Easter Sunday
St Mary's Cathedral
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
31 Mar 2002
Easter is the season of hope. Not just for those who are already Christians, but especially for those being baptised or received into the Church this year. Easter hope is also there for anyone who turns to Jesus for help in dealing with suffering and hardship.
Our reasons are simple and run beyond common sense. We believe the young Jew who was executed in Jerusalem for religious and political reasons nearly 2000 years ago really did suffer and die. Most people neither doubt nor deny this. While there are reasons to admire and sympathize with Our Lord's bravery, goodness and dignity, there are no special grounds for hope here. Many heroic men and women have died similar deaths for good causes over the centuries.
Christians also believe this man was the only Son of God; his divinity was the source of his wisdom and compassion. The suffering and risen Jesus takes us into the heart of the Godhead. Jesus' divinity was hidden by his death, which was counter-evidence to his special claims. "He helped others but he cannot help himself" as his enemies mocked.
But Jesus' divinity burst out, called forth by the Father, when Jesus arose from the dead against all expectations. Even his closest followers seem to have expected this comeback, this glorious vindication, as little as his well-placed enemies. They were as shocked and incredulous as we would have been. Until the Resurrection which changed them.
Especially at Easter, as the wonderful Easter hymn "the Exsultet" proclaims, "It is truly right that with full hearts and minds and voices we should praise the unseen God, the all powerful Father and his only Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ".
Recently I heard of a woman who ran a soup-kitchen in one of the slum townships in Africa. At different times both her daughter and her four-year old grand-daughter had been raped by local men, more or less outside the soup-kitchen. She knows the rapists and often sees them on the street, but the breakdown of justice means that they have gone unpunished for their crimes. She was asked how she could do so much to help her neighbours; how she could keep going, despite the suffering of her family. Her reply was astonishing: "Because God is with me".
Non-Christians are often puzzled and occasionally infuriated by the serenity of Christians under the most appalling sufferings. Our African woman is not mad or unfeeling. She has to deal with her enormous suffering every day. And yet despite this she is at peace and continues to hope. She can do this because what she has suffered is not all there is. Over and above this, there is the reality of God's love.
This story takes us into the heart of the Christian mystery. This woman is suffering her crucifixion but knows something of resurrection too. She has crossed the Red Sea, even though she has not entered the Promised Land.
More people claim to know about Christianity than really know Christ and his story. A little knowledge can prevent us from ever getting to the truth, can act like an inoculation so that we never "catch" the Christian mystery in all its beauty. Christianity only comes at a cost; it takes time, love and struggle.
It is part of being human to be puzzled; for good people sometimes to be mistaken. But ill will or large evil in our heart also make it difficult to understand.
People still object to being told that politics or philanthropy is not the first Christian priority. Nobody wants to make Jesus king as some did 2000 years ago, but some do want to reduce Christ to being chief opposition spokesman to governments.
Some government policies can deserve opposition on Christian principles. Christian faith would be meaningless if it was not expressed in good works.
But Christianity reaches far beyond public life today. Christ calls us to follow in the depths of the human heart with consequences in eternity. Following Christ is deeply personal; and no one else can make that decision for us. It is the consequences which are communitarian.
Just as Christ was raised from the dead to new life, St Paul explained to the small Christian community in Rome (the capital of Empire), so too we are raised to a new life through baptism.
Adults who decide to come into the Church understand how baptism frees them from sin. So adult Catholics of long standing understand that they too must turn from sin after they fall. All Christians, precisely because we are Christians, are called to be "dead to sin and selfishness, but alive for God in Christ Jesus".
Jesus' death and resurrection has made available to us, especially through the Church's sacraments, the grace, or spiritual fuel, or religious energy to decide that we believe and to resolve to strive regularly to treat others with love.
Through Christ's resurrection "The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the work of the Lord". And it should be a marvel for our inner eye, which enables us to see God around us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
