Easter Sunday
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
27 Mar 2005
At the conclusion of the introductory Service of Light, which begins the Easter Vigil celebrations, where Christ is described as the light of the world, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all history and the unimaginable space of the cosmos, we prayed in these words "May the Light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds."
I cannot imagine anyone of good will, whatever the strength or weakness of his faith, who would not make that prayer his own. Unless we are blinded by hate, pleased to have enclosed ourselves in darkness, we all want to see, to understand many things: how reality hangs together, what we are meant to do now, what we should do with our life, how we should cope with adversity great or small, and how we should prepare for the afterlife, if heaven and hell exist.
The whole of life is seen in a different light when we accept the teachings of Jesus the Nazarene, who suffered, died and rose again nearly 2000 years ago.
Our claim is that the light of the risen Christ does dispel darkness from human hearts and minds.
Everyone needs a modicum of good will, genuine if basic love, to recognize God, the beauties of his creation, and the account of the redemption. In Dante's classic poem "Paradiso" the heroine Beatrice explains that the knowledge of God "is buried from the eyes of everyone whose intellect has not matured within the flame of love". Even children who are not loved by their parents or other significant figures find it hard to understand God's love. Love is necessary for understanding.
My task as a bishop on this Easter morning, as a successor of the apostles, is to bear witness to these ancient truths which we all have received from generations of teachers, guardians of the apostolic tradition.
I make no claim to be a religious genius, no claims to be a prophet or a poet, no claims to be unveiling some fantastic new spiritual scheme. My message is not my own.
My role is more modest and therefore I believe it is more credible; to announce to you what I have received from the Church, from the New Testament writings as they have been defended, deepened and explained by the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
Jesus was not just another wise teacher; not even a compassionate miracle worker who through his curing of the sick anticipated many of the wonders of modern medicine. He was more than a hero, who endured his particular and ugly fate with uncommon grace and dignity. He died and rose from the dead.
The truth of his claims is vindicated by his resurrection and this triumph over death justifies our attention, our meditation on all his sufferings.
Jesus' resurrection is the central fact in Catholic worship and prayer and the ground of all Christian thinking. Neither is it simply a prodigious miracle, but the culminating event, short of Christ's ultimate return, in the framework of Judaeo-Christian history which brought into being a new community of believers, the Church.
Most of the misunderstandings which tempt us today have appeared at some stage of Christian history. So we are not like the very early Docetists, or the Moslems of today, who do not believe that Jesus really died. His suffering and death were real.
Neither do we believe, like the Christians' first opponents, that Jesus' resurrection was a myth put about by his early followers, so that his body always remained in the tomb to corrupt into dust, while it was only his memory, or perhaps his soul which went marching on.
However there is another vital dimension to our claims. We also believe and announce that Christ's death and resurrection have redeemed us.
The poet Edwin Muir put it beautifully.
"But famished field and blackened tree
Bear flowers – in Eden never known.
Blossoms of grief and charity
Bloom in these darkened fields alone. ....
Strange blessings – never in Paradise
Fall from these beclouded skies."
Redemption is a strange notion. It is the further claim that all people of good heart and good will are saved by Jesus' suffering.
Christians understand that redemption means that God will forgive our sins no matter how terrible if we repent, that all good or godly people will be rewarded in the next life and that goodness will triumph finally over evil and suffering. In the meantime, not the end time, sin continues to abound, while wars, oppression and family trauma remain constant.
Some early Christians were impatient for Jesus' return on the Last Day, when the redemption will be completed, but we have waited so long, this expectation has faded. Nonetheless even in daily life we can find some hints of this final triumph of goodness, some small evidence of the mighty transformation that Christ will effect upon the entire cosmos. Let me give a few examples.
Many years ago I buried a teenager who died from a brain tumour. At his funeral I mentioned the Christian teaching of redemptive suffering. A tragedy like this often places additional pressure on existing family tensions, but afterwards the father of the boy told me that while his marriage had always been good, the suffering and death of their son had brought the mother and father closer together.
The Boxing Day tsunami memory with its hundred of thousands of deaths is still raw. But this catastrophe was followed by an outburst of generosity and compassion, unequalled in Australian history, towards the many victims, overwhelmingly of different religions and different races. I do not believe that even fifty years ago in Australia the generosity of so many people would have crossed such a double barrier.
I also ask you to pray for our pope, John Paul II in his final illness. We have been told that he is joining his suffering to that of Christ, no doubt offering it up for the good of the Church. On Holy Thursday, Cardinal Re said that the Holy Father has aligned himself to God's will, to whatever God has planned for him. We understand this.
The Christian approach to suffering, because of our belief in redemption, is very different from secular understandings, which are typically tempted to ignore suffering, or hide it away as demeaning and pointless, or bring it to an end by eliminating the sufferer.
Much of this was behind those voices suggesting the Pope should resign. A Catholic friend of mine answered this well. To such a suggestion he asked whether the speaker ever had a parent who was old and sick. When he replied affirmatively, he asked "Did you therefore ask your father to resign?" Of course he did not. I think it is a good point.
All three examples show good coming from suffering, small hints of the triumph of goodness and happiness when Christ will return in glory at the end of time, when there will be no more mourning or sadness.
Christ's resurrection is the guarantee of love's triumph. The Easter message is that love is stronger; stronger than any hate, any evil, any suffering.
To all those in difficulty the Easter message is a consolation. To all those of us who are going well, Easter is a reminder to count our blessings and be grateful to the good God for them.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
