Given at the Mass of the Resurrection in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Sunday 5th November 2017.
The women came to the tomb early in the morning bearing their grief, thinking over the painful events of Good Friday and the emptiness of Holy Saturday. They carried the same feelings that we have after a sudden death, numbness, unreality, sadness and grief. They saw the stone had been rolled away and they were afraid. Later they hear the voice telling them that he is Risen, he is not here and will go before you to Galilee. There you will see him.
We follow them to the tomb, not with fear but rather with confidence and hope. We believe that Christ is Risen from the dead and this has brought us on pilgrimage to this holy place. Yesterday we queued up and entered the tomb. We saw that it was empty but also, I hope, you experienced a deep sense of calm and trust in the Risen Christ who is with us. In our moment of prayer outside the basilica we thanked God for this gift to us and the gift of faith.
Peter and John reached the tomb. John his heart burning with exhilaration and expectation reached the tomb first but waited for Peter the leader of the apostles. Peter went in and saw the cloths rolled up; John went in: he saw and believed. His faith must have helped Peter to believe and so he handed on the gift of faith to him. He saw and believed: we need each other to strengthen our faith and hand this gift on to others. May your presence here renew your faith and help you to persevere.
The life of Christian faith is not straightforward. We face the same challenges and struggles but do so in a different way. This gives us hope and courage. We recall that St Teresa of Calcutta had a deep experience of God’s love which led her to work for the poorest but then she spent many years walking in the darkness of faith when God seemed absent. Thomas Merton describes the life of faith like travelling through a deep fog at sea and listening for the foghorns of the other ships which tell us that they are there but we cannot see them. Similarly, we walk by faith and not by sight.
The gift of faith is a mystery. I am sure many of you often wonder why adult children no longer practice their faith. It is deeply painful and you did all you could. This is a mystery. God gives them the freedom to choose but keeps alive his prompting and nudging by the Holy Spirit. Like St Monica, who waited for years for her son Augustine, to come to faith, this is an invitation to hold firm and pray for them.
Christ’s resurrection from the dead is a victory over sin and suffering. We have seen the effects of sin in our own lives, in the situations of injustice we have seen, in oppression and poverty. Christ is victorious over all these things and so we have the courage to pray and to work for peace.
Christ’s victory opens the gates of heaven. We are consoled that our loved ones who have died can rise with Christ to glory and that he is the first to go before us. We can live in the hope of the promise of eternal life and the forgiveness of sin. God sends his Holy Spirit into our hearts so that the spirit of love can shape our lives.
Let us in a few minutes of silence pray for a deepening of the gift of faith in our lives and the lives of those we know find faith difficult.