Easter Homilies

Homiles by Abbot Paul Stonham for the Paschal Vigil and Easter Sunday Morning

Duccio: Three Mary's at the Tomb of Jesus (detail form the Maestà)

Easter Sunday 2006

"Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of the scriptures that he must rise from the dead." That is how the Gospel according to John describes the disciples that first Easter Day. How I feel for them. They constantly "failed to understand". They failed to understand not only the scriptures but practically everything Jesus said and did. Even when they saw the empty tomb and Jesus himself, though the beloved disciple "saw and believed", it wasn't easy for them to believe in the Resurrection.

You remember Thomas' reaction to his fellow disciples when they told him that they had seen the Lord and that he had breathed on them saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit." "Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe." I refuse to belief. You can't get more definite than that! The following Sunday Jesus returned and said to Thomas, "Doubt no longer but believe. You believe because you can see. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe." We are those who have not seen and yet believe. But do we believe? I feel for the disciples because they were just like you and me. They failed to understand. "I refuse to believe."

The fact of the matter is that although the Resurrection is the touchstone of the Christian faith and without the Resurrection there would be no Gospel, no Church, no sacraments, no point in praying, no Christian faith, nevertheless it's not easy to accept the fact that Jesus, who suffered, died and was buried, rose from the dead on the third day. And the story of the empty tomb doesn't make things easier. How many heresies have sprung up from doubt in the Resurrection? - Islam for one, and think of the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons.

St Paul, who met the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, wrote to the Corinthians, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep." The Corinthians, like all of us, had difficulties in believing in the resurrection of the flesh. Belief in the Resurrection is not some vague notion about our spirits living on while our earthly bodies disappear for ever. Christians believe in the resurrection of the flesh. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day."

When Jesus rose from the dead it was in the flesh. Didn't he say to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Doubt no longer but believe."? On the road to Emmaus Jesus said to the two disciples trying to make sense of his death and resurrection, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe that the Christ should suffer these things and so enter into his glory." When he entered the house and sat at table with them, they recognised him "in the breaking of bread". Luke tells us that later that evening Jesus appeared to all the disciples together. "They were startled and terrified," he writes, "and thought that they were seeing a ghost... 'Why are you frightened,' Jesus said, 'and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.'" Yet in their joy at seeing the Risen Lord, Luke tells us that they were "disbelieving and still wondering".

No, it's not easy to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, even when you see it for yourself, and it's even more difficult to believe in our own future resurrection, the resurrection of the body, of our flesh, on the last day. There's no easy solution to this problem. If the disciples themselves did not understand and refused to believe, what hope is there for us? I suppose at best we oscillate between the faith of the beloved disciple, "He saw and he believed", and the doubt of Thomas, "I refuse to believe". Doubting, we believe.

Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" Today we ask the question, "What is faith?" The Letter to the Hebrews gives us the clearest answer: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." Faith, then, is not certainty but hope. Like Abraham and Moses, like Our Lady at the message of the Angel, like Martha and Mary at the death of Lazarus and like the ten lepers in the Gospel story, we have to step out in faith, trusting in God, trusting in Jesus, trusting in his word. Faith is a gift, God's gift. Essentially it is not something that is mine, either to keep or to lose. It is God's gift to those who are poor in spirit and pure in heart, his gift to those who are truly humble and whose hearts are open to him.

Today the Church is under attack. As the Holy Father said on Good Friday, echoing the words of Jesus, this is very much the hour of darkness. And yet has there ever been a time when the Church of Christ was not under attack? Remember what Jesus said to Saul on the road to Damascus. "I am Jesus and you are persecuting me." Has there ever been a time when the Church, when Jesus himself, was not being persecuted? Just think of the martyrs. And yet when faith is belittled, ridiculed, mocked, that is when it grows stronger and matures and flourishes. With Martha and Mary we hear Jesus say, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" With the disciples we reply, "Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief."

I feel for the disciples, for their lack of understanding, their lack of faith. I am a disciple too and am no different to them. But like them I also hear the voice of Jesus, my Risen Lord, as he explains the scriptures to me and I recognise him in the breaking of bread. In the Magisterium of the Church I hear him teach the truth about God, the truth about creation, the truth about me. And in the silence of my heart I hear him say, "Do not be afraid. It is I." And I see him in those I love, in those I find difficult to love and in those I hate. I see him in every living creature, in the changing seasons. I see him in the sick and in those who suffer, in the hungry, the naked, the outcast and the poor. I see him in those who have died and lie in their graves waiting for that great and glorious Easter of the Last Day. Like the disciples coming down from the Mountain of the Transfiguration, I see "only Jesus".

We are all here this morning because, deep down, we all share the same faith, a faith which we quite openly confess to be tinged with doubt. We share a deep, personal conviction, a gut-feeling, that on that Easter morning two thousand years' ago, something quite extraordinary happened, something not easy to explain and even harder to believe.

In the Victimae Paschali we sing the words, "Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus" - The Lord of life being dead lives and reigns." Where there is death, there is life, where there is sorrow, joy, where there is darkness, light, where there is hatred, love. And in our hearts, where there is doubt, there is faith. On behalf of the Monastic Community I wish you all a joyful and a holy Easter. God bless you. Alleluia, alleluia.

Holy Saturday Vigil 2006

"Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" That is what the women bringing spices with which to anoint the body of Jesus were saying to each other as they made their way to the tomb in the garden very early in the morning on the first day of the week. "Who will roll away the stone for us?"

All over the world, and not only on the first day of the week, early in the morning you can see droves of people, young and old, pouring out of night clubs and discos. Only this week we read in the papers that Prince Harry, to celebrate his commissioning at Sandhurst, enjoyed himself at an all night ball in the company of other officers and his girlfriend. We all know people who watch television all night and others who think nothing of going to the launderette or to the supermarket in the early hours of the morning. Even in sleepy old Hereford these places are open twenty four hours a day.

In the eastern Churches a good deal of the Liturgy takes place at night and in the early morning, and not only in Holy Week, but we modern Roman Catholics have given up almost completely on keeping vigil. The liturgical reforms of Pius XII and the restoration of the Easter Vigil have failed to capture the imagination and devotion of the majority, in spite of the great efforts made to popularise it. I bet more Catholics know about the so-called Gospel of Judas than about the Exultet. Most parishes go for the earliest and shortest option. How many parishes have more than one reading from the Old Testament, for example? And I can never forget one good priest telling me that for him the Paschal Fire should be limited to the striking of a match in the sacristy. Long live Br Peter and the Belmont Bonfire! I wonder if anyone called out the fire brigade this evening.

Joking apart, it is terribly sad that we have lost the most ancient of Christian customs, that of keeping vigil, watching and waiting in prayer for Christ to be born, to rise from the dead or to come again. I suppose that in Britain it was due, in part, to the Reformation and the prohibition of traditional Catholic practices. The Easter Vigil, the mother of all vigils, is an invitation to return to the authentic Christian tradition, both in community and in private, of spending the night in prayer, just as we read in the Gospel that Jesus did, and not only after the Last Supper but throughout his earthly life, and he encouraged his disciples to do the same. In fact, his Divine Sonship was revealed above all in the intimacy of his prayer life in the peace and solitude of the night. In the deathly silence of the tomb, Jesus kept vigil as he waited for the Father's will to be fulfilled in the glory of the Resurrection.

"Who will roll away the stone for us?" In the Paschal Mystery Christ teaches us to place our lives with confidence in God's hands. "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." The good women, who had done so much for Jesus during his lifetime and who now came to the tomb to anoint him, had to learn life's great lesson, that ultimately what matters is not so much what we do for God, but what God does for us. Like poor Martha we anxiously "fret and worry about so many things, but only one is necessary, and Mary has chosen the better part". She simply sat at the feet of Jesus and listened. She kept vigil in her Lord's presence.

When the three women reached the tomb they found that the stone, which was very big, - I wonder if that symbolises all our burdens? - had already been rolled away. Perhaps it is all too easy. Being sinful and, therefore, complicated and complex beings, we would want it to be different: difficult, hard, impossible. But salvation is a gift, God's gift to us in Jesus. We can't work for it, we can't earn it, we can't steal it, and we certainly don't deserve it. All we can do is to accept it, and that's the hardest thing of all: to accept life as a gift, to accept forgiveness and redemption as God's gift. Simply to keep vigil, to wait in patience and silence, in humility and obedience - perhaps that's the meaning of the vow of stability - to wait for the Lord to act, to wait on God's graciousness and love, to wait for his will to be done.

That is what Jesus did as he lay in the grave and that is what we must do if we really want to see the Risen Lord and experience the new life of grace, the new life of Easter. On behalf of the monastic Community I wish you all a very happy and peaceful Easter. Alleluia, alleluia.