From the Pastor’s Desk:

We are celebrating the key, central event of our Catholic, Christian faith. Jesus Christ had broken the bonds of death.  Jesus had come back from the dead.  As the Easter Candle was blessed and lit, then carried into our darkened church at the beginning of the Easter Vigil we proclaimed Christ risen from the dead.  We cannot prove the Resurrection to someone who is not open to such a faith experience.  None of the Gospels describes how the Resurrection took place.  The Gospels do describe the Crucifixion, for death is an event that every human being will experience as part of their human life.

The Resurrection is something that only God has done and therefore is not a part of our human experience.  It did truly happen, but it is a trans-historical event—a divine intervention into human history.  Thus an event that historians cannot prove or disprove.  God’s actions are not the subject of historical proof.

According to the Gospels, Jesus’ family and friends finally recognized Him.  They knew his voice, they touched Him, they shared meals with him.  He was not a ghost.  The Gospels very definitely emphasized the physical characteristics of His appearance.  However, the Gospels also made it clear that there was something different about the risen Christ.  He was no longer subject to the limitations that mortality places upon us.  Once risen, Jesus was present to his friends without them at first knowing Him.  He could enter rooms where the doors were shut.  He could appear suddenly and just as suddenly disappear, as he did with the two disciples when He broke bread at Emmaus.

Easter began the season of celebration and hope.  In the eyes of the world, Good Friday ended in a catastrophic event.  But in the darkness of the night of Holy Saturday, it became quite clear that the devil had lost the fight—death no longer had power over us.  Our faith and the hope that springs from it declares that, through the power of God, life will win in the end.  Despite what this world throws against the followers of Christ, there is the hope of being with our loved ones once more, sharing paradise with them and with our loving God forever.

Those four words spoken at the grave by the angel, “He has been raised,” are words that sent a shock through the entire universe.  The impossible had happened—life from the grave.  Our human story was no longer birth, life, and death.  It had become birth, life, death, and eternal life.  That first Easter was not just a happy ending to Jesus’ story; it was a radical new beginning for the human race.  With the Easter Vigil, we began the great celebration of the Easter Season.  The purple of Lent and the red of the Passion have been put away, and we celebrate Jesus breaking the bonds of death for us all.         CHRIST HAS RISEN!