Homily for Easter Day 2018: "The Lord himself puts into our hearts the gift of faith"

Bishop Paul’s homily for Easter Day 2018
 
What we are celebrating today has been highly contested right from the beginning. Remember Saint Paul. When he passed at Athens, he walked through the town and spoke to all kind of philosophers and other people on the Areopagus. As long as he spoke about the religious thirst of the people in Athens and of God “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) he found an interested audience.

However, as soon as he came to the topic that Jesus crucified had risen from the dead “some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ At that point Paul left them” (Acts 17:32-33).

The tricky thing with the resurrection of the Lord is that we cannot verify it in a way that we can say people: Have a look and convince yourself. We can only listen to the first witnesses who speak to us through the scriptures of the New Testament and through the faithful who throughout the centuries kept alive the message of Easter. Nobody can be forced to be convinced though many reasonable arguments speak in favour of the credibility of the first witnesses. If we believe we do it not because we can have a look into the empty tomb or have an apparition of the risen Lord. We believe because the Lord himself puts into our hearts the gift of faith. In professing our faith and in doing what Jesus teaches us we experience the truth although there may always remain a rest we cannot explain to others or even to ourselves.

Nowadays many critical people in the world are listing and reminding us all the sins we can find in the history of the Church. The result is a kind of criminal story of Christianity. It is true that a lot of shameful things have happened and are still happening among and by Christians. However, we cannot deny that since the death and resurrection of Jesus millions of his followers have paid with their blood for their faithfulness to the Lord. They have realised in their lives the love Jesus had for us. Wherever Christians were faithful to the mandate of Christ the world became more human and viable, experienced the light from above, and those who were desperate received hope. Why? Because of the truth we profess in the preface of the funeral mass when we pray: “In Christ the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned … Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”
All this started on that morning when the women went to the tomb and were told by the heavenly messengers: “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen.” It started when the disciples after many doubts saw the empty tomb and came to believe. It started when the risen Lord himself appeared to them and breathed into them the Holy Spirit changing them from coward disciples to courageous witnesses of his death and resurrection. From that moment onwards they could tell the people: “Death is not the end; there is a life that will last for ever; sin and corruption have not the last word; the last word has the living God “who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Brothers and sisters in Christ, just after the homily I shall invite you to renew your baptismal vows. Commit yourselves again on this Easter day. For in baptism we have died to the old sinful man and were born to a new life; we came to believe in the risen Lord,  and are now called to live as the children of light. Amen.