Archbishop of Sydney

Easter

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
27 March 2005

Easter remains a bit of a puzzle.  It is the most important Christian feast, or series of feasts.  On Thursday (Holy Thursday) we commemorated the first Eucharist; on Good Friday, Jesus’ death on the cross, and today, Easter Sunday, we remember the Resurrection.

But the central message is mysterious and the historical claims are startling.  The young man Jesus, who was executed, was and is the only Son of God.  He truly died and then rose from the dead.  By this death and resurrection he redeemed and saved us.

Redemption is also a strange notion.  Not only do we have to puzzle over why God allowed his only Son to suffer and die a criminal’s death, but we have the further claim that all people of good heart and good will are saved by this suffering.

Christians understand that redemption means that God will forgive our sins if we repent, that all good or godly people will be rewarded in the next life and that goodness will triumph finally over evil and suffering.  In the meantime, not the end time, sin continues to abound, while wars, oppression and family trauma remain constant.

Some early Christians were impatient for Jesus’ return on the Last Day, but we have waited so long, this expectation has faded.  Nonetheless even in daily life we can find some hints of the final triumph of good, some small evidence of the mighty transformation that Christ will effect upon the entire cosmos.

Many years ago I buried a teenager who died from a brain tumour.  At his funeral I mentioned the Christian teaching of redemptive suffering.  A tragedy like this often places additional pressure on existing family tensions, but afterwards the father of the boy told me that while his marriage had always been good, the suffering and death of their son had brought the mother and father closer together.