Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday Homilies 2007

Abbot Paul Stonham

The Women at the Tomb, Fra Angelico

EASTER VIGIL

"When the women returned from the tomb, they told all this to the Eleven and to the others, but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe." "Pure nonsense" - now keep that in mind. "Pure nonsense", that's what we are here to celebrate tonight, "pure nonsense". And thank God it's the Gospel that says so. It's plain to see that, from the beginning, the apostles and the other disciples found the news of the empty tomb and the message of the angels to the women, that the Lord Jesus had risen from the dead, simply impossible to believe, unbelievable, in fact "pure nonsense".

So it won't have come as a surprise to anyone to read in the papers and hear on the radio this week all sorts of disparaging remarks about Jesus, the Resurrection, the Gospel, the Christian faith and, above all, the long-serving bete noir of the media pundits, the Catholic Church. But we have heard it all before, and, quite frankly, I couldn't care less. Why get upset? I might be some kind of religious freak, but the more I hear dreadful things said about Jesus, the more I love him and want to be counted among his disciples. The more I hear his Church, my Church, criticised and insulted, the more I love her and the more I try to be faithful to her teaching and way of life. Persecution, whatever form it takes, certainly separates the men from the boys, and that includes women too!

But let's return to the Gospel and focus our attention of Jesus. That, after all, is all that matters. Everything else will take care of itself. Human beings are not particularly good at taking advice or heeding warnings. We learn mostly by making mistakes and looking back, reflecting on personal experience. I prefer reading and learning about something only after I have seen it for myself and so can piece the jigsaw together. The same happened with the apostles and the women.

"Remember what he told you; that the Son of Man had to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified, and rise again on the third day." Listening to the women talk about the empty tomb and the message of the angels did not convince the apostles. They had to see and hear for themselves. These people weren't dumb - they asked intelligent questions and mulled things over seriously. Think of Thomas - "Unless I see the holes in his hands and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe."

But early in the morning, on the first day of the week, something twigged in Peter's mind. Hadn't he heard Jesus talk about this very moment many times before his Passion? He went running to the tomb and, having seen it empty, went back home, amazed at what had happened. His doubts began to evaporate in the first light of dawn. He was beginning to believe. Only gradually, as Jesus appeared first to one, then to another, then finally to all of them, did the disciples come to believe that he had risen from the dead. Seeing is believing, yet "blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."

Tonight we give thanks to God for the gift of faith. It might still be "pure nonsense" for many, but for us, for the Church, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the source of our joy and the key that opens the door to the meaning of life and the meaning of death, the meaning of suffering and God's ultimate purpose in creating all that exists.

I'll leave the final word to St Paul, writing to the Romans. "When we were baptised we went into the tomb with Christ Jesus, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glory, we too might live a new life. When he died, he died to sin once for all, so his life in now life with God. So too you must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus."

On behalf of the entire Community I wish you all a very happy Easter. Christ is risen; he is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia.

EASTER SUNDAY

May I begin by wishing you all, on behalf of the monastic community, a very happy and holy Easter? I pray that the Risen Christ will bestow many graces on your lives and the lives of your families and loved ones.

What is the essential message of Easter? Simply this, that God exists and that God loves us. In the words of Edmund Spencer's Easter poem, "So let us love, dear love, like as we ought, Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught."

In the life of Christ we see from the very beginning, from his Incarnation in the Virgin's womb, that God's purpose in becoming man was to forgive us our sins, to take our burden of sin upon himself, to reconcile us with himself and with our fellow creatures, to show us his love and mercy. That is the meaning of the holy Name, Jesus.

That was the message of Christmas and the Epiphany, the message of God's merciful love, his loving kindness: that the Christ Child was destined to suffer and die to atone for our sins, the truth revealed in the gifts of the Wise Men and in the prophecy of Simeon and Anna.

That was the message of his ministry, his teaching and miracles, and in calling to himself a large gathering of disciples, from among whom he chose twelve to be apostles. Already in Jesus' lifetime it was a message that went beyond the narrow confines of Israel and reached out to the Gentiles. And it went beyond the even narrower confines of the self-righteous, of institutionalised religion, of the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, and reached out to prostitutes and tax collectors, to lepers and the possessed, indeed to all the outcasts of society, making no distinction between rich and poor, male and female.

And now in his Death and Resurrection, it was a message that went beyond the confines of our earthly life and reached out to the dead, to Adam and Eve and all their descendents. St Paul would one day speak of "the whole of creation groaning in one great act of giving birth". Indeed, in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ the whole of creation is made new. A new heaven and a new earth spring to life in the silent darkness of an empty tomb. The message would ultimately reach its fulfilment in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the life-giving grace of God's love.

Just before the Alleluia we sang that haunting Easter Sequence "Victimae paschali laudes". Somewhere in the middle come these two extraordinary lines: "Mors et vita duello, conflixere mirando. Dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus." (Death and life are confronted in a duel strange and wonderful. The Lord of life is dead yet reigns alive.) In Christ Jesus not only do God and man meet as two natures in one Person, but heaven and earth have irrevocably come together and intertwined. They can no longer be separated, nor can life and death, light and darkness, good and evil, faith and doubt, hope and despair, love and hatred, forgiveness and sin. How and why? Because in rising victoriously from the grave, Christ himself proclaims that God exists, that God is love, that God is life, that God will be all in all.

This morning we have returned to the empty tomb with Mary Magdalene, and with Peter and the beloved disciple. With them we see and we believe. No matter how much or how often we have failed to understand the teaching of scripture, no matter how much or how often we have sinned or gone astray, the message of Easter, in the words of St Paul to the Colossians, rings out loud and clear. "You have been brought back to true life with Christ, and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. But when Christ is revealed, and he is your life, you too will be revealed in all your glory with God."

May that life, the life of the Risen Lord, fill you today and every day with radiance and joy, with sincerity and truth, as, through the love of God made manifest in Christ Jesus, your glory is revealed. "So let us love, dear love, like as we ought, Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught."