The Season of Easter: An Anglican Perspective

The Season of Easter

The Season of Easter — the Great Fifty Days — is the oldest and most joyful season in the Christian year. It begins on Easter Day and ends on the Day of Pentecost, running for fifty days from the resurrection of Christ to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. No season in the Anglican calendar is longer or more sustained in its celebration. There is no fasting within it. The Alleluia, suppressed through Lent, is restored and sung at every service. The Paschal candle burns throughout. The Preface of Easter is used at every Eucharist from Easter Day through Pentecost. The BCP 2019 appoints collects on pages 609–614 and lectionary readings on pages 723–725 for the season, giving it a rich theological density.

The Great Fifty Days is not a single note held for seven weeks. It is a sustained movement — from the empty tomb, through the resurrection appearances, through the Ascension of Christ to the Father’s right hand, through the ten days of waiting in the Upper Room, to the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. The season traces the full arc of what the resurrection means: not only that Christ rose but that he ascended, not only that he ascended but that he sent the Spirit, not only that he sent the Spirit but that the Spirit has come and the Church has been born. The fifty days hold all of this together as one continuous act of worship.

The Structure of the Season

The Season of Easter has a clear internal structure, moving through three distinct moments across seven Sundays.

The first movement is the resurrection appearances. Easter Day through the Second and Third Sundays of Easter trace the disciples’ encounters with the risen Christ: the empty tomb, the appearance to Mary Magdalene, the appearance to the disciples behind locked doors, Thomas’s confession, the breakfast by the lake. The Gospel readings in this period are drawn primarily from John 20 and 21 and Luke 24 — the post-resurrection narratives that give the resurrection its human texture. The collect for the Second Sunday of Easter on page 612 names this movement: “Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.” The resurrection has created a new covenant, and those reborn into it are asked to live accordingly.

The second movement is the Good Shepherd and Rogation Sundays. The Fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday, on which the collect on page 612 prays that the Church would know the voice of the one who calls each by name. The Sixth Sunday of Easter is Rogation Sunday, on which the collect on page 613 asks that love toward God may be the ground from which all earthly blessing is received and the source from which all earthly labor finds its meaning. Both Sundays have their own articles in this series; together they mark the season’s middle weeks as a sustained meditation on life lived under the care of the risen shepherd and the provision of the risen Lord.

The third movement is the Ascension and the waiting. Ascension Day falls on the Thursday of the sixth week of Easter — forty days after Easter Day. The Sunday after Ascension Day is the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday of expectant waiting between the Ascension and Pentecost. The collect for this Sunday on page 613 prays that the Church would not be left comfortless but would be strengthened and defended until the coming of the Holy Spirit. And then Pentecost arrives on the fiftieth day, and the season ends in fire and wind and the birth of the Church.

The Easter Lectionary

The lectionary readings for the Season of Easter are found on pages 723–725 of the BCP 2019. The Easter season lectionary has a distinctive feature not shared by any other season: Acts of the Apostles is read as the first lesson at every Sunday Eucharist throughout the fifty days, replacing the Old Testament reading. The effect is cumulative and powerful. The season that celebrates the resurrection of Christ traces simultaneously the birth and early mission of the Church that his resurrection made possible. The disciples who encountered the risen Lord in the Gospels of the first weeks become the apostles who proclaim him in the public square in Acts. The resurrection is not only what happened to Jesus. It is what happened to the community he left behind.

The Gospel readings in Easter trace a characteristic arc across the three years. The early Sundays draw from the resurrection appearance narratives: John 20 in the first weeks across all three years. As the season progresses, the Gospel readings shift from narrative to discourse — drawing from John’s Farewell Discourse (John 13–17) in the middle and later weeks. This is theologically deliberate: the Church that has received the risen Lord is now being formed by his teaching about the Spirit, about the vine and the branches, about the love that is the mark of discipleship. The season moves from seeing the resurrection to living in its consequences.

The Epistle readings across the fifty days draw from 1 Peter in Year A — the great baptismal letter, addressed to those newly born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ — from 1 John in Year B, and from Revelation in Year C. 1 Peter is particularly fitting for the Easter season: it speaks directly to those who have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection, who are sojourners in the world, who are to be ready to give an account of the hope that is in them. Revelation’s Year C appointment gives the season an eschatological horizon: the risen Christ who is proclaimed through fifty days is the same Christ who will come again, and the Church that celebrates the resurrection is the Church that waits for its completion.

Holy Days Within the Season

The Season of Easter is dense with feast days. Several Red-Letter Holy Days fall within the fifty days, and their placement within the Easter season gives each of them a distinctive resurrection context.

The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist falls on April 25, which lands within the Easter season in most years. The Gospel that opens with “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1, ESV) is read in the light of the empty tomb that his Gospel narrates. The feast of the evangelist who recorded the resurrection is fittingly observed within the season of its celebration.

The Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James falls on May 1. As noted in the article on their feast, Philip’s question in John 14 — “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” — is answered by Jesus in the Farewell Discourse that the Easter season reads for several Sundays. The feast of these two apostles falls within the season that reads their Lord’s answer.

The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on May 31, the eve of June, which lands in the Easter season in years when Pentecost falls late. The Visitation — Mary going to Elizabeth, the Spirit filling John the Baptist in the womb, the Magnificat — is a feast of the Spirit’s activity, fitting for the season that ends with the Spirit’s outpouring.

Ascension Day itself is a Principal Feast occurring within the Season of Easter — on the Thursday forty days after Easter. The collect on page 613 prays: “Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.” The Ascension is not a departure but a filling: he ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things. The risen Christ who is no longer visibly present is the Christ who is now everywhere present. The Easter season holds this paradox: he is gone, and he fills all things.

The BCP 2019 Collects and Prefaces

The BCP 2019 appoints a full set of collects for the Easter season, from the Easter Eve collect on page 609 through the daily collects for Easter Week on pages 610–611 and the Sunday collects through the Day of Pentecost on page 614. The richness of this provision reflects the season’s theological density: each day of Easter Week and each Sunday of the season has its own collect, its own angle of approach to the resurrection.

The Easter Day collect on page 609 opens the season: “Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may, by your life-giving Spirit, be delivered from sin and raised from death; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Death overcome, the gate of everlasting life opened, deliverance from sin, raising from death: the collect names the full scope of what the resurrection accomplishes. The Third Sunday collect on page 612 takes this further: “Almighty God, you gave your only Son to be for us both a sacrifice for sin and an example of godly living: Give us grace thankfully to receive his inestimable benefits, and daily to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life.” The resurrection is received as benefit and followed as example: both dimensions are present in the Easter season’s formation of the Church.

The Preface of Easter, found on page 154 of the BCP 2019, governs every Eucharist from Easter Day through the Day of Pentecost, with the Preface of the Ascension used from Ascension Day through the following Sunday: “But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.” (BCP 2019, p. 154) The Preface of Easter is the theological statement of the season in miniature: the Paschal Lamb, the taking away of sin, the destruction of death, the winning of everlasting life. For fifty days, the Church sings or says this preface at every Eucharist. By the time Pentecost arrives, these words have been received dozens of times and should have become the shape of the congregation’s resurrection faith.

The Season of Easter in Anglican Worship

White vestments are worn throughout the Season of Easter, the color of resurrection joy and light. Red vestments are worn on Pentecost Sunday, to honor the fire of the Spirit, and on any martyrs’ feasts that fall within the season, such as the Feast of Saint Mark. The fifty days of white are the liturgical embodiment of the resurrection light that the season proclaims.

The Paschal candle, lit at the Easter Vigil, burns at every service throughout the fifty days — at the Gospel, at baptisms, and prominently in the chancel — as a visible sign of the resurrection. It is extinguished after the Gospel on Ascension Day, symbolizing the departure of Christ’s visible presence from the earth, and thereafter placed near the font where it burns at baptisms throughout the year.

The Alleluia is the season’s signature. Suppressed throughout Lent in many Anglican parishes, it returns at the Easter Vigil and is sung or said at every service of the fifty days. The Easter greeting — “Alleluia! Christ is risen. / The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” — opens the Easter liturgy and may be used throughout the season as a greeting and dismissal. No other season of the year is so saturated with the Church’s great acclamation of praise.

The Easter season is one of the primary occasions for Holy Baptism in the Anglican calendar, along with Pentecost, All Saints’ Day, and the Baptism of Our Lord. The Easter Vigil — the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday — is the preeminent occasion, in which the new fire, the Exsultet, the Scripture readings from creation through the New Testament, and the first Alleluia of the season all lead to the reception of the newly baptized into the resurrection community. Baptism during the Easter season places the candidate’s new birth explicitly in the context of the resurrection: born again by water and the Spirit, as the one who rose from the dead was born again from the tomb.

Observing the Season

The Season of Easter begins on Easter Day and ends on the Day of Pentecost. The BCP 2019 provides collects beginning on page 609 and lectionary readings on pages 723–725. The season always includes exactly fifty days and seven Sundays.

To observe the season fully: do not allow the cultural pattern to collapse Easter into a single Sunday. The fifty days are a season, not a single celebration. Pray the collect appointed for each Sunday of Easter and notice how each approaches the resurrection from a different angle. Follow Acts of the Apostles through the season as the first lesson at the Sunday Eucharist — the birth of the Church traced simultaneously with the resurrection of its Lord. Read the John 14–17 Farewell Discourse through the middle Sundays and receive it as the risen Christ’s teaching about the life the Easter season is meant to produce.

Keep the Alleluia throughout the season. Let it be heard at the beginning and end of every service, every week, for fifty days. Observe Ascension Day — do not let it pass without notice simply because it falls on a Thursday. The Ascension is a Principal Feast and its collect speaks directly to the daily life of the Church: he ascended that he might fill all things, and he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages. And let Pentecost be the crowning of the season: the Spirit poured out, the Church born, the fifty days completed. The season that began at the empty tomb ends at the upper room filled with fire.

Conclusion

The Season of Easter is the Church’s annual immersion in the full reality of the resurrection. It is not a single Sunday of celebration but fifty days of sustained proclamation: Christ is risen, he has ascended, he has sent the Spirit, and the world has not been the same since. The season’s length is its argument: the resurrection is not a doctrine to be acknowledged but a reality to be inhabited, and fifty days is the calendar’s way of insisting that the Church spend enough time in the light of the empty tomb to be changed by it.

“But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.” (BCP 2019, p. 154)