The Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, by Brian Kranick (2019)

Easter Sunday is not the end of our Easter celebration.  After forty days of preparation with Lent, and the Easter Triduum, from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, it is easy to miss looking ahead on the Church’s liturgical calendar.  This is, after all, the climax of the Christian year with the celebration of the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Catechism calls Easter the “Feast of feasts” and the “Solemnity of solemnities.”  Yet, Easter Sunday is actually just the first day of the Easter Octave, the eight-day festal period, in which we continue to celebrate the momentous conclusion to the Paschal mystery and the economy of salvation played out in liturgical time.  

The eight days of the Easter Octave are a special time to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection and more deeply contemplate its mysteries.  The Church punctuates the special importance of this feast by assigning it the highest liturgical ranking, that is, as a Privileged Octave of the First Order.  This means each of the eight days is counted as a solemnity, the highest-ranking feast day, in which no other feast can be celebrated.  It begins the fifty days of the Easter celebration to the feast of Pentecost, but these first eight days of the Easter Octave culminates with the second Sunday of Easter:  Divine Mercy Sunday.

It is entirely fitting that Divine Mercy Sunday is the culmination of the Easter Octave, for as St. Pope John Paul II stated in his Divine Mercy Sunday homily in 2001, “Divine Mercy! This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity..”  Divine mercy is the grace and merit won by Christ on our behalf in His Passion and Resurrection.  ….

Read more here:  catholicexchange.com/the-octave-of-easter-divine-mercy-sunday-2