Easter Sunday - Year C - 4th April 2010

New Life

Today there are signs of life all around us. There are flowers around the altar. We have gone from violet to white vestments. All nature is waiting to burst into bloom. Christ has risen and lives again, and we all feel a bit more alive.

Easter is an affirmation of life in the face of death, a message of hope in the face of despair. We need it, because life is under assault today, from outside our society and from within. From outside, we have had the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. We live under the threat of terrorism. We have lost so many personnel in Afghanistan. Within our society, there flourishes what Pope John Paul II called a culture of death. Abortion takes the lives of unborn children. A movement is under way to legalize assisted suicide and eventually euthanasia. Our church has not been immune and sadly our priests have sinned and some Bishops have not given the leadership we expected of them.

In the face of these threats from within and without, Christ's empty tomb tells us every year what we need to hear over and over: that sin and death do not have the last word, and that we should never lose hope. The disciples gave up on Good Friday. They watched Jesus die, and they thought they saw the end of all their hopes and dreams. Giving up is something we are all, at some time, tempted to do, and some give in. Some people give up on church. Some give up on the government. Some give up on their families. Some give up on life, and some give up on themselves.

God is always making new life and under girding it with a goodness, graciousness, mercy, and love that, in the end, heals all wounds, forgives all sins and leads deadness to all kinds to new life. Through baptism we share in the very life of the crucified and risen Christ and so we are made new.

A message on an Easter card once read. "May you leave behind you a string of empty tombs!" That is both my Easter wish and my Easter challenge for all of us.

The Easter message is that Christ has risen. Life has conquered death. Don't give up!

Happy Easter!