27.04.2025 Fr. Andy Writes

 WELCOMING THE EASTER SEASON

Despite a slow progress in my state of health, I am very blessed to belong to such a wonderful parish of people, who have given me so much love and support over the last few months (and years really). I see it as a “Slow Resurrection”. It has not taken me three days (a short time in biblical language) like, Jesus to “Rise from the dead”, but more like forty days (a long time in biblical language). And just as people, like Mary Magdalene and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, did not recognise the Risen Christ too easily, I don’t even recognise myself too easily at the moment either!

Just before Holy Week, I managed to get up to take part in the penitential service and able to give a general absolution for everyone and our lovely four children who were preparing to make their first holy communion over Easter. I was also able to join in the Good Friday celebrations and Easter Sunday morning. Many thanks to Father Geoff for his fantastic support and for the loving kindness and friendship he has given to me and to the parish. What a great guy Geoff is. We are so lucky that we have him at this time during my recovery.

I love this Easter period when the beautiful theme of the Resurrection lives in our hearts and minds. I am so grateful for all the people involved in the preparation and the celebration of Holy Week and for the powerful presence of love and support that has been shown not only to me, but to one another. What an amazing parish we have!

I often wonder why so much human life seems so futile, so tragic, so short, and so often so sad. I mean, if Christ has risen, why do people die before they begin to truly live? Why has there been nonstop ward? Why are so many people imprisoned unjustly? Why are the poor so oppressed? Why is there so much violence, especially to women? If Christ has risen why is there so much suffering? Is the resurrection something that has just happened once, in his body, but not ours?

But I believe that the resurrection of Christ is telling us that the final judgement has already happened. It’s nothing we need to fear. It is nothing we need to avoid or deny. God’s final judgement is that God will have the last word! Easter reveals that there are no dead ends; ultimately, nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. Of course, we look around us, at history and at life in its daily moments and it seems, “No, no, that can’t be true”. And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we suspect, new life breaks through for those who are willing to see and to cooperate with this universal mystery we call resurrection.

It is beautiful that Easter coincides with the springtime. All around us are signs of new life: blossoms on the trees, flowers being reborn, longer and sunnier days seem to be already with us. I don’t get out much at the moment, but managed in get into the back garden and see the sun rise - the light was coming from the earth, coming from the world we live in. It was coming, not from the top, but from the bottom. It seemed to say that even all of this which looks muddy and material, even all of this which looks so ordinary and dying, will be reborn.

Easter is a feast of hope. This is the feast that says God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty. What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death, but life. Surprise of surprises! It does not fit any logical explanation. Yet this is the mystery: that nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love. This is what Joe (Long) and I talked about when he came down to see me the other weekend, in relation to his wife Liz, who died recently from a stroke. Liz will always live on in love. Just as she shares in the resurrection of Jesus, with Joe’s faith and love she still lives on sharing the life of Joe.

So, to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: my life and my love will always and forever have the final word. It is true that each of us will die, and yet, “I am certain of this, neither death nor live, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, not any height nor depth, nor any created thing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-40).

On Good Friday we lament Jesus’ death while living in hope that death does not have the last word on our destiny. We are born with a longing, desire, and deep hope that this thing called life could somehow last forever. There is something eternal that is already within us. Some would call it soul. Christians would call it the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is God within us that makes us desire and seek God. Deep in our hearts there is a human and divine love that is eternal and gratuitous and so every act of love, no matter how small will imprint on our hearts and deep into our soul.

Let me finish with a powerful saying which brings together this newness of life that we see around us in this beautiful Easter season. The Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino wrote, “In the end, everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, then it’s not the end” This is what Easter is all about “Everything will be all right in the end.”

I can’t emphasise enough that the feast of Easter is not about the body of Jesus, it is about all of us, humans, animals, plants, the whole of creation and indeed the whole universe. Everything has been resurrected, and that is why Easter is a feast of hope, which gives direction, purpose, meaning, and community to all life. Christ has destroyed death forever; that is destroyed death for all of us. Life is changed, not ended, as we say in our funeral liturgy. Indeed, in the end everything will be all right. We pray for Pope Francis who has died today (Easter Monday), may he live forever in the mighty presence of God and enjoy the new life in Christ.