Easter & The Triumph of Hope and Love

Each year when we come to the Easter Vigil, it’s so incredibly powerful to start in darkness, to light the Easter Fire, to say the opening prayers of our commemoration of our Lord’s Passover from Death to Life, and to see the candles lit one by one and create a warm glow in the sanctuary. Hearing the readings that tell of the history of salvation and of God’s love for us, and then also reflecting again on the Gospel with the joy of Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James realizing that they are seeing Jesus. My favorite line is Luke 24:5 “Why do you seek the living among the dead.”

 

This liturgy does so much to lift my soul. I love being a priest, but being a priest, and a human, sure has it’s challenges. I’m around suffering quite a bit. Even though I myself have been blessed with fairly good health, I celebrate about 30 funerals a year. I’m often going to visit people often who are in the twilight of their lives battling a terminal illness. And beyond this, I have loved ones who battle some challenging health issues, and deal with people all the time who are going through tough life situations, from their own health battles, their own battles with sin, or tough situations with family members causing them pain. But in these visits, I’ve also seen such incredible faith from people who know Jesus is their anchor.

 

We all go through these challenging moments, and understandably we can as humans want to escape from it. We all need a vacation, or to “forget about life for a while” as Billy Joel sings in “Piano Man” through our hobbies or things we do for entertainment. But our lives do have meaning, and on the one hand there is the reality of Good Friday, but also the reality of Easter.

 

What this great feast reminds us of is that we need not be afraid. Yes, in the future there will be Good Friday moments for us all. And we cannot change the fact that we age each day, and that things change. As I shared with the school kids at a recent Grandparents Day Mass, part of me would love to just go back in time for a bit and have it be 1985 once again, where I can be a kid and re-live the great memories once again of going to the mall with my grandparents, or having the Easter ham over at their place while conversing with them and just having a great time together.

 

No, I can’t go back. But Easter reminds me I go forward not alone, but with Jesus and my loved ones, living and dead, still journeying with me.

 

With respect to the Lord, Holy Week reminds us of how far God goes for us. But with Jesus, we are a “new creation.” Saint Paul says it best in Romans 6:3-11, our Epistle on the Easter Vigil: as Jesus is raised from the dead, we too might live in the newness of life, and that “If we have died with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.” When the darkness of fear tries to creep into my life, and when I ponder mortality, or losing people close to me, there is and certainly will be grief and pain, but there is the hope and joy of heaven; Jesus saying to us all “it will be okay” for death may take our bodies on earth but it will never take our soul. As the two men in white say in the Gospel: “He is not here, but he has been raised.” This is true for us too.

 

And with this, Easter teaches us how to live. The women go and tell the others about the resurrection. This is hope. It takes time for them to figure out what the women are talking about. But they help bring the apostles out of the darkness into the light. When I look at the people who fill my life, I have people who have given me so much hope and peace in so many ways, from caring parents and grandparents who journeyed with me, to friends and brother priests who have helped me to grow, to even Kirby and now Emmett my dogs whom God sent to me to help me on the journey. Saint John Paul II would say we are an “Easter People,” but I think many in our world are like the apostles still locked in the room. We all know people who are beaten up by life, or have made bad choices and fear confronting those choices are looking at themselves and making changes, or are living in fear or even anger, or just lost their way. These are the lost sheep Jesus is seeking out; the people He wants to say “peace” to, and let us never forget how we can make that happen by reaching out to these people.

 

The transformation that happens at the Easter Vigil is what stands out as we go from darkness to light, symbolizing the transformation that happens in our souls. This is the joy and hope of Easter. May this holy day fill you with joy, and like the women who leave the tomb, may we seek out those in our live who need to hear and understand how much they are loved by the Lord.

 

Yes, Good Friday will come for you and me and those we love. And it is okay to be fearful of that, to experience sadness and to continue to grieve when we need to for the losses we’ve suffered. But let us never forget life is eternal, and the Risen Lord offers us His comfort, His mercy, and peace. When come to next week and Jesus appears to the apostles, He’ll enter the room despite the doors being locked, just like He got into Peter’s boat the first day He met Peter without Peter actually asking Him to get into the boat. Such is the love of our Lord, who is always seeking us out, and who will journey with us through our own Good Fridays to the joy of Easter Sunday.

 

May God bless you and your families this Easter, and may the joy of the Resurrected Christ fill you with comfort, joy and peace.

Alleluia, He is Risen!

God bless, ~Fr. Paul

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April 2025