April 12, 2009 Easter Sunday Acts 10:34, 37-43; Col. 3:1-4; Jn. 20:1-9 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   Readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/041209.shtml               ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________     Is there any hope? We are no different than the early disciples who stood at the foot of the cross on Good Friday. They saw their hope for the future die at that place. How would they live? How could they go on?   We all face the burden of aging, the destruction of family life, debilitating diseases, unstable economy, and a culture that appears to be crumbling from within, not to mention the fact that there seems to be violence everywhere. We see in all of this the emptiness of secularism in the celebrity culture. We long for a word from the outside; and we cry out to God, "Is there any hope?"   As we read the Easter story, we see that the sum of that story is YES, there is hope. It comes in the form of Jesus, crucified and resurrected from the dead 2,000 years ago in an obscure part of the world. The accounts written about him give witness to ten appearances after he was raised from the dead, and the event of his resurrection has become the spinal cord of a new community of faith that formed around him. Not only was he resurrected, but also he ascended to his father in heaven and now gives the hope that we long to have.   We must be reminded that the belief of Jesus' resurrection is not the belief that Jesus had simply gone to heaven after his death. The Easter faith was always the belief that Jesus went through death into a new sort of bodily existence in which his original body was transformed into a body with new characteristics and properties. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that our bodies are not abandoned but rather are transformed.   The resurrection was not a once-in-a-lifetime, take-it-or-leave-it event. It is not optional equipment for the Christian. This day it must be clear that all of us must realize that the identical divine energy, which at first took Christ out of the grave, is available still, not at the end of life, not at the hour of death, but available here and now to help us to live. Therein lies our hope. We say that Jesus is Lord of the world and the rulers of this world are not. It not only gives us personal hope but also gives us the strength to work with other Christians around the world against unjust systems and speak the truth of the Gospel wherever we can. The power which on Easter Day shattered death is now given to us to live.     <<   Previous: Good Friday  | Next: Second Sunday of Easter >>     Go Back to SERMONS (Year B)