Homily Easter 31st March 2024
If there was ever a time when human begins have been justified in repeating to one another the words of Christ’s messenger at the door of the empty tomb, “Do not be afraid…You have nothing to fear”, surely that time is now.
It is as though all of humankind’s most perverted range and fear had to be gathered up into one ultimate evil, in the most destructive act possible, to kill the creator, to destroy the source of life, and by doing so, spend itself.
Only God could have met that kind of challenge. Tonight/Today we know that he did. Christ took on himself the concentrated fury of all human sinfulness, the very worst that human folly could do, and it was not enough. The back of sin has been broken, and as long as we see the world in the light of this new Easter light, nothing can ever really terrify us again.
The resurrection is the heart of our faith. The foundation of it. Because the terrifying finality of death is seen to be a lie, we know that so much else the world holds to be true is also a lie. We know that truth is, after all, God’s and only God’s word can guarantee it. We know that the experience of the senses is a limited thing and that we will never know the world as it really is, if we rely only on that, only on our abilities.
The resurrection is the basis of our hope. It is a sure sign that God is true to God’s promises. That for each of us there is infinitely more to come. We would be foolish indeed if we were to ever give into the temptation to look around us and say, “This is what my life is, this and no more.” God has great things in store for each of us, a great future. We can refuse to accept that future, but we can never destroy its possibility.
Finally, the resurrection urges us, excites us to love. To build between ourselves and our world a bond of concern, of involvement. We must never suppose that the divine work of Christ is a substitute for human effort. Quite the opposite.
Christ’s triumph over the power of sin, and the inevitability of human weakness demands of us that we ratify and reflect and imitate it in our own lives, actively, positively, not simply swept along some imagined tide of grace, but rather by the freely conscious choices that we make.
As the new Easter candle entered the Church to the words of -Lumen Christi – The Light of Christ – we carried it through our midst, and we set it ahead of us. May the light of Christ always guide our steps as we navigate the struggles and joys of daily life.

Fr Andrew