The Resurrection of the Lord
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Watch this
homily! (begins at 38:40)
In
the year 1941, while German bombs were raining down on London, a gifted
spiritual writer, Caryll Houselander, published a book entitled, This War Is
the Passion. She saw in the agonies endured by the British people during the
Blitz the ongoing Passion of Christ – his suffering in the members of his
Body. And how right she was. And the suffering goes on, doesn’t it? The
Passion. At this moment, the world’s attention is directed toward too many
wars to count - most prominent among them the highly controversial war now
six-weeks-old that the US and Israel have unleashed on Iran, and the
agonizing war in Ukraine now dragging on into its sixth year. The same can
be said about each of these wars that Caryll Houselander said about the
London blitz. This war is the passion. Christ is still being crucified!
It seems a bit incongruous to be
celebrating Easter while those wars are daily taking their grim toll on
human lives and human livelihood, doesn’t it? But the truth is that we need
to celebrate Easter more than ever. As we seek hope in the face of great
desolation and light in the midst of darkness, we need to fix our eyes on
Jesus who has triumphed over death.
Standing next to me is the
paschal candle that was lit in total darkness last night out on the front
steps of the Cathedral and carried into the Cathedral where for a time it
was the only light in this vast space. Then, slowly, as we passed the light
one to another, the entire Cathedral began to glow with a holy light.
This Easter, I find myself
praying that the light of Christ that we celebrate at Easter - light
symbolized by this candle - might overcome the darkness of the suffering
people of Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and suffering people everywhere.
Easter is all about
light, isn’t it! Christ, the light, who from the darkness of the tomb burst
forth into the light of day. Christ, the light, who at a moment in time was
completely overcome by the powers of darkness, but only so that he could in
his very person turn darkness into light, doubt into faith, despair into
hope, hatred into love. In my reading the other day I came across this
arresting thought: “Our Scriptures do not give us words to explain away pain
and death; rather, they give us a person: Christ, the Son of God, who was
willing to go down into the trenches with us to suffer and die for us.
Rather than encouraging us from the sidelines, he became one of us and
suffered right alongside us.”
My friends, this is the Christ we
celebrate at Easter, the Christ who, thanks to his victory over death,
brings us life in abundance, overflowing life, life that is ours for the
taking in celebrations like this and in all the rich sacramental life of the
Church, life that will one day completely overflow in us when the risen and
glorious Christ raises our mortal bodies and makes them like his own in
glory.
Now, I know that, for some, the
Resurrection of Christ is not real. It is metaphor, not actual event – a
metaphor for the triumph of good over evil, of life over death; or it’s a
poetic way of saying that Jesus and his teachings are timeless and enduring,
or that his disciples, after he died and was buried, began to see and
experience him in a new way. But let me ask you, my friends, did you come
here this morning to celebrate a metaphor?! I don’t think so. You came here
because you believe - or are trying with all your might to believe - the
astonishingly good news proclaimed to those three brave women at the empty
tomb early on that first day of the week: “Why do you seek the living one
among the dead? He is not here. He has been raised!”
We need, my friends, on this
Easter day of 2026 - with wars raging around us and a world all but devoid
of leaders we can trust and truth we can verify, a world that seems to have
lost its way and is spinning out of control – we need to hear that amazing
news the way those women heard it. We do. We need to hear it and to be set
on fire by it, jolted by it as if by an electrical charge. The message those
women received – that Jesus was risen – is gospel - Good News - the greatest
news of all time, for in raising Jesus from the dead God was not only
intervening in human history but transforming human history. We call
the resurrection the New Creation, and so we should. God, who at the very
dawn of creation, brought light from darkness and sparked the first
stirrings of life, did something similar by raising the crucified body of
Christ from the dead, transfiguring it with glory.
My friends, the Resurrection is
mystery and it is miracle, but it is not metaphor. And it is also hope, hope
grounded in an event that took place some two-thousand years ago, hope that
lives in the now, hope for tomorrow even when tomorrow may seem anything but
hopeful.
In closing, I want to take you to
Pope Francis, who died last Easter and who left behind a beautiful
autobiography to which he gave a one-word title: Hope. That says it all. In
one place, he lets the familiar story of the marriage feast of Cana when
Jesus turned water into wine far superior to the wine that ran out, carry
the message of hope. Here are his words:
“If…you are overcome by fears and worries, think of that episode in the
Gospel of John, at the marriage feast of Cana, and say to yourselves: the
best wine has yet to be served…. Be sure of it. The deepest, happiest
reality for us, for those we love, has yet to come. Even if some statistic
tells you the opposite, even if tiredness weakens your powers, never lose
this hope that cannot be beaten. Pray with these words and if you are unable
to pray, murmur them to yourself, do it even if your faith is weak, murmur
it until you believe it, murmur it also to those in despair, to those with
little hope. The best wine has yet to be served!”
My friends in Christ, it’s
Easter, the feast of life, the feast of joy, the feast of hope. The table is
set, all is ready, and we are invited. And the best wine has yet to be
served. Happy Easter!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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