Given on Easter morning, Sunday 9th April 2023, in Westminster Cathedral
This is a day to celebrate a startling faith. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, as he said he would, opening for us a pathway of life for now and unto eternity.
Last night in the cathedral at the Vigil, we celebrated this fact, this Risen Lord, with great drama. We started in darkness. Then the Paschal candle was lit and slowly the light spread through the whole cathedral. We went from darkness to light. Fresh water was blessed and used to cleanse and refresh us in baptism.
The account of the Resurrection we heard last night from St Matthew’s Gospel was full of drama. The earth shaking with thunder, the soldiers as if dead, the magnificent angel saying, ‘He is not here. He is risen.’ The women were the first to receive this news and to bear its message to the disciples.
This morning, drama gives way to splendour, something more about the wonder of this event and how it has unfolded. Think again of the first reading that we heard, the courage and the clarity of St Peter’s proclamation, his first preaching. There are two things that he stresses. One, that this is all done through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. He speaks of Jesus as being anointed, and everything that he did, and his being raised from the dead, as the work of God. And the second thing that he says, is that he and his colleagues are the witnesses to this. They, too, are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The account of the Resurrection we’ve heard this morning from St John’s Gospel has a different measure to it. St John wrote his Gospel much later, decades after the death of Jesus, so he’s reading into these events the fruit of that lived faith. Yes, the women are the first to go, showing courage and initiative, but then they go and summon the apostles. There is a race to the tomb, but Peter has to be the first to enter, even though he’s lost the race. Because by then it is clear that when Jesus said, ‘You are the rock, and on this rock I will build my church,’ that Peter was to be first. And so this morning, we gather in this church around Peter, the rock of our faith. All of us move at different paces, trying to race towards the Risen Lord.
We strive to have our hearts open and ready, touched with joy in faith, with hope in the face of darkness, and with a mission that we too are to respond by seeing ourselves to be the witnesses to that faith.
Now, St Paul tells us what that mission involves in that second reading. He said, as witnesses, as those who have received this faith, we are to look for the things that are in heaven. I wonder if, when Paul wrote those words, he was thinking of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples when he taught us to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’; ‘let it be done on earth as it is in heaven.’
When we take to ourselves the task of looking for the things that are in heaven, we are to see them and signal them and make them real here on this earth. We’re committed to a quest for harmony and peace in our homes, in our society, in our broken world. We’re committed to a search for respect and dignity for every person as a creation of God: people never reduced to numbers, never simply seen as problems. Maybe as we marvel at the Cross, which is now without its victim, and at the tomb that is now without its body, we know our quest is to express and give forgiveness.
There are many images that capture our Easter faith. Try and pick the one that suits you best, and treasure it.
It might be the image of the light of Christ coming like the dawn and slowly dispersing the darkness of our nights and showing us a new horizon, a new thing to aim for.
It might be the image of water pouring from a solid rock face. We experience life as harsh, yet we know that in that rock face, Christ has created a fissure through which light and water pour, giving us hope and strength.
It might be the image of a desert suddenly covered with a bloom of flowers: new promise in what seemed to be a barren way of life.
Whatever the image, the proclamation is simple. Christ is risen. Death has no power anymore.
He is Lord. And for this reason, I wish you all a very happy Easter.
Amen.
✠Cardinal Vincent Nichols
Archbishop of Westminster
Photo: Fr John Scott/Oremus