be victorious at the end. This certainty of ours is based not on simple human reasoning, but on a historical fact of faith: Jesus Christ, crucified and buried, is risen with his glorified body. Jesus is risen so that we too, believing in him, may have eternal life.
The Easter season is full of this type of imagery, constantly reminding us of the victory won for us by Jesus Christ.
This is why the Easter season is one of the most beautiful times to die in the liturgical year. The hope and promise of the resurrection are fresh in our minds and we can look forward with great eagerness at the life to come.
It is also the time when we have typically gone to confession and received the Eucharist. In many ways it is during the Easter season when we are spiritually prepared for our passage from this life to the next.
Obviously we don't know when God will call us home and we can't predict when that will happen. The key for all of us is to live every day as if it were Easter.
Pope Francis said in 2022, on a reflection about St. Joseph, patron of a good death:
The true light that illuminates the mystery of death comes from the Resurrection of Christ. This is the light. And Saint Paul writes: “Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15: 12-14). There is one certainty: Christ is resurrected, Christ is risen, Christ is alive among us. And this is the light that awaits us behind that dark door of death.
And as St. John Paul II once said, "We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!"
May we all strive to truly live those words in our lives and to be ready for that day when our time on earth is at its end.
