We end Holy week with the end of the Paschal Triduum and move into Easter week.
I scrolled through FB this morning only to find this surprising news.
We start off Easter Monday April 21 with the death of our beloved pontiff Pope Francis. Someone on Scott Hawn’s FB said…
He died well on Easter Monday… he visited the prisoners on Holy Thursday, gave a good homily on Good Friday and his last blessing at Vatican City yesterday. Rest in peace as His memory be a blessing to many.
In one of his last homilies on Easter Sunday Yesterday he said…
For this reason, our Easter faith, which opens us to the encounter with the risen Lord and prepares us to welcome him into our lives, is anything but a complacent settling into some sort of “religious reassurance.” On the contrary, Easter spurs us to action, to run like Mary Magdalene and the disciples; it invites us to have eyes that can “see beyond,” to perceive Jesus, the one who lives, as the God who reveals himself and makes himself present even today, who speaks to us, goes before us, surprises us. Like Mary Magdalene, every day we can experience losing the Lord, but every day we can also run to look for him again, with the certainty that he will allow himself to be found and will fill us with the light of his resurrection.
Sisters, brothers, in the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we can say: with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again.
As Christians take time in this jubilee year to reflect on the core of our faith millions of others will not. They won’t go to church services or think deeply about Jesus’s passion. They will continue to release movies, books and music to the wider world as if nothing special is going on. They will add sins to Jesus cross by killing others and starting wars. But people of all races and creeds will achieve great things in which the cross has set them free. Some of these events are recorded in the history books. Normal secular life walks along the road of cavalry with pious faith filled Christians.
What events big and small happen as folks went to Easter Sunday services?
Listed below are some of those memorable events.
I have listed the current liturgical feast and date.
Followed by an event that happen on the same date, but different year.
And finally an event that happen on the same liturgical date but a different date and year.
What is confusing about Lent and Easter is that an event that happen on one day one year may not happen on the same day next year. It’s tricky but for the lover of history its fun to unravel and wrap your mind around.
We start out Holy Week two days before with two movies opening in cinemas that our perfect to start out the journey to Jerusalem.
Please Note That Historical Data is comprised and quoted from Wikipedia.
Easter Sunday April 20, 2025
Pope Francis@Pontifex – I would like us to renew our hope that #peace is possible! From the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Resurrection, where this year #Easter is being celebrated by Catholics and Orthodox on the same day, may the light of peace radiate throughout the Holy Land and the entire world.
31. We wish it to be your rule first of all to tear away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it really is; and by sermons and pastoral letters to instruct the people as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts. As Our predecessors have many times repeated, let no man think that he may for any reason whatsoever join the masonic sect, if he values his Catholic name and his eternal salvation as he ought to value them. Let no one be deceived by a pretense of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion andmorality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful.
Easter Sunday April 20, 1884
NGC 2835 is an intermediate spiral galaxy located in the constellation Hydra. It is located at a distance of circa 35 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 2835 is about 65,000 light years across. It was discovered by Wilhelm Tempel. NGC 2835 is located only 18.5 degrees from the galactic plane.
April 20, 1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
S1.E14: Rainy Day in Paradise Junction starring Audrey Hepburn as Virginia. – Travelers take shelter in a train station while a thunderstorm rages outside. The most optimistic of the group is teenage Virginia, who announces she’s headed for Hollywood to become a dancer now that her mother has died and she’s an orphan. But Bill, another traveler, notices the brace on Virginia’s leg and ridicules her ambitions.
Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, aging people who slowly and with trembling fingers turn the last pages of a book of life and hope against logic and the preordained that some magic printing press will add to this book another limited edition. But these two senior citizens happen to live in a time of the future where nothing is impossible, even the trading of old bodies for new. Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, in their twilight years, who are about to find that there happens to be a zone with the same name.
Easter Sunday April 22, 1962
Soviet citizens who had been living in China’s Xinjiang Province began crossing the Chinese-Soviet border to escape famine and persecution. Over the next six weeks, 67,000 people fled from Xinjiang into the Kazakh SSR, without interference from either side.
John Young saluting the United States flag while jumping up on the Moon, with the Apollo Lunar Module Orion and Lunar Roving Vehicle in the background
Easter Sunday April 2, 1972
Lt. Col. Iceal Hambleton, a USAF navigator with a background in ballistic missile technology and missile countermeasures, was the sole survivor of an EB-66 shot down behind enemy lines during the Easter Offensive of the Vietnam War. If he was captured, he would be a propaganda and intelligence bonanza for the North Vietnamese and the Soviet Union.
On this day Prince turned the Orange Bowl purple for the final stop on his Purple Rain tour.
On Easter Sunday 1985, Prince and the Revolution brought their Minneapolis sound to the Orange Bowl for the final stop on their 95-city Purple Rain tour. It was Easter Sunday, a fact that dismayed Miami city commissioners, who thought the eccentric singer—and his naughty lyrics—unfit for the Christian holiday. After all, it was Prince’s libidinous songs that were the impetus for the creation of advisory labels on albums deemed explicit.
Despite the city commissioners’ disapproval, the show went on. Prince greeted the crowd with, “Happy Easter, Florida,” according to Jean Marbella in a Sun Sentinel recap the next day. “My name is Prince, and I’ve come to play.” He started the concert with ‘Let’s Go Crazy’.
And play he did—to 55,000 fans who flooded the stadium in purple-colored garb (as instructed on their $19 tickets). Lavender leotards, purple Mohawks, and purple paired with leather and lace were the perfect complements to the performer’s Magic City-appropriate metallic blazer with purple accents. Adding a bit of gravity to the event, Prince announced that he would be taking time off from performing live, and the concert was expected to be his last for some time. (Unable to stay away, he returned to the stage the following year.) Prince & the Revolution 4.7.1985 @ the Orange Bowl in Miami FL
Iran invites 60 countries to a two-day nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on April 17–18, entitled “Nuclear energy for everyone, nuclear arms for no one”. China says it will attend the conference which invites “the world to disarm and prevent proliferation”. (Al Jazeera)
April 21, 1934 – The “Surgeon’s Photograph”, the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1994, it is revealed to be a hoax).
A Holy Door by Vico Consorti at the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry during its construction
A message from Pope Pius XI published in a Cologne-based Catholic publication criticized Nazi propaganda as “pointing away from Christ back to paganism.”
Phillis and her son Charles were among the victims of the slave-trading ring operated by Middlesex County judge Jacob Van Wickle. This document is a record of the removal of Phillis (aged 25) and Charles (aged one and a half years) from the state of New Jersey to Louisiana by slaveholder Nicholas Van Wickle (Jacob Van Wickle’s son).
Judges Jacob Van Wickle and John Outcalt signed the removal certificate on April 22, 1818, and Middlesex County Clerk William P. Deare recorded this document in the Book of Manumissions and Removals on June 15, 1818.
Easter Monday April 22, 1889 – At noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Rush of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.
The drama film Far and Away (1992), starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, depicts a young Irish couple immigrating to the States with hopes of participating in the Cherokee Outlet (or Strip) land run (1893 just north of the Unassigned Lands) and staking claim to their own land.
Easter Tuesday April 23, 1889
The first mass meeting is called. A Citizen’s Committee of 14 is elected and instructed to conduct a survey.
Confusion reigned on Tuesday, April 23, the day after the Land Run, as settlers realized that nobody was in charge. Surveyors representing competing townsite companies tried to mark the streets on land that a day earlier had been open prairie. As conflicts escalated, a small group of men called a mass meeting, enlisting boys on ponies to spread the word.
Settlers flocked to the southwest corner of Main and Broadway. Angelo C. Scott, a young Kansan with a booming voice was elected chairman. Amidst heated discussions, the assembly resolved to conduct a new townsite survey and entrusted its oversight to a citizens’ committee to be elected on the spot, each member to come from a different state.
Citizens shouted the names of their nominees, who were hustled onto boxes next to the chairman and secretary. “If the crowd liked his looks they voted him up; if not, they voted him down,” recalled Scott. –The Citizens’ Committee Historical Marker
Joseph N. Welch (left) being questioned by Senator Joseph McCarthy (right), June 9, 1954
Easter Tuesday April 20, 1954
Michael Manning, (September 1, 1928 – April 20, 1954) was an Irish man who was convicted for rape and murder and executed in 1954. He was the 29th and last person to be executed in the Republic of Ireland, as capital punishment was gradually abolished in the decades following Manning’s execution.
The FBI identified a suspect in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., filing a request for an arrest warrant and releasing a photograph of fugitive “Eric Starvo Galt”, which would turn out to be an alias for James Earl Ray. The warrant request, filed in Birmingham, Alabama, alleged a conspiracy between Galt “and an individual whom he alleged to be his brother”. Following the granting of the warrant, police in Memphis, Tennessee, filed charges of murder against “Galt”
The immediate aftermath of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. This photograph was allegedly taken within just seconds of the shooting by photographer Joseph Louw, the only known photographer at the scene.
In Gainesville, Florida, Floyd “Sonny” Tillman opened his first Sonny’s BBQ restaurant. In the coming years, the chain would expand to over 130 restaurants across eight Southeastern states.
Easter Wednesday April 23, 2025
April 23, 1985 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
The Easter egg hunt has just begun for a woman in Wisconsin.
Earlier this month, she gave the Salvation Army thrift shop in Manitowoc a batch of plastic Easter eggs that she found among her late grandmother’s possessions.
Now she’s trying to find out who bought them. She just read Granny’s diary – and learned that the eggs were stuffed with “a considerable amount” of cash.
States have official birds, flowers and trees. But Virginia alone has an official state bat.
“Why not a bat, what’s wrong with that?” Gov. Mark Warner rhymed when asked for the reason he was signing a bill making the Virginia big-eared brown bat the state bat.
Members of the statehouse had unanimously approved the bill – although one baseball fan in the Senate had urged, tongue-in-cheek, that the Louisville slugger be designated instead.
Retired Pope Benedict XVI, pictured in a 2008 file photo, celebrated his 93rd birthday April 16, 2020. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz) See BENEDICT-93 April 16, 2020.
On this day approximately 500 people arrived at Bergen-Belsen on a transport from Buchenwald. These prisoners were held in a section of Bergen-Belsen called the Prisoner Camp. Over the following two months, these prisoners were forced to convert the former prisoner of war camp into a concentration camp. The prisoners focused on constructing the Residence Camp, which became the main holding area for future prisoners. The Prisoner Camp was closed in February 1944 following the completion of the Residence Camp. However, it was quickly reopened as a camp for the sick and prisoners in transit to other camps. Liberation of Bergen-Belsen – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools
Easter Friday April 25, 2025
April 25, 1927 – The design was chosen for the flag of Alaska as part of a contest among the territory’s schoolchildren. Thirteen-year-old orphan Benny Benson, who based his design on the North Star and the Big Dipper (later set against a dark blue field) won a $1,000 prize and a trip to Paris.
Easter Friday April 22, 1927
In the biggest disaster relief effort to that time, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge announced the formation of a committee to aid flood victims through the American Red Cross. “The Government is giving such aid as lies within its power,” Coolidge stated, supplying boats and tents for refugees, but added that “the burden of caring for the homeless” was that of the Red Cross. “For so great a task additional funds must be obtained immediately,” Coolidge urged the public to make “generous contributions” to the Red Cross. The government spent $10 million on relief, while the Red Cross collected $17.5 million in cash and $6 million in supplies to take care of 600,000 flood victims.
A tent-city for displaced citizens in Vicksburg, Mississippi
House of Wax opens. It was a remake of the studio’s own 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, it stars Vincent Price as a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays. The film premiered in New York on April 10, 1953, and had a general release on April 25, making it the first 3D film with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater and the first color 3D feature film from a major American studio. Man in the Dark, released by Columbia Pictures, was the first major-studio black-and-white 3D feature and premiered two days before House of Wax.
Schematic illustration of endoscopic fetal surgery for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome
Easter Saturday April 25, 1981
The Soviet Union launched Kosmos 1267 to carry the unmanned TKS spacecraft, a vehicle that could provide a space ferry to bring back returning cosmonauts, as well as providing an additional component to an orbiting space station.
March 23, 1937 – Saint Faustina Kowalska (August 25, 1905 – October 5, 1938) wrote in her diary (Notebook III, Item 1044) that she had a vision that the feast of the Divine Mercy would be celebrated in her local chapel and would be attended by large crowds and also that the same celebration would be held in Rome, attended by the pope.
Also on this date- Craig Breedlove, is born. He was an American race car driver known for his record-setting land speed records, as the first person in history to reach 500 miles per hour (800 km/h) (10/13/1964) and the first to reach 600 miles per hour (970 km/h) (11/15/1965); in Los Angeles (d. 2023)
Breedlove in a 1968 illustration
Getting Back to St. Faustina
In July 1937, the first holy cards with the Divine Mercy image were printed. In August, Sopoćko asked Kowalska to write the instructions for the Novena of Divine Mercy, which she had reported as a message from Jesus on Good Friday 1937.
Throughout 1937, progress was made in promoting the Divine Mercy, and in November 1937, a pamphlet was published with the title Christ, King of Mercy. The pamphlet included the chaplet, the novena and the litany of the Divine Mercy. The Divine Mercy image appeared on the cover, with the signature “Jesus I Trust in You”. On 10 November 1937, Mother Irene, Kowalska’s superior, showed her the booklets while Kowalska rested in her bed.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In