Our altar Easter 2020
EASTER DAY - A - 20 MATTHEW 28. 1-10
This will be the first Easter Sunday I have not been able to celebrate as a priest in my 40 years of ordained ministry. These are extraordinary times. A pandemic has enveloped the world we live in. Many are sick and some have died.
We are told the worst is yet to come. People are afraid. There is no normalcy nor any guarantee that life will ever be the same again. Not only can I not celebrate the Easter Mass with you on this day, but also I cannot stand before you in person and deliver this homily.
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As we read and or hear the story of the first Easter according to St. Matthew, Paul’s words are very apt for us today as we face the current threat to our earthly life and our sense of security. Our faith is being tested.
Need less to say, all four gospels have an Easter account. Mark and Luke, for example, have the women coming to the tomb on that first Easter morning with spices in their hands in order to complete the burial of their beloved Jesus. They have accepted the fact that he has died.
Matthew, whose account we hear today, simply has the women coming to the tomb empty handed. They have no hope of seeing him. Perhaps they just wanted to be there and to mourn in silence and peace. If it was peace and quiet the women were seeking that was not what they got.
Matthew’s graveside scene is quiet dramatic. It begins with an earthquake, and a descending angel in resplendent light who rolls away the stone that had blocked the tomb and sits upon it. The guards who had been assigned to make sure no one came to steal the body of Jesus, especially the disciples, so that they could go and proclaim that he had risen, as he said, were frozen with fear at the sight of the angel. The women stood there afraid to move or to say anything. What could all of this possibly mean?
For all those who might think and say that God was silent on Good Friday that is certainly not the case here. God has the last word and it comes from the mouth of His angelic messenger. “Be not afraid,” the angel tells the women. “I know why you are here, but he whom you seek is not. He is risen as he said.”
Then the angel invites the women to see for themselves that the tomb is empty. Once they have seen with their own eyes that the body of Jesus is not there, the angel sends them on a mission. “Go quickly and tell the disciples that he is risen from the dead, and that he is going ahead to
And go they do running away from the tomb, the guards and the angel with mixed emotions of fear and joy and as they do so, they run headlong into the risen Lord. He greets them. “Rejoice!” They recognize Jesus and fall at his feet worshipping him. They hold on to him with dear life not wanting to let go.
Jesus repeats the angel’s message. “Be not afraid. Go and tell…” The angel’s message is why we are gathered together today, whether it be in church as it should be singing hymns and giving thanks for Christ’ resurrection, flowering the cross and greeting one another with He is Risen, or together as best we can through the means of electronic media. The Easter message remains the same “He is not here; He is risen as He said. Go and tell…”
Many of us receive the Easter message on this day, as did the women with mixed emotion with both fear and great joy. Fear of our present situation and the uncertainty that it carries for our future and yet at the same time rejoicing in Christ’ resurrection. If we could, we would run away from the one and into the arms of the other.
Physically we cannot. Spiritually we can. We can embrace once again the joy of Easter and the Hope of new life in Him who died and rose again, setting aside our fear and in place of that, as St. Paul says, “seeking the things that are above and setting our minds on the things that are above…“
It is Christ’ death that has brought new life to the world. We are not to shy away from the fact of his death but to glory in his cross, which is the weapon Christ used to destroy death and the trophy of his victory.
That is at the heart of the Easter message and the message you and I, by virtue of our baptisms, are called to spread. There has never been a greater time to do so in the modern era than this Easter Day.
That first Easter was a day the women never forgot. It wasn’t the angel’s message “he is risen, he is not here,” that made it memorable. It wasn’t even the empty tomb. They ran away from the terror of that scene with mixed emotions.
Their faith was not strengthened by either, but by their personal encounter with the risen Lord. Their seeing Jesus was a commissioning of new work, a new life, a new way of life. That event changed the world forever.
No doubt, this Easter will be one we will never forget. As the disciples found themselves shut in on that first Easter out of fear, we too find ourselves shut in and unable to assemble and celebrate our Lord’s resurrection as the Body of Christ as we should.
But as the risen Lord passed through the solid rock that attempted to shut in his body in a darkened tomb, so he also passed through the closed doors that hid the disciples on that first Easter morning. He did so to bring them the good news of his victory over sin and death, to take away their fear, and to give them hope. And so He comes to each of us as we open our hearts to worship and receive him with great joy on this Day of Resurrection.
As St. Paul writes in another place, “it is Christ Jesus, who died, yes who raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us…For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come…will be able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
On this Easter Day, God has the last word as the angel said to the women who came to mourn, so God says to us who seek to worship Him in spirit, “Be not afraid. I know why you are here, He is not. He is risen as he said. Go and tell.” Alleluia! Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed. Alleluia! AMEN+
Our flowered Easter Cross 2020:
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