Easter Sunday 12 th April 2009

What a week has just occurred. We call it Holy Week. It is the most amazing time for all people of good will. This is the greatest love story the world has ever known. The reason for saying this, you ask? God is love and it is His story. He has invited us to be part of it.

At the dawn of creation God abolished darkness with light and brought order out of chaos. It all started so positively and so well. Then things went wrong and sin entered into the story. God could have given up and said that we had our chance and didn’t take it. That wasn’t God’s way of dealing with the fall of our first parents (and ours); He couldn’t just walk away.

A long preparation began for the coming of the Messiah who would build the bridge back to God. The scriptures all dreamed of the day when this wonderful event would come about. No one was quite sure how this would work out in detail. God surprised everyone when He arrived, almost slipped in, among us in a stable at Bethlehem.

Bit by bit Jesus began the long haul of leading us back to the Father and did all possible to tell us that He had come on earth out of sheer love. For that He was ridiculed and mocked and eventually crucified. It looked like one of the most abysmal failures this world had ever seen.

Believing it was all over, Mary Magdalene made a sad visit to the place where Jesus had been entombed. She wanted to remember Him. There was no question of ever meeting Him again. She arrives and is amazed to see that the boulder sealing the tomb is rolled back. The body of her beloved Jesus is not there. Could those who had crucified Him stolen the body as a final insult? All Mary can see is the missing body of her Lord.

Peter looks into the tomb and he also sees the horrible emptiness of the tomb. He had wept salt tears when he realised that the denials of Jesus could never be put right now because Jesus was not only dead but the body was missing. Only the ‘beloved disciple’ entered the tomb and he saw and believed. It was only now that it dawned on them that the Lord had so often told them that he must rise from the dead.

Mary meets Jesus but thinks He is the gardener. It is only when she hears her name, ‘Mary’, on the lips of Jesus that her heart miss a beat and the impossible has happened, ‘He is risen’! She must be beside herself with delight. Think of how relieved Peter must have been to know that he would have another chance and can make amends for his denials. He will profess his repentance by giving his own life for the Lord whom he once denied. He reaches Rome and starts a line of succession as Vicar of Christ reaching unbroken to Benedict XVI.

It’s some story! But that is not all – it is our story. No matter how we have acted towards Jesus in the past, today is our new opportunity to listen closely until we hear Jesus speak our name in total and unconditional love. He carries the marks of the Passion as He rises from the tomb. This is the price of love. It will cost us also to go on looking out for the Crucified Christ living in the crucified people of today. The call to us is to help these to rise this Easter.

Aidan Troy, C.P. (Aodhán Ó Troighthigh, C.P.)