Another Lent is past. Another journey with Jesus from his fasting in the wilderness to the cross is past.
On Ash Wednesday, we were called to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, good deeds done in love. We were called to repentance, to a change of life, heart, and mind. We were called to our own forty days in the desert fasting and praying with Jesus. We were called to turn from sin and to turn to God.
We just passed through Holy Week and all the events of the last days of Jesus’ life on earth: his betrayal by Judas, his denial by Peter, his Last Supper with his disciples when he gave us the Eucharist, his body and Blood for our food for eternal life, his death on the cross, and his burial. And today we experienced Jesus’ absence as he lay in the tomb. We experienced the emptiness of a day without Jesus.
And now the tomb is empty. Jesus is risen, truly risen. This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. This is the Feast of feasts. All other feasts celebrate some aspect of this one great Feast.
Tonight, we celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and evil. We are freed from sin and death as an ultimate evil. Life has triumphed over sin and death. Love has conquered sin and death. Easter says that death has lost its ultimate power over us.
We have been freed from sin and death to be united to God in Christ Jesus. And being united with God in Christ Jesus is the fullness of life, the fullness of holiness. We are restored to the beauty of holiness from the ugliness of sin. Easter says the enduring and compelling beauty of Christ Jesus’ life and love is now ours to share.
The victory over sin and death is secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus; therefore, we are liberated from sin and death. We attain union with God. We receive the fullness of life in Christ Jesus. This is our salvation and our hope. This is what the empty tomb is about. Easter says that the empty tomb is the promise and hope of our own resurrection in Jesus.
And in this Eucharist God makes the death and resurrection of Jesus present to us. We share in them by faith. The Risen Lord is present in this Eucharist in his act of saving us. He is present as our Savior. He is present in his dying and rising. By faith we join him in his passage from death to life.
The message of Easter is: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
Easter is the testimony to the power of God’s Love for us in Christ Jesus.
Easter is the restoration of the beauty of holiness for us.
Easter is the promise of our own resurrection.
This Mass is a memorial, a making present, of Christ’s death and resurrection. This Mass perpetuates this saving act of Christ in time, in our time.
Now.
Alleluia.