Easter morning always has a particular freshness about it. Even for those who know the liturgy well, who have heard the Gospel a hundred times and are accustomed to the ebb and flow of Holy Week, the day arrives with something unmistakably new. Today, the Church announces a fact that changed the world: Christ is risen.
That claim remains as startling now as it was at the tomb. Much to the chagrin of our secular brethren, it is not a mere pious metaphor, nor a religious way of saying that spring has come round again. It is the central truth on which all Christian hope depends. The Resurrection is the answer the Church gives to death and despair, to sin and to all the exhausted cynicism of the age. It is the reason Christians can look squarely at a troubled world with true hope.
And ours is, by any measure, a deeply troubled world. There is continued war and suffering on several continents, while societies closer to home show signs of deep disorder: family life fractured, public morals degraded, pornography ubiquitous and abortion rampant. Many people also carry private burdens known only to themselves: grief, illness, family breakdown, anxiety about money, and the struggle to live faithfully. Easter does not wave these things aside. It does something far more important. It tells us that darkness does not have the final word. The stone is rolled away not only from the Lord’s tomb, but from our own settled assumptions about what is possible.
That is why Easter is the feast of new beginnings. It reminds us that grace is real, that redemption and renewal are possible, and that God cannot be defeated. The Christian life is not sustained by optimism in the modern sense of the word. It is sustained by hope, which is a much sterner and more durable thing. Hope rests not on mood, but on the risen Christ.
Easter is also a reminder that the Church is always older and younger than we imagine. She carries ancient truths, but she is never merely a relic. At her best, she speaks to each age afresh because what she proclaims is not bound to one age at all. That, in its own modest way, is also what we hope to continue to do: to serve our readers by taking the Catholic faith seriously, and by treating the things of God and the life of the Church as matters worthy of attention.
Over the last few months, we have seen very significant growth in readership, which means that many of you are reading the Catholic Herald this Easter for the first time. To those new readers, a warm welcome.
On this Easter Sunday, may I simply thank all of you, old and new, for reading us. I wish you a blessed and joyful Easter. May this great feast bring peace to your homes, renewed confidence in the risen Christ, and the consolation that comes from knowing that death is not the end and that hope is not in vain.
Christus resurrexit. Alleluia.
