The Octave of Easter

Octave of Easter – eight days starting on Easter Sunday and ending the Second Sunday of Easter, which is also Divine Mercy Sunday. Every day of the Octave is a Solemnity, the Church’s highest feast day. We light the tall, white, decorated Pascal candle. We sing the Gloria, hear a special Easter Alleluia verse, and may recite the Easter Sequence before the Gospel. The priest uses an Easter preface. We also repeat “Alleluia” after we say the final “Thanks be to God” at the end of Mass. The priest’s vestments are white or gold, for the both the Octave and the Easter season. The Easter season comprises Easter Sunday, the Easter Octave, and the weeks following through Ascension Thursday (40 days after Easter), ending at Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Easter. During the Easter season, we hear at Mass stories of the Resurrection from the Acts of the Apostles: Mary Magdalene and the apostles at the tomb, the Lord’s appearance on the road to Emmaus, His meeting with the apostles on the shore of Lake Tiberias, and other familiar accounts. If you usually pray the Angelus, you will replace it during the Easter season with the Regina Caeli (Queen of Heaven) prayer. The Easter season offers plenty of time to celebrate the holiday, with Easter egg hunts, flowers, springtime animals such as lambs, rabbits, and baby chicks in toys and food, and special treats from the Easter basket, a homemade lamb cake or Easter bread. The Easter season also is the time for making one’s Easter duty, the Church’s requirement that we receive Holy Communion during this season.