Message of Abbot Paul - Easter Sunday
Message from Fr Paul for Sunday, 17th April 2022
This year we have been blessed with glorious weather that reflects the joy, light and warmth of Easter and the glory of the Resurrection of Jesus, our Risen Lord. I share with you the short homily I preached at the Easter Vigil. Today in Ukraine, as in all countries that keep the Byzantine Rite, it is Palm Sunday. The Holy Week they are commencing looks as though it will be grim indeed. Our Ukrainian brothers and sisters will truly be walking with Jesus in the valley of the shadow of death and entering deeply into the suffering of his Passion and Death. But the glory of the Resurrection most surely awaits those who die in Christ. We keep them in our prayers together with all those who are suffering, for whatever reason, throughout the world.
---
“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” is what we’re celebrating tonight. 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, in fact, “pure nonsense”. No doubt, we would have reacted in the same way. So it shouldn’t surprise us today when we read and hear all sorts of wild interpretations about Jesus, the Resurrection, the Gospel, the Christian faith and the Church. It was the same at the beginning, starting with the scribes and Pharisees. As for the disciples, it wasn’t the news they were expecting or hoping for and they couldn’t understand what was happening. They were being asked to believe the impossible.
We learn by making mistakes and reflecting on personal experience. The same happened with the apostles. What the angels had told the women slowly began to sink in. “Why look among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here: he is risen. 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.” Pure nonsense or not, they had better go and see for themselves what on earth was going on. Think of the reaction of Thomas, when the others told him something similar to what the women are saying tonight, “Unless I see the holes in his hands and can put my fingers into the holes and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.”
So, early in the morning on the first day of the week, something finally twigged in Peter’s mind. Hadn’t he heard Jesus talk about this very moment many times? He went running to the tomb and, finding it empty, came back, amazed at what he had seen. His doubts began to evaporate in the first light of dawn. He was beginning to believe: he was beginning to see the light. 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 truly risen from the dead. Even so, remember what Jesus said to Thomas, “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 Christians the Resurrection of Jesus is the source of our joy. It is the key that opens the door to understanding life and death and, ultimately, God’s plan for his creation. In the Resurrection we see the light of truth.
St Paul, writing to the Romans, gives us this interpretation of the Paschal mystery, “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 you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive for God in Christ Jesus.”
On behalf of the Monastic Community and all those who worship at Belmont, I wish you all a joyful Easter. Christ is risen; he is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia.
