St John’s Cathedral

Saturday 7 April 2007

When the women came back to the apostles and told them what the two men in brilliant clothes had said, the apostles thought that “this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense and they did not believe them.” As we read the story we feel perhaps that the apostles were very slow and blind compared to the women who were more ready to believe.

We are all here because we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but before we feel too superior to the apostles we need to ask ourselves a question. Do have we really understood how the resurrection of Jesus has changed everything in our lives, everything in creation? If we really understood how completely human expectations, human life and human history had been transformed, our minds would also find it hard to take in the truth.

The apostles, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, were downcast. They had seen the life of Jesus come to an agonising and cruel end. The women came with the story of men who had said ‘He is alive; he is not here; he has risen.’ It was too much for the mind to grasp.

And the truth is that, like the apostles, we have to struggle to understand the greatness of what happened on the first Easter Day.

Does our reaction resemble that of the apostles more than we might like to think? When things have not worked out as we had hoped, do we think it is a total disaster from which there can be no recovery? Do we sometimes get disheartened at the thought that our lives are slipping by and we are not achieving what we thought we would achieve? Do we find ourselves overwhelmed by our own burdens, our own guilt, our own limitations, our own fears?

We were baptised, St Paul tells us, into the death of Jesus. We went into the tomb with him and joined him in death. We were crucified with him, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.

In his resurrection, everything is made new: death is not the end; cruelty and injustice do not have the last word; love is stronger than hatred; life is stronger than death. That was the truth that was dawning on their minds on Easter morning. The agonised Body hanging on the Cross was not a defeat. The grave could not hold him. ‘He is not here; he is risen’.

Easter does not promise us freedom from suffering and death. God knows life can sometimes be hard and heartbreaking. But we share in the sufferings of Christ in order to share in the endless joy and glory of his resurrection.

If we really understood the triumph of Christ over the cruelty and agony, the betrayal and the mockery, we would understand that no situation is hopeless and no loss or pain can defeat the love of God. We remain as St Peter put it, ‘aliens and exiles’ in this world (I Pet 2:11), but “through faith we already share in the fullness of the risen life” ( BENEDICT XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 30 ). If we do not fully believe it then, like the apostles we have not understood the story that the women heard “He is alive; he has risen”

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick