Christ is risen! He is truly risen!
A blessed and happy Easter to our St. Patrick’s family! Today we celebrate the greatest news of all time: Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And this means that we too will rise again, we too will see each other again. God did not create us for death, but for life. In these Easter days we rejoice in the Jesus’ victory because his victory is our victory too. St. John Paul II reflected upon the victory of Jesus in his first Easter message as Pope. Here are his words:
Happy Easter from all of the priests at St. Patrick’s! “How can we fail to rejoice at the victory of him who was so unjustly condemned to the most terrible passion and death on the Cross; at the victory of him who first was scourged, buffeted, spat upon, with such inhuman cruelty?
How can we fail to rejoice at the revelation of the power of God alone and at the victory of this power over sin and human blindness?
How can we fail to rejoice at the victory definitively won by good over evil?
This is the day that the Lord has made!
This is the day of universal hope. The day on which there gather about the Risen One, and join with him, all human sufferings, disappointments, humiliations, crosses, human dignity violated, human life not respected, oppression, repression, all the things that cry aloud:
To the paschal victim let there rise today the sacrifice of praise!
The Risen One does not go away from us; the Risen One comes back to us.
“But you must go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you…'” (Mk 16:7). He comes everywhere, where people most await him, where sadness and fear are greatest:, where misfortune and tears are greatest. He comes to shed the light of the Resurrection upon everything that is subjected to the darkness of sin and death.
Today we wish to rediscover this vocation, to claim this mission for our own once more. We wish to let it be filled once more with the joy of the Resurrection. We wish to bring it near to all people, to those who are near and to those who are far off.
Let us share this joy with one another.
Let us share it with the apostles, with the women who were the first to bring the news of the Resurrection.
Let us unite ourselves with Mary. Regina caeli, laetare!
Man can never lose the hope of the victory of good.
May this day become for us today the beginning of a new hope.”
Happy Easter from all of the priests at St. Patrick’s!
Msgr. Brian McNamara