My brothers and sisters in Christ,
I want to wish you and your families a joyful and happy Easter. The Lord is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!
Today is the great culmination of the Church’s liturgical year. We celebrate Christ’s triumph over sin and death itself. It is particularly important to remember this during this Jubilee Year, recalling that we are “pilgrims of hope”. We know that death has no more power over us, precisely because Christ has conquered sin and death. He is risen in the flesh. He rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; therefore, we have certitude that the gates of heaven have been opened to us, that death has lost its power, that death has lost its sting. We hope not only for the resurrection of the flesh on the last day, but even now we hope for heaven itself and to see the glory of God, because Jesus has cast open the prison bars of death and has set us free through His sacrifice on the cross, through His death, His burial, His descent into hell, and His glorious resurrection.
In these days of Easter, the Church will be celebrating the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. As I travel around the diocese confirming many young people, I speak to them about the need to witness to their faith. Having been sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, they must witness to their faith. Mary Magdalene was a witness to the resurrection. She knew that the Lord had risen. She went and told the apostles that the Lord is risen. Peter and John raced to the tomb, and there they saw the stone rolled back, and the tomb was empty, with the burial linens neatly folded.
In the fifth week of Lent, we heard of the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus came forth from the tomb, but he would have to die again. The stone had to be rolled back. The dead man came back to life still wrapped in the burial bands of death. With the account of the Resurrection of Jesus, the stone is rolled away again, but this time there is no body. The body is not there, for the Lord has risen. Unlike Lazarus, who came back bound in the bandages of death, in the case of the Lord’s Resurrection, the death mask is folded up like a napkin, because the Lord had truly risen.
Returning to John’s account of the Resurrection, Peter and John ran to the tomb to see what had happened, what had transpired. John was younger. He got there first. He paused in deference to Peter. John represents the contemplative dimension of the Church. He sees, and he believes. This is a reminder to us to stop and to contemplate what God has done for us. Peter also ran to the tomb, but he entered into it. He is a man of action. Peter and John, these two great apostles, would also announce the Resurrection and bear witness to it.
Others like the disciples, like those on the road to Emmaus on the evening of the resurrection, would have their hearts burning deeply within them as the Risen Lord drew near and explained the Scriptures to them. They would come to know the Risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. They would come back and tell others, saying that He has appeared to Simon. They testify that the Lord had been truly raised from the dead. He is not dead. He is Risen. He is alive.
As Catholics, as the Church, as a People of Life, we are called to bear witness to the God of Life and to the promise of eternal life which He offers. We not only care for and nurture life, but we testify to the abundance of life that has come to us in Christ Jesus, our Crucified and Risen Lord.
The Lord is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia! Happy Easter!
Most Rev. Earl K. Fernandes
Bishop of Columbus