EASTER SUNDAY – A: 24th April, 2011

EASTER SUNDAY – A: 24th April, 2011

Acts 10:34. 37-43; Ps. 117; Col. 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

My dear Brothers and Sisters,

Why is dawn so beautiful? Because it comes after a dark night. Why is reunion so joyful? Because it comes after a painful separation. Why is Easter so glorious? Because it comes after a dreadful death. Today, we celebrate the greatest feast in the Church’s calendar: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the very foundation of our Christian faith, for if Christ had not risen, we would be back in our sins, unredeemed and still shackled by the slavery of sin. Mother Church cannot contain her joy. She needs a whole octave “to recover” from the glorious resurrection of Jesus Her Lord as She heaps Alleluia upon Alleluia to express her jubilation!

Easter is both a holiday and a holy day. We need a holiday when we break away from normal routine to rest, relax and recuperate. It is wonderful to see so many cars and cyclists on the road. Our caravan sites are full and our beautiful countryside, which is a bit of paradise on this side of eternity, is busy. A healthy mind in a healthy body. But Easter is also a holy day for we are not only mind and body but also soul. We are to use a rather sophisticated term “a pneumatopsychosomatic composite.” Some five hundred persons are spending the Easter holiday and holy day this year as guests at the Benedictine monastery at Ampleforth. They want a break from normal routine, from the hustle and bustle of that terrible tsunami that daily inundates their lives and sweeps everything in its wake away. They want time to be silent and still, to quieten themselves not only from the external noise that deafens them but also the internal turmoil that disturbs and destroys them. They feel the need to ponder and pray and to join the monastic community in the slow and solemn celebration of the liturgy. In doing so they are giving a holy day to their soul for a mind and a body without a soul is a dead corpse. Is it not?

You and I, my dear Brothers and Sisters, are at the fulcrum of a real tug of war, at the meeting point of two opposing gravitational pulls: On the one hand, there is the gravitational pull of the flesh and all that is sinful and evil. On the other hand, there is the gravitational pull of grace and all that is good and godly. Is not this what St. Paul adverts to when he admonishes us in today’s second reading: “Since you have been brought back true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is… Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth…”(Col.3:1). The tragedy of our time is that we try to be our own saviours. We think mistakenly, of course, that we have reached such a degree of self-sufficiency and autonomy, that we can resist the gravitational pull of evil with our own resources and reserves. The more we strive to do this, the more we struggle and the more we struggle on our own, the more we sink! It is like falling into quick sands: the more you struggle on your own, your very struggle and the gravity of your body and flesh make you sink further. You need an external gravitational force to pull you out and be saved. That external gravitational force is God’s grace. That is the Easter grace of the Resurrection that Jesus offers us, the gravitational grace that will lift us up from the quick sands of the body and flesh. Easter raises us for it reminds us that we need to rise and that we can do so only with God’s grace. Easter must be a holiday for sure; but even more surely, we must make it a holy day!

[St. Tudwal Church, Barmouth – Msgr. Alex Rebello (650 Words)]