Easter is a Christian festival aka Pascha or Resurrection Sunday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The account is described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial after being crucified by the Romans at Golgotha.
Easter is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus and is preceded by Lent, which is a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.
Easter is a movable religious holiday that doesn’t fall on the same day every year. The date on which Easter is celebrated is calculated based on the lunisolar calendar. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or close to March 21st.
Easter is considered one of the most important Christian holidays because it celebrates Jesus’ supernatural resurrection from the dead. This occurrence famously established him as the Son of God and as an indicator that God is the righteous judge of the world.
Religious Easter Messages
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!“
– 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.“
– Charles M. Crowe
“And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.”
– St. Augustine
“Death is the justification of all the ways of the Christian, the last end of all his sacrifices, the touch of the Great Master which completes the picture.“
– Sophie Swetchine
“Christ has not only spoken to us by his life but has also spoken for us by his death.”
– Soren Kirekegaard
“The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances.“
– Robert Flatt
“People come together with their families to celebrate Easter. What better way to celebrate than to spend a few hours going on the journey of Christ’s life.“
– Roma Downey
“Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.“
– Janine di Giovanni
“Christ the Lord is risen today, sons of men and angels say. Raise your joys and triumphs high; sing, ye heavens and earth reply.“
– Charles Wesley
“In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
– 1 Peter 1:3
“The Cross was the manifestation of Divine love without reserve or limit; but it was also the expression of man’s unutterable malignity.”
– Sir Robert Anderson
“So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.”
– Philip Ledyard Cuyler
“God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ’I love you.’“
– Billy Graham
“How can we joyfully anticipate Easter Sunday’s power without mournfully remembering our weakness?“
– Christopher Greer
Powerful Easter Quotes By Popes
“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.“
– Pope John Paul II
“Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered… God exists: that is the real message of Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed.“
“And ever anew we must withdraw our hearts from the force of gravity, which pulls them down, and inwardly we must raise them high: in truth and love. At this hour, let us thank the Lord, because through the power of his word and of the holy Sacraments, he points us in the right direction and draws our heart upwards. Let us pray to him in these words: Yes, Lord, make us Easter people, men and women of light, filled with the fire of your love. Amen.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“We celebrate because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“To be sure, it was not Easter Sunday but Holy Saturday, but, the more I reflect on it, the more this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“We are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“Indeed, the cure for death does exist. Christ is the tree of life, once more within our reach. If we remain close to him, then we have life. Hence, during this night of resurrection, with all our hearts we shall sing the alleluia, the song of joy that has no need of words. Hence, Paul can say to the Philippians: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!’ (Phil 4:4). Joy cannot be commanded. It can only be given. The risen Lord gives us joy: true life.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“The day I was baptized, as I said, was Holy Saturday. Then it was still customary to anticipate the Easter Vigil in the morning, which would still be followed by the darkness of Holy Saturday, without the Alleluia. It seems to me that this singular paradox, this singular anticipation of light in a day of darkness, could almost be an image of the history of our times. On the one hand, there is still the silence of God and his absence, but in the Resurrection of Christ there is already the anticipation of the ‘yes’ of God, and on the basis of this anticipation we live and, through the silence of God, we hear him speak, and through the darkness of his absence we glimpse his light. The anticipation of the Resurrection in the middle of an evolving history is the power that points out the way to us and helps us to go forward.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“The liturgical celebration of the Easter Vigil makes use of two eloquent signs. First there is the fire that becomes light. As the procession makes its way through the church, shrouded in the darkness of the night, the light of the Paschal Candle becomes a wave of lights, and it speaks to us of Christ as the true morning star that never sets – the Risen Lord in whom light has conquered darkness. The second sign is water. On the one hand, it recalls the waters of the Red Sea, decline and death, the mystery of the Cross. But now it is presented to us as spring water, a life-giving element amid the dryness. Thus it becomes the image of the sacrament of baptism, through which we become sharers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“In the Baroque period the liturgy used to include the risus paschalis, the Easter laughter. The Easter homily had to contain a story that made people laugh, so that the church resounded with a joyful laughter. That may be a somewhat superficial form of Christian joy. But is there not something very beautiful and appropriate about laughter becoming a liturgical symbol? And is it not a tonic when we still hear, in the play of cherub and ornament in Baroque churches, that laughter which testified to the freedom of the redeemed? And is it not a sign of an Easter faith when Haydn remarked, concerning his church compositions, that he felt a particular joy when thinking of God: ‘As I came to utter the words of supplication, I could not suppress my joy but loosed the reins of my elated spirits and wrote “allegro” over the Miserere, and so on?’“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“Easter is the feast of the new creation. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer knows illness and death. He has taken mankind up into God himself. ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,’ as Saint Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:50). On the subject of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, the Church writer Tertullian in the third century was bold enough to write: ‘Rest assured, flesh and blood, through Christ you have gained your place in heaven and in the Kingdom of God’ (CCL II, 994). A new dimension has opened up for mankind. Creation has become greater and broader.“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“But once Christ is risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred; the force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death. Perhaps this is actually the situation of the Church in every age, perhaps it is our situation? It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words: ‘We are as dying, and behold we live’ (2 Cor 6:9). The Lord’s saving hand holds us up, and thus we can already sing the song of the saved, the new song of the risen ones: alleluia!“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“On this night, then, let us pray: Lord, show us that love is stronger than hatred, that love is stronger than death. Descend into the darkness and the abyss of our modern age, and take by the hand those who await you. Bring them to the light! In my own dark nights, be with me to bring me forth! Help me, help all of us, to descend with you into the darkness of all those people who are still waiting for you, who out of the depths cry unto you! Help us to bring them your light!“
– Pope Benedict XVI
“Dear sister, dear brother, even if in your heart you have buried hope, do not give up: God is greater. Darkness and death do not have the last word. Be strong, for with God nothing is lost!“
– Pope Francis
“This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and we are his glory: the living man.“
– Pope Francis
“At Easter, God finally reveals His glory: He takes away the last veil and astonishes us as never before. We discover, in fact, that God’s glory is all love: pure love, mad and unthinkable, beyond every limit and measure…True glory is the glory of love, because it is the only one that gives life to the world. Certainly this glory is the opposite of worldly glory, which comes when one is admired, praised, acclaimed. The glory of God, on the other hand, is paradoxical: no applause, no audience. At the center there is not the ego, but the other.“
– Pope Francis
“Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give in to resignation and failure? Easter is the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside. God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness.“
– Pope Francis
“Easter is the event that brought radical news for every human being, for history and for the world: the triumph of life over death; it is the feast of reawakening and of rebirth. Let us allow our lives to be conquered and transformed by the Resurrection!“
– Pope Francis
“To celebrate Easter is to believe once more that God constantly breaks into our personal histories, challenging our “conventions”, those fixed ways of thinking and acting that end up paralyzing us. To celebrate Easter is to allow Jesus to triumph over the craven fear that so often assails us and tries to bury every kind of hope.“
– Pope Francis
“It is true, yes, Baptism that makes us children of God and the Eucharist that unites us to Christ must become life, that is, they must be expressed in attitudes, behaviour, gestures and decisions. The grace contained in the Sacraments of Easter (Baptism and Communion) is an enormous potential for the renewal of our personal existence, of family life, of social relations. However everything passes through the human heart: if I let myself be touched by the grace of the Risen Christ, if I let him change me in that aspect of mine which is not good, which can hurt me and others, I allow the victory of Christ to be affirmed in my life, to broaden its beneficial action.“
– Pope Francis
“The Lord awakens so as to reawaken and revive our Easter faith. We have an anchor: by his cross we have been saved. We have a rudder: by his cross we have been redeemed. We have a hope: by his cross we have been healed and embraced so that nothing and no one can separate us from his redeeming love. In the midst of isolation when we are suffering from a lack of tenderness and chances to meet up, and we experience the loss of so many things, let us once again listen to the proclamation that saves us: he is risen and is living by our side. The Lord asks us from his cross to rediscover the life that awaits us, to look towards those who look to us, to strengthen, recognize and foster the grace that lives within us. Let us not quench the wavering flame (cf. Is 42:3) that never falters, and let us allow hope to be rekindled.“
– Pope Francis
