Easter Sunday (homily)

We saw the Tabernacle Empty on Holy Thursday, when we remembered the Last Supper. We saw the altar bare naked, deprived of all its beauty. Last night we found the tomb empty… Today, our Church is in full beauty! The tabernacle holds Jesus in the Bread… During the Three Holy Days it was empty, now, the table of the word is full, the Tabernacle preserves abundantly the Bread of Eternal life… Christ is Risen! And there is a lot to celebrate!
 
We celebrate that Our Lord is with us again! We celebrate that it is not only nature which is renewed at spring time. Today we celebrate the good news of good news that we are given a renewed life. Today we celebrate that we are given a new chance – to complete what is incomplete in our lives.
 
There is what we call a New Year promises. But what could be your Easter Promise? What would you like to achieve with the help of the Risen Lord? Every holy mass is called the ‘holy sacrifice’. It is not only the priest who offers the mass for an intention. It is you, personally, who can have an intention, a purpose, for which you offer the Mass. What is it, in your personal case? Offer it, for those purposes, with the Risen Lord!
 
Easter is such a wise feast! Though it is something radically new… Jesus is resurrected, and now he is at the right hand of the Father. But his wounds are also there, on his resurrected body!
 
Our Church, the mother of our hearts, (as it nourishes it!), has also undergone this transformation. It is beautiful! It is amazing how, through your prayers and voluntary work, it became beautiful!
 
However, there is a great reminder of what Easter means for us. The walls ‘bear their wounds’, the scars of aging… Easter is like this: our old life is there, our old story is there. But not as a cause to be sorrowful, but to praise God that our life is whole again in him!
 
Easter has implanted in us a burning desire for repentance, for change! This is not an ordinary, everyday desire to correct a fault. Easter manifests the distance between the sinner and God. Easter reveals the distance between where our world is and where it should be.
The open and empty tomb is a beautiful symbol: it shows us broken up… so broken up that our distance from God causes us to yearn with a powerful love to God. That is why the whole Easter story, with the appearances of the Lord, is about this yearning and seeking and finding Jesus.
 
This yearning, this burning desire to be the Lord, not only forgives our sins, but “turns our past/ our past sins and failures into virtues”. No, it is not a contradiction! This is the good news of Easter! If our heart is risen, there is no failed past, only growth, and new beginning – a REAL CHANCE.