But didn't God make "the day" long before Easter?
At the Easter Vigil we began the readings with the story of the creation of the world in Genesis, "evening came and morning followed, the first day."
Today's responsorial psalm reminds us that God did not make the world once, but twice. With the resurrection of Christ, in the words of the Exultet, earth is united to heaven, and a new world is born. It may look to the human eye like old one but it is not.
The early church would speak of this not as the first day, or the seventh day, but the eighth day. As I sit here on my front porch in Richmond, the sun is shining, the birds and singing. As I look across the street at the cemetery of Historic St. John's Episcopal, I am reminded that with the resurrection Jesus changed forever the meaning of words like cemetery, and death. He opened the gates of heaven and gave us eternal life.
