To watch Father Joe’s homily for the Easter morning Mass: CLICK HERE!
This past Good Friday, I went to a funeral service for a local golf Pro who died from pancreatic cancer. And my thoughts turned to the funerals I’ve officiated over in recent months…
Funerals that bring to mind their Good Friday… that in faith we believe leads to Easter, for each of us and all of us… to resurrection and eternal life.
For today’s Feast of Easter certainly is the exclamation point to the birth, the life, the words, and the death of Jesus.
As St. Paul reminded the Romans, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”
And as we know, it is through our Baptisms, that we share in the life, death and most importantly the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is interesting that the Gospel of Mark gives little mention of the resurrection of Jesus by only mentioning to the three women who came to the tomb, “He has been raised.” Rather Mark seems to want to emphasize that point that Jesus has gone ahead of his Disciples. It almost seems that the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel is in a hurry to have his disciples continue his ministry of healing, feeding, and giving hope to all, especially the oppressed.
Jesus continues to go before us, HIS people and disciples of 2018. And like the women of the Gospel who went to the tomb to find Jesus, we too realize that Jesus is not to be found in the Tomb, but Jesus is to be found in the world.
And that may well be the Good News for us this Easter!
If we want to find the Risen Lord, we have to GO OUT, out into the world, out into life. For it is in living the Gospel that we find Jesus. For it is in living the Gospel that we realize Jesus is alive.
This Easter and beyond, may we find Jesus in one another and others, may others find Jesus as we live our faith, increasingly with the passing of each day as person, family and parish.
The hope of Easter is for the renewed world. May we bring to life the hopes of those we know and the many we do not know.
May we go out into our world and bring through our lives peace and justice; compassion and goodness; mercy, faith and truth and so much more. All that which Jesus promised and Easter affirms.
May we and others find Jesus not in the Tomb, but in the world in which we live every day.