Fr Greg's Easter Message: Sunday 20th April, 2025

Hi everyone, and Happy Easter to you all!

I hope that 'Holy Week' has been an edifying experience for you and that you have reached Easter Sunday touched by the love of Jesus and the hope for eternal life.

"He is not here; for he is risen, just as he said!" (Mt 28,6)

For Easter Sunday is the celebration par excellence of a bold truth indeed: that your life was made to last forever! The Good News of Jesus' Resurrection from the Dead is the basis of our own joyful belief, that 'life will be changed, but not ended' at the moment of our passing from this world. Which is why we declare in the Nicene Creed each Sunday that we "look forward to the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come."

It is certainly reassuring to live in the belief that we will see our departed loved ones again, and once again enjoy their friendship. I hope this Easter Sunday, and the week that follows, will be a time of sharing Christ's Risen Joy in and among your family and friends as you devour your Easter Eggs together, as a symbol of the 'new life' Christ has brought us all.

Just A Short 'Fun Fact of Faith' about Mary. The astonishing first reports that 'the tomb was empty!!' came from a group of women who visited the tomb early that morning. But they weren't the first to see the Risen Christ. It is believed on very good authority that Mary, Jesus' Mother, was the very first to see Jesus Risen from the Dead. Many Saints testify to that.

One of our most recently proclaimed saints, Pope Saint John Paul II (whom some of us met in real life), said the fact that Mother Mary was not named along with Mary Magdalene and the other women as having gone to the tomb that morning (see Luke 24, 10), indicates that she most likely already knew he wouldn't be found there, as she'd personally seen him Risen.

Saint Pope JP II concluded: "it is reasonable to think that Mary, as the image and model of the Church which waits for the Risen One and meets him in the group of disciples during his Easter Appearances, had had a personal contact with her risen Son, so that she too could delight in the fullness of Pascal joy".

No less than six 'Doctors of the Church' - including Saints Ambrose, Anselm, and Albert the Great - have held that Our Lady was the first witness of the Resurrection from the Dead, though nothing is specifically mentioned about that in the New Testament. That makes a lot of sense to me as well. I mean, think about it; if Mary met Jesus on the Way to Calvary, if she stuck by him at the foot of the Cross, and if Jesus was laid into her arms after being brought down from the Cross to be buried ... wouldn't you think she be Priority One on Jesus' "To Do List" of those he would visit that first morning of the Resurrection? Anyway, thought I'd just share that one with you today!!

So, have a lovely last "first week' of Easter and 'last week' of School holidays. God bless!!

Your brother, in Christ's Risen love,

Fr. Greg