Fr Tony writes.....

Surrexit Dominus Vere: Alleluia The Lord is Risen indeed: Alleluia

During these last days we’ve been involved in ritual, some of it, very ancient. We need ritual to enter into the mystery of God and His overwhelming love.
Imagine for a moment what that first Good Friday evening must have been like for the Apostles. Imagine how they felt. “It is all over. He has gone. All our hopes are dashed. Where do we go from here?”
They feel empty, lost, betrayed. And to make things worse there’s that awful sense of guilt. They remember each step of the journey. They see him still; beaten, bruised, and covered in blood: that is those of them who did not run away at the outset! Peter sadly remembers his own cowardice, denying three times that he even knew Jesus. So much for leadership! And then Judas! What do they make of him. Do they yet know that he has hanged himself in shame? Probably not! How could he do what he did, to use the intimacy of a kiss to betray his Lord? How could he so betray the trust that Jesus had placed in him?
For us in the Church there are painful echoes of Judas today. And we ask the same question: How could such things happen? They think of Pilate who could have stopped it all, but didn’t. Again there are echoes today. How do we respond to evil in our midst? What could we have been done differently?
On that Friday night and during the long hours of Saturday they experienced utter desolation, a feeling of hopelessness. It is against this background of sadness and remorse that the Resurrection comes as a burst of unbelievable joy and hope. On the Cross it seemed that death was in the end more powerful than life, that evil had triumphed over good. It can seem like that today for many people, but Easter is the ultimate triumph of Love. God in Jesus has experienced the full force of human sin and evil, the worst that man can do. But now in His Rising from the dead we see that Love is more powerful even than death itself.
Easter then is above all a time for hope. Christ’s Resurrection tells us that there is no evil so deep that it cannot be overcome by the power of God’s love in Christ. In Him we have the beginning of a New Creation:
“I shall pour clean water over you and you shall be cleansed…… I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” “You shall be my people and I shall be your God”
The darkness of Good Friday is the sad reality of many lives today, but we are an Easter People. Our Crucified and Risen Lord gives us the hope, the conviction that evil can be overcome by love, and that the final victory of love is certain. It is our task to live by that faith, and in that hope.
The Lord is truly Risen: Alleluia