Believe and Rejoice!

At the start of this Holy Week, the horror of the explosions that maimed and killed our Coptic Christian brothers and sisters in Egypt brought us face to face with the evil that would seek to dominate our world.

In our own country, families are torn apart by marital strife that pierces the hearts and minds of parents, children and the wider family circle. Communities cry out for relief from daily violence while as a nation we hold our heads and mourn for our youth who choose the wicked way for want of examples that would lead them to a vision of hope and of life.

We take solace and strength from Christ Himself who, in His human state, suffered the anguish of knowing what He had to face, not for His sake but for ours. He, too cried out to the Father. He asked to be spared the agony which He alone had to endure. Like Him, we find ourselves asking, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In our attempt to control our lives and be masters of our fate, we forget that, like Jesus, we must put our supreme trust in the Almighty.

This is the only way we can rise from the tombs of fear, pain and despair that can keep us buried without hope of rising to new life.

In the darkness of the tombs, we forget - or are afraid to trust — that God loves us; that He wants us to have life and life in abundance.

The world would have us believe that this is just wishful thinking, an attempt to escape the realities of life. Yes, He has risen from the dead and has promised that He will be with us to the end of the world! In today’s Gospel, we read that the disciples had “failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (Jn 20:9).

Their failure to understand and consequently to believe, finds echoes in our own experience.

They, who had walked and talked and lived with the Lord, ran away with fear when He was captured. They despaired that their leader had left them alone, that they would never see Him again.

Even after His resurrection, they still lacked the confidence that His Holy Spirit would fill them with the power they needed to continue His work on earth.

When at Pentecost they were indeed filled with His Spirit, the resurrection we celebrate today dominated and guided their lives, as it must dominate ours.

The resurrection renews our Christian faith that defies human ‘wisdom’. It celebrates our God--- all-powerful, all-wise and all-loving.