Today I want to wish you all a very Happy Easter. This is the best day of our year, the best moment of our faith! Today we complete the celebration of the work of God among us, in our history, in our world. Today we come beyond the sadness and horror of the Lord’s brutal death, beyond the sad emptiness that inevitably follows the death of a loved one, beyond the disappointment of lost hopes. Today we see all that reversed and the whole of the natural order of life followed by death turned on its head. Now we see a new order, a new expectation and hope. No longer does life end in death, but death ends in new life!
This is the work of love. This is God’s infinite love for the whole of his creation springing into action. This creation, brought into being by love, will not be lost in final disintegration!
Just as that act of creation comes about because God is ‘speaking out’, so too God ‘speaks out’ again, rescuing his handiwork from its own self-inflicted damage.
This ‘speaking out’ is the Word of God, spoken from all eternity in the act of creation, and spoken once and for all in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth.
This ‘speaking out’, because it is by God, achieves what it says. It does so because it is always a word spoken out in the love which is God, and spoken out by the power which is God. That love and power is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit achieves what the Father says in the Eternal and Incarnate Word. Jesus is raised to new life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is our Easter faith. Death is overcome. The prospect of final and total disintegration is banished. Sin, the presence in us of evil and self-destruction, is proved to be weaker than the power of God, for the ultimate sign of our separateness from God was the finality of death. So we rejoice in Christ as our Saviour. He is our Salvation. But there is still more to come.
This day celebrates not only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as the conqueror of sin and corruption, but it also lays out the destiny that God has in store for us. Raised to new life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
These words apply to you and to me! They apply to each one of us. This is the greatest miracle of Easter. The risen life of the Lord Jesus is shared with all people! This is what God wants to achieve. This is the real point of the project of the coming of the Eternal Word of God in the flesh of Jesus. Nothing less than the redemption of the whole of creation will do! You and I, and all who share in the grace of the Holy Spirit, are raised to new life.
This new life is within us. It is life lived in union with Jesus, in relationship with him. This is why our daily lives are transformed by our relationship with the Lord and with him as the only one who is raised from the dead! United with him we can live a new life that reflects what we see and know in him: a life of love, compassion and forgiveness; a life of faithfulness, of forbearance and unshakeable hope; a life of loving trust in the constant presence of a loving Father, even in those moments when we, like him, have cried out: ‘My God, why have you forsaken me!’
All of this is possible, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that Spirit is poured into our hearts, from the side of the wounded and risen Christ, who makes that gift reach us most of all in the sacraments of the Church.
Happy Easter to everyone! Be filled again by this Holy Spirit! Cherish and nourish this new life within you! Show your joy and happiness in the Lord to those with whom you live and associate. Share this Easter joy!
As St Francis of Assisi said: we are to preach the Gospel of joy always, and sometimes we might have to use words!
Alleluia. He is raised to new life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Alleluia!
