Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Today it’s obvious. It’s patently, forcefully, radiantly obvious. Obvious what the message is, what we are celebrating, what’s on the table today to taste and see. He is risen. He is truly risen. God has raised him, says St Peter. Christ my hope has risen, says Mary Magdalen, and we have been raised with him, says St Paul. As a 5th c preacher put it well: “There is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see hell restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Saviour’s passion raises men [and women] from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights.”
This is the first thing to say and to see and to feel and taste with the spiritual senses the Holy Spirit activates in us.
Crucified and buried on the Friday, raised in the flesh on the third day. Truly born of the virgin, said St Ignatius of Antioch,…truly nailed for us in the flesh under Pontius Pilate…he truly raised himself…that he might raise an ensign to the ages through his resurrection” (To the Smyrneans, 1, 2, 1).
This is our faith. This is the foundation of our hope. This is the joy that no-one can take from us. It’s the secret strength of our lives, so many lives. It carries us through death.
He is risen. This is what the Apostles went out into the world to say. It’s what the first Christians gave their life for. It’s what the Church in the person of the Holy Father will be proclaiming now urbi et orbi, to the city of Rome and the whole world – in the midst of so much madness.
The Resurrection, though, is for uploading, personally, freely. It’s for uploading daily, alone and with others, in matters small and great. “Rise heart; thy Lord is risen…Who takes thee by thy hand, that thou likewise may rise with him.” So, a fine old English poet.
Let’s go deeper then. We don’t just say, he is risen; we add, he is truly risen. Christos voskres. Voistinu voskres. We say, he rose from death, or from the dead, or from the underworld, or from the tomb. He didn’t just burst into light one fine day. He suffered death. He went down into the pit, say the Psalms. He descended into the “lower regions of the earth” according to St Paul (Eph 4:9). And a great stone was rolled and sealed against the place of his burial. And who saw him rise? No-one. The guards slept on. And he left behind an empty tomb and folded grave-clothes – just signs and hints. And when he did appear it was, says St Peter, “not to all the people” – not to Pilate or Caiaphas or the Sanhedrin, not as a light in the sky, but normally to ones or twos or threes or seven, or eleven. Intermittently, unexpectedly, briefly and not for more than 40 days. And taken for a gardener or a pilgrim or a stranger cooking breakfast on the shore. We must take all this for ourselves. It all has double meaning. The Resurrection begins in the dark. It presupposes pain and lack of hope. It rises in the depths, secretly, hiddenly. Its grace, to use a phrase of St Augustine, “works in the hidden parts of the mind”. It begins in the subterranean and makes its way up like a spring flower. It puts out unexpected shoots. It shows itself in wounds, or in sharing bread, or unexpected meetings or in folded linen cloths or in the calling of a name, “Mary!” It uploads itself in Peters and Johns and Mary’s and other unlikely characters. It hides itself still today under the appearances of bread and wine. It shows itself in small acts of love, in humble persistence in doing good, in rebuilding after destruction – as we pray for so many countries now; in a firm inexplicable hope, in unexpected creativity.
And here precisely is its power, His power. It is a resurrection from a passion and death, this passion and death, the unparalleled passion and death and descent into hell, of a man who is God. And so it’s unstoppable. It is universal, all-encompassing, magnificent. It is salvation. It is why we in a quiet inexplicable hope say, he is truly risen5 years ago I had a memorable experience in this very church on this very Easter day. After the Mass the African choir sang on and people were dancing and singing. Why not? Let the stones cry out! Then in the Blessed Sacrament aisle I noticed a woman kneeling and sobbing. She was Ukrainian. We know what was happening to her country. Resurrection and Passion, passion and resurrection. “In a manner known only to God, said Vatican II, the Holy Spirit offers everyone the possibility of being joined to the paschal mystery” – the divine mercy that saves us.
Christ is risen. He is truly risen.
