Fr Greg's Easter Message: Sunday 17th April

“There’s Really No Greater Love Than This!”

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the triumph of Jesus’ insuppressible love over everything the world - and its occupants - can dish up! For Jesus is as present in the world today as he ever was that first Easter Sunday, when the unsuspecting women went to his tomb - and found it empty, with the linen cloths that had wrapped his body flattened out as if his body had simply ‘evaporated’ from within!

What a sight that must have been … yes, and what a sight it is to see more and more ‘risen companions’ in this Parish, ready and willing to take the Risen Christ out to the people who as yet don’t know much about him, or at least have not experienced his ‘rising’ within them.This is the real situation of a lot of our ‘lapsed’ Catholic friends. It isn’t that they don’t believe that Christ is risen from the dead, it is more that they haven’t seen him in action. Having failed to identify his presence, they live like ‘practical agnostics’ – but not atheists. It isn’t as if they believe there is no God, it is just that they haven’t seen any proof that Jesus truly is risen. And so life goes on as if God didn't really matter much to them...

But that is where you and I come in! We who have experienced Jesus ‘washing our feet’ – which means carrying us while we couldn’t follow along by ourselves, putting up with our ‘spiritual tantrums’ when things don’ go our way. We for whom Jesus carried the Cross - the cross of our persistent sin – yes, sin – because we refuse to change certain aspects or ‘pet likes’ even though we know they are objectively wrong, and are damaging our souls.

We for whom Jesus spent time in the tomb – for we have all experienced times of utter ‘deathly silence’ … when, in the aftermath of our sin, when we see the pernicious effects of it on others we love - there seems to be a sort of ‘emotional void’ or numbness within. Some of what we commonly call ‘depression’ is related to this.

But Jesus has a solution to it all. He wants to employ you now in a whole new field of endeavour. We are all among those for whom Christ has died and has risen. All of us! And we are all equally invited to become Jesus’ ‘replacement humanity’ in the world. His death was real, and so too is his resurrection: in all those who boldly pick up their own crosses – even the crosses of others – and go back out into the world to share the effects of a resurrected love with the people around us.

You can be part of the proof our 'agnostic' friends need … you can be a ‘living sign’ of the presence of the Risen One, in people who have changed for the better. You can extend that presence into the world, by making that divine love visible, palpable, tangible - in the midst of your own crosses.

This is our ‘mission’ in the world around us, and this is the mission we Verbum Dei Missionaries wish to lead you in accomplishing, in this Parish, and as far outside of it you wish to go! For that reason, we have our Schools of the Word’, our ‘Schools of Apostles’ and our retreats and spiritual exercises. Perhaps this will be the year in which you join us in one or all of them??

Know that the Good Lord not only won’t ‘let you down’, but will keep on ‘raising you up’, especially when you lose steam or somehow 'go off track'. And Mother Mary is a specialist at raising and encouraging ‘fledgling’ children of God until we all make the grade! Remember that the Rosary is like plugging in your heart, like you would with an electronic device to charge it up!

So a very Happy Easter to you all, and may you find the strength you need from now on from the voice of the Good Shepherd, the Risen One who is accompanying you now and for the rest of your lives … now and for all eternity.

Your brother in the Risen Lord’s Mission to the world.

Fr. Greg!!