Easter Sunday - Why Easter Matters

Easter is significant because it reveals that love is more powerful than death. Death is what frightens us most. It hems us in and it sets the ultimate limit to everything. If death has the final word, then all the evil in the world wins and there's no hope because there's nothing after death. That's the end.

But Easter is the declaration that God's love, the love that made the world and sustains it, is more powerful than death. That's a moment of liberation. It means death no longer enslaves us. The first Christians saw that the bursting forth of Christ from the tomb is the shattering of death's bonds.

Even more, the Resurrection is God's great salvation of the world he has made. The God of the Bible doesn't despise matter--just the opposite. God makes everything good. And through the Resurrection, God ratifies, sums up, and valorizes his material creation. Therefore, Jesus' resurrection from the dead is not just about him. It's about all those who will participate in his Mystical Body, the Church, and it's about all of matter. In raising Jesus bodily from the dead, the Father is raising all of matter to new life.

We see this as the Bible comes to its climax in the Book of Revelation. There we discover a New Heaven and a New Earth. Heaven is not just some purely spiritual space that our souls go to after we die. It's a new creation, God ratifying and elevating his whole work. That's the climax of the biblical revelation.

The God who made the world good has now, out of a passion to set it right, saved that world by raising it up to a higher pitch.

The Christian Church gives witness to that great fact. And that's what Easter is about.

Fr Robert Barron

The Lord is risen.

Tell us, Mary: say what thou didst see upon the way. 

The tomb the Living did enclose; 

I saw Christ's glory as he rose! 

The angels there attesting; 

shroud with grave-clothes resting. 

Christ, my hope, has risen: he goes before you into Galilee. 

That Christ is truly risen from the dead we know. 

Victorious king, thy mercy show!

A reflection for today

It's a bit of a gap day after the fast moving events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Today we await for the celebration of the Resurrection.

You may be helped, as I was, by this reflection from the blog of a Catholic student.

Blessing Easter Food

It was good to welcome members of our Polish community, and other communities from Eastern Europe this morning and to bless the food for their first Easter meal.

Newsletter for Easter Day of the Lord's Resurrection

Click here to read this weekend's newsletter.

The Holy Week Ceremonies so far have gone beautifully. Thank you to all who have worked so hard. The greatest Liturgy of the year is this evening as it gets dark. I look forward to seeing you all at the Easter Vigil Mass at 8.30pm.

This is the night
when Christ broke the prison-bars of death
and rose victorious from the underworld.

Happy Easter to you all.

Question for Good Friday - is our faith Polyannish?

It’s somewhat Pollyannish to say, “Christianity is just about the Resurrection, and not the Cross.” To say that is to deny the gritty evil in the world. But once you get past childhood and start reading serious books and watching more sophisticated films, you find people desperately wrestling with evil. That’s what any serious novel, film, or play is about. Just look at any of Shakespeare’s plays–there’s always someone engaging profound evil. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to say, “Let’s not focus on the Cross; it’s too sad, too dark, too evil.”

Pressing the issue theologically, what is the Cross? It’s God journey into God-forsakenness. God enters into human dysfunction in all of its forms. In the Passion narratives you have cruelty, violence, hatred, injustice, stupidity–all of human dysfunction is on display. And Jesus enters into that, thereby redeeming it.

The Church fathers liked to say, “What has not been assumed has not been saved.” Jesus assumes the human condition in all of its dysfunction, going all the way down, so to say. And it’s only for that reason he can bring us all the way up.

The Resurrection without the Cross is superficial, just as the Cross without the Resurrection is despair. It’s the play between the two that matters.

Chrism Mass

Yesterday was Bishop Malcolm's last Chrism Mass with us before he goes to Liverpool as Archbishop. His homily is well worth reading.


I was particularly moved by the end of the homily:


When I leave the Diocese at the end of this month, I will take with me all those spiritual gifts that have helped me be a Bishop; I take the sorrow and regret of the mistakes I have made, and hopefully the forgiveness of those I have hurt; and I take many happy memories of this beautiful Diocese.
But I leave you something special too: I leave you the Holy Chrism, the Oil of the Sick and the Oil of Catechumens, so that your ministry can continue – that rich golden oil blessed and consecrated will enable you to endow our young people with the Holy Spirit at Confirmation, bring comfort and healing to the sick in the Anointing of the Sick, and prepare and strengthen next year’s catechumens to be baptised and brought into the full communion of the Catholic Church, taking their place at the table of the Lord’s Supper, receiving him in Holy Communion.
I will remember you, thank God for you and pray for you and your families every day. In return, please pray that my separation from you will eased by God’s grace, your love and the welcome which I will receive in Liverpool, and that I will be given the strength to rise to the challenges presented by this new mission given me by our Lord. Amen.