Fifty! Because the Church does not begin preparing for the next Christmas and Holy Week on the day after Easter, but instead spends fifty days celebrating and delving ever more deeply into the mystery of our salvation, rejoicing in the new life we have gained in Christ through his resurrection from the dead.
But before the fifty comes the eight: the octave. Eight days, from Easter Sunday to the Second Sunday, because the celebration of Easter is so great and so important for us Christians that, for eight full days, the Church lives each day as though it were Easter Sunday. During the octave, each day we hear proclaimed one of the events found in the Gospels connected with the resurrection of Jesus, and at the same time we begin to be drawn into the spirit of how the first Christians started to live and celebrate this resurrection after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
The Octave of Easter—not because we are “otto,” as the Maltese adage goes, but because we are truly as God wills us to be: reunited with him through the death and resurrection of Christ!