“No
matter how dark the days we live in are or what dark places we wander
into in life there is always hope. For the Christian, light not
darkness, love not hate, goodness not badness, life not death will
conquer in the end.” – Bishop Michael, The Easter Vigil in the Holy
Night 2024
“The world is in a very dark place at the moment.”
Recently,
I had a conversation with a young mother about the challenges she was
having handing on the faith to her children. As we chatted she said to
me “The world is in a very dark place at the moment.” I have always
tended to shy away from such dark negative generalisations. However, for
some reason, her words kept coming back to me: “The world is in a very
dark place at the moment.” My mind went first to the people of Gaza.
That blood soaked land, where the death and destruction caused by the
war casts a dark shadow on our humanity. Then, I thought of Ukraine -two
full years of war with no hope of an ending and even the possibility of
the conflict spreading to other places with catastrophic consequence.
The East is pitted against the West. While Islam, Judaism and
Christianity are seen as foes not brothers and sisters with Abraham as
our common Father. In a world where so many suffer want and go hungry –
never has so much been spent on systematic warmaking, destruction and
death. Thousands of migrants drown. Their dreams for a better life
drowning with them. All this while, the dark shadow of climate change
and its dire consequences creeps up on humanity. Here in Ireland, people
struggle to make ends meet and find a place to live. Tensions rise as
we try to welcome the stranger, while a culture of death becomes more
and more accepted. On a personal level, many are battling with
depression, addiction, poverty, family tensions, the loss of a loved one
and poor health. At times the darkness is so dark and the prospects of
light so far away that we can throw up our hands in despair and lose
hope. The more, I think about it, perhaps the more I could be convinced
that “the world is in a very dark place at the moment.” A Good Friday
mood abounds in so so many places of our lives and of our world at this
time.
The Journey of Holy Week 2024
Over
the last few days as a people of faith we have been on a journey -the
journey of recalling and reliving the last days of the life of Jesus.
Against the backdrop of the Passover gathering with those closest to him
in this world – we heard rumours of betrayal. Later, on the mount of
Olives, after a profoundly personal spiritual struggle to do what was
right – he is arrested. The crowds soon turn on him and he is condemned
to the vile viciousness of execution by crucifixion. We looked on
helpless, as the life of this young man who had touched so many with his
simple message came to a violent and bloody end. We were told that a
darkness covered the earth as he breathed his last. We saw, his
lifeless, broken body taken from the cross, hastily prepared for burial
and laid in the darkness of a borrowed tomb. We felt the pain of his
Mother and his disciples. We turned our backs and faced towards home
convinced that that that was the end – darkness had won the day.
The tomb is empty …
Then,
like a bolt out of the blue -comes startling news that no one would
have expected. There are no eyewitness accounts of the actual moment.
However, the experiences of those in its direct aftermath have been
retold over and over again. From early on the first day of the week –
after the women, Peter and John had come to visit the tomb, incredible
news began to filter out. The tomb was empty. The grave clothes had been
rolled up. They had met and spoken with that same Jesus who had died
and was buried. He was now transformed, really present and alive in
their midst. For weeks afterwards, they struggled to understand what had
happened and found it even difficult to express their experience in
logical words.
God’s last word is not death and mindless destruction
For
me the greatest proof that Jesus is risen, lies in the effect it had on
those early apostles and disciples. They were ordinary people, like you
and me, people who had experienced the trauma and loss of his death.
However, instead of downhearted doubt they now exhibited exuberant hope.
Fear that they might meet the same fate as Jesus had been transformed
into an almost foolhardy urge to tell everyone what they had
experienced, no matter what the consequences. In due course, all of the
twelve apostles, bar one, were to die the deaths of Martyrs rather than
deny what they had experienced. For the early Christians –the
resurrection of Jesus had become his defining hour. It showed forth what
they had failed to understand for so long. In Jesus and through Jesus,
God himself had definitively entered this world of ours. God who created
all that is – had definitively intervened on the side of light not
darkness, hope not despair – on the side of life not death. When it
seemed like all was over and darkness itself had reigned – the news of
the Resurrection brought new hope, new light and new life. This was good
news – good news that they and their first century world needed to
hear. Surely, this is a message as valid for us today as it was back
then. God’s last word is not death and mindless destruction. No matter
how dark the days we live in are or what dark places we wander into in
life there is always hope. For the Christian, light not darkness, love
not hate, goodness not badness, life not death will conquer in the end.
Have hope
If
there was a message that, I would like us to take from being here on
this most sacred night of the Christian year - it is this. First of all
and above all things - be confident – have hope. Goodness triumphed this
Easter night those many years ago. No matter how dark things are light
will always come, goodness will always triumph – the God of life will
always prevail.
Be hope in action
Secondly, like those early disciples we can make our world a better place by sharing this message not just in our words but also in our deeds. Let us be hope in action. Let us try to light a light where there is darkness, to be good when there is bad, let us try to be hopeful when there is despair, let us never grow tired of talking about peace when there is war or of celebrating life in the face of death. Let us reach out rather than push away, give when we can give, help when we can help, be kind when we can be kind. Let us be twenty-first century beacons of Christian hope, human lighthouses pointing to a better way amid the many darknesses of this world of ours today.
“He is not here! He is risen! He has gone before you to Galilee!” (Mt. 28) Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
(Bishop Michael, Easter Vigil, 2024)