Easter Message

Holy Week is the most intense time in the Christian calendar. It takes us from Palm Sunday to Good Friday and Easter Day, the most significant festival for Christians everywhere. Christianity is a Resurrection faith. The experience of God's triumph over evil and even death itself stands at the centre of the Easter celebration. Students ask why the Church celebrates the Cross, an instrument of torture and the most miserable punishment in the Roman Empire. For Christians, the Cross of Calvary is not an end in itself. In fact, it is not an end at all, but a beginning, the gateway to newness of life, to light in the darkness and to the greatest promise of all. The logic is simple. There can be no resurrection without a death. The empty tomb of Easter morning is the greatest symbol of God's love for humankind and of the power of God over the worst we can do to each other, and to ourselves. But to get there, we have to embrace the journey to the tomb, and the Passion of Jesus the Christ. It is a painful and agonising story, one of loneliness, disappointment, betrayal, the most abject suffering in the shadow of desertion by one's friends and even one's God. To see the light of Resurrection, Jesus had to work through the agony of the week that took him to the Cross. Of course, we tend to prefer the 'upside' of the whole Easter narrative. Always look on the bright side! It is natural to want to brush aside the painful path that will take us there. But if we seek to share with Christ the new life of Easter Day, we must also share the steep and rugged pathway that leads to the bright, warm glow of that early-morning sunrise. And we know it is never easy. The world is full of dark places and bleak experiences. We, like Jesus, are no strangers to them. We can duck and weave, attempt to circumvent the difficult places of the challenges in our personal lives, of our families, our communities, our national life and the world beyond. The way though brings its own difficulty but we can be confident that God knows and understands our experience. In Jesus, it is his lived experience. We are called to be the Body of Christ; Jesus has no hands but our hands, no voice but our voice. We cannot live as the Body of Christ unless we have the mind of Christ, know the love of Christ and share the difficult places through which Christ's own body passed on its way to the dazzling brightness of Easter morning. That means embracing our own frailty and brokenness; it demands, too, that we take on the suffering we see in those we encounter. That is part of our sacrifice, the living sacrifice we are called to be. We cannot pass by on the other side. Let us walk this week to the foot of the Cross and there leave the broken things of our own lives and of the world. There, we will find that sacred place where we can give to God all that impedes our path to wholeness. We can then go on unburdened and, together with Jesus, face the new dawn of Easter, confident in the promise it holds for us. We are not asked to make the same sacrifice, only to use well and to the purposes of God's creation the new life we receive. As we tread the pathway of this week, let us take care to examine the cracks, the fractures and wounds that hamper our growth. Then, only then, can we leave them with God and celebrate a happy and holy Easter.

 

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