Easter Sunday 2019

Dear Brothers and Sisters.
Peter and the other disciple ran together to the Tomb and saw the linen cloths on the ground.  Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture, that Jesus must rise from the dead.  But now they saw, and they believed. Later that same day the Risen Lord appeared to them in the flesh with greetings of peace and forgiveness of sins. 

We can only imagine what those following forty days were like, with the Lord among them, in that first and most blessed of Easter seasons.  Peter gives some sense of it when he addresses Cornelius and his family before baptising them in the Lord Jesus and His Church.  God has chosen him with the Apostles and the holy women to see Him raised to life by God, to eat and drink with Him after His Resurrection, and so to be witnesses to the whole people.  Their witness was to be to the living reality of the Lord’s Resurrection, but also to its message: that Jesus, the One to whom all Scriptures bore witness, has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead, but that all who believe in Him will enjoy a merciful and forgiving judgement.

Not long after, on the Road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus experienced the wonderful surprise of that forgiveness from Jesus, who might have been expected to condemn him for his severe persecution of the Church.  That encounter with the mercy of God brought Paul back to true life in Christ.  Thereafter, his whole life and mission was none other than looking for the things that are in Heaven, where His Beloved Christ was, sitting at God’s right hand.  His thoughts were thereafter only on Heavenly things, knowing that he had died to things that were on the earth.  On that Day outside Damascus, when the Risen Christ was revealed to Him, Paul knew from then on that Christ was now His life and, for all eternity, his glory. 

Brothers and sisters, like Peter and the Apostles we, as Christians, know all about Jesus of Nazareth and how he began in Galilee, about how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil. We know how they killed him by hanging him on a tree.  Yet, for all that, it is still possible for us, like them, to fail to understand the full teaching of Scripture.  Like the holy women making their way to the Tomb in the early morning, even though Christ is Risen, we can be living still in the dark, awaiting a real personal encounter with Him. 

Brothers and sisters, it is right and just that at all times we should acclaim the Lord, and all the wonders He worked on earth.  But, on this day, above all, we laud the Father yet more gloriously since, by rising, Christ our Passover has now restored our life. The very thought of it should leave us overcome with paschal joy, realising how, because of His Resurrection, every land, every people exults in His praise and even the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts, sing together the unending hymn of His glory.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord God chose beforehand Peter and the Apostles to eat and drink with His Risen Son after His Resurrection. Today our Heavenly Father has chosen Marie-Therese, his little one, to receive her First Holy Communion on this Easter Sunday Morning, and so to eat and drink with Jesus after His Resurrection.  We pray for her, for her mum and dad and family, and for ourselves, that this Easter Season will introduce us into the full message of the Scriptures, that it will inspire us to look for the things of Heaven where Christ is¸ and that it will see us exult, along with every land and people, with the angels and heavenly powers, in the Risen Lord’s Paschal joy.

Resurrexit sicut dixit. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!