Easter resonates in the Irish mind for both religious and political
reasons.
The Easter Rising in 1916 was originally timed for Easter
Sunday itself. One day later the revolutionaries struck in the hope of
both ending the long centuries of colonial rule and initiating the new
life of an independent republic. They believed that their blood
sacrifice would usher in a new, more desirable political dispensation.
Many today wince at the association of this violent political act with
the most central Christian belief about Christ’s passage from death to
new life. Nonetheless, it still gives us a perspective, however
incomplete, into the power and scope of the Easter message.
Easter, of course, continues to be a major holiday in Ireland (and
elsewhere), a very important festive time for both family and faith.
Liturgically it is the pivotal time with Christians celebrating the very
kernel of their faith, encapsulated in those words from tonight’s
Gospel: ‘He is not here; he has risen.’ It is second only to Christmas
in terms of the amount of time spent in the company of relatives and
friends.
At Easter time, with spring well underway, many of us find new energy and hope as the days lengthen and new life emerges.
We know well our need for hope in a world so disfigured by hatred and
war, be it in the Holy Land, Ukraine, South Sudan, Yemen and so many
other theatres of conflict that are rarely or every mentioned by the
Western media.
Here at home, we know the need for hope too in the face of a culture
saturated by materialism and individualism, undermining bonds that
sustain us, especially the family, giving rise to growing levels of
stress, unhappiness and threats to mental health, especially among the
young. And this is exacerbated by, among other things, both our painful
housing crisis and the impact of global warming.
On this most holy night we do well to remember that the symbols used in
the Easter Liturgy like light from both the Easter fire and the paschal
candle, and the newly blessed water (reminding us of our baptism) seek
to point us to Christian hope. They engage anew our imaginations and
remind us that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and that this Risen
Lord is with us.
That is the great promise of Easter – the Risen Lord is with us – and it
is one that we need to take to heart more on our own personal faith
journeys, and in the face of the indifference and hostility which
Christian faith can meet in equal measure in many quarters today. In
the words of the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins when he turned the
term ‘Easter’ into a verb, ‘Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the
dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.’
Our Easter faith, it should also be remembered, calls us to a longing
for the world to come. It reminds us that the present of this world,
its goods and pleasures, are in themselves insufficient. It exhorts us
to open the doors of our hearts to the recognition and experience of the
true greatness of our existence which is our hope for a future with God
in the newness of eternal life.
Easter speaks eternally of hope and new beginnings in our very selves,
our country, our Church, our world. It calls us to a hope and a
confidence that is stronger than any limitation or burden under which we
may labour and brings us to the threshold of eternal life with Christ
and the whole communion of saints, those we have known and loved and
those who will have known and loved us.
When Pope John Paul II stopped in Harlem during his visit to New York in
October 1979, he uttered a memorable refrain which we can all gladly
share in tonight: ‘Do not abandon yourself to despair. We are the
Easter people and alleluia is our song.’ Alleluia!