Archbishop of Sydney

EASTER SUNDAY

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
11 April 2004

Once again, as always, we began our Easter Vigil celebrations with the service of light, where Christ is proclaimed as the light of the world, because he shares in the light of God the Father’s glory.  Christ is proclaimed as the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, because all time and all creation belong to him.

This imagery of light takes us a long way from the sufferings on the Cross, inflaming us with a new hope.

Light is a symbol of our invisible God, the almighty Spirit.  We glimpse something of God’s power and transcendence, but it is an imperfect symbol, because light cannot know us or love us.  God does know each one of us and does love each one of us.  God is personal and the Divine Word became a man, who lived among us, suffered with us and saved us.  So we marry this truth with the symbol and speak of Christ as the light of the world.

The truths of Easter are explained in the “Exultet”, the Easter hymn proclaiming Jesus’ victory.

“The power of this holy night
dispels all evil, washes guilt away,
restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred, brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth
and man is reconciled to God.”

Originally the deacon used to proclaim the truths of Easter at this point, each making up his own prayer.  The text we use can be traced back to the seventh century and had displaced all rival versions by the ninth century.

We should always remember that the Roman rite of the Mass, which we use is very ancient indeed, based as we know on Jesus’ first Eucharist at the Last Supper; but the Latin prayers, with a few words in Greek (Kyrie eleison) were developed principally from Jewish forms of worship.  Some traces remain explicitly with words like “amen” and alleluia”.

Pope St. Leo the Great and Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century were important figures in the evolution of our Mass form, but by the end of the sixth century under Pope St. Gregory the Great we have the Roman Canon, or Eucharistic prayer, very similar to the prayers we use today.

Every local Catholic Church community uses this patrimony, but here in this Cathedral we are privileged to have a vital musical tradition which brings us masterpieces of composition from a period of at least 1500 years and more, because some claim that our Gregorian chant is very close to the Jewish chants Our Lord himself would have sung in the Temple and his synagogue.

As we celebrate this Easter we should thank God for all the beautiful ritual and music we have inherited to help us pray and raise our minds to God, as we struggle to understand the miracles that God’s Son has achieved for us.  We thank God too for all the talented musicians who make this music, dignifying and ennobling our prayer.

Back to the Easter message.  We celebrate this most important of the Christian feasts with some dark clouds on the horizon, the bombing in Madrid, the widespread violence in Iraq, terrorist threats.  Much less noticed is the fall of the birth rate everywhere in the Western world, even in Australia, a sign that hope in the future is weakening.

There are many other patches of dark cloud obscuring our clear skies, but Christians do not deny or ignore these sad realities.  We see through them to the victory of God, achieved as Christ; incomplete now but to be finalised on the last day.  Christ began his work as alpha and will complete it as omega.

Therefore we should not understate the traditional Christian claim about the facts and significance of Jesus’ redeeming death and resurrection.

The Easter gospel is not about memories, or ideals, or profound thoughts, although these should be present.  At Easter we do not gather to celebrate a doctrine, not to rejoice in Jesus’ message of hope, not in his love ethic, nor his promise of eternal life, of punishment or reward after individual judgement (although all these are contained in the Easter package).

Jesus truly died.  At Easter we proclaim that the man who was truly lost on the cross, is now alive and well and available to us.  “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen”.

The resurrection is not a metaphor to disguise the fact that Jesus remains as dead as he was on Good Friday night and that his body rotted in the grave, or that his bones remain somewhere to be found.

Jesus has risen from the dead, with his glorified body.  He is alive and loving us, because he has redeemed us.

The Easter message is that we have a personal Redeemer, the son of God who rose from the dead.  The prolonged violence and suffering of the passion of Christ are not only a consolation to sufferers, reminding them that God’s Son suffered too; not just another story of another good person treated cruelly and unjustly.  They are only part of the story, the necessary prelude to the resurrection of Christ and of all good people on the last day; they are the events which guaranteed that God forgives our sins and will completely overwhelm the evil in human history at the end of time.

On Easter Sunday the Church urges us to reflect on this triumph of life and love achieved through the resurrection of Christ our Lord.  But the events of the Passion during Holy Week have also prompted us to do what most people prefer to avoid, i.e. to reflect on the mysteries of suffering and personal sin and on the struggle between good and evil which takes place in every heart and at every level of society.

On Easter Sunday the focus changes, because today we celebrate the mystery of Christ’s liberating obedience and redemptive suffering.  Death is not the last word.  Jesus has won.

Easter peace to everyone.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen