Easter Message

Lent must live on

In a few days the Lenten season will come to an end ... sort of! A careful look at the calendar, the Liturgical calendar, should remind us that there are several important "seasons," and weekends and days, in our faith life. Lent is perhaps the most significant to all Christians. Its effects are meant to live on in our daily life.

We abstained from meat, cigarettes, chocolate, movies, etc., etc. We were asked to let go of something or some attitude that was destructive of others, or we tried to love our wife/husband more; we tried to forgive some family member or some friend who hurt us; we tried to encounter Christ. Christ Jesus is present in all these life experiences.

We are now in the Holy Week. You are surely already invited to your parishes for these sacred days. On Holy Thursday, Good Friday (death of Christ), and later Saturday night comes the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It is my prayer, my desire, that we all take part in these wonderful sacred and mysterious events. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to touch us during this time of grace. God's love is to be found all the more in all our lives if we make "room" for Him.

My prayers are with you and your families during this, our Easter celebration. Christ is risen, Christ is with us, Christ calls us to ever more intimacy, personally and in each of our communities.

+ Raymond Roussin, SM
Archbishop of Vancouver

The greatest `mutation'

"Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, He is risen" (Lk. 24:5). These angelic words dumbfounded the bewildered women who went to Jesus's tomb on that first Easter morning. His body was no longer there! With awe and joy, the Church of God in Vancouver proclaims to the world: "The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" (Lk 24:34).

At Easter we rejoice because Christ did not remain in the tomb. His body did not experience corruption. Life triumphed over the power of death. Through the power of the resurrection, our Redeemer is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. The Risen Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever (cf. Heb. 13:8).

Borrowing from the language of the theory of evolution, Pope Benedict has observed that Christ's resurrection is the greatest "mutation," the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that has ever taken place in the long history of the development of life. On that first Easter morning Christ leaped into a totally new life, bursting the bonds of death which could not hold Him prisoner.

The new age has begun. Starting from Christ, our world, fallen and fragile though it is, is already being transformed into the new creation. The arrogance of evil has been vanquished by the power of love.

The resurrection is a cosmic event which links heaven and earth. Jesus is not a man from the past. He is the Living One, Who still walks before us and calls us to follow Him.

The risen Lord reaches out across time and space to reach us. He comes to us through baptism. Baptism means precisely this, that we are not dealing with an event of the past, but with a qualitative leap in world history that encompasses us. It seizes hold of us and draws us into the promise of eternal life. This is what it means for us to be baptized into Christ.

Easter, then, is a feast of exuberance, of exaltation and of enormous joy. In the Archdiocese of Vancouver, together with the whole Church throughout the world, we rejoice that the darkness of our night has been transformed into the brightness of a new day. The risen Christ, and He alone, is the hope of a better world.

"This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice in it and be glad" (Ps. 116:24).

+ J. Michael Miller, CSB
Coadjutor Archbishop of Vancouver

The sign of victory

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord,

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

It is with this simple yet powerful salutation that Christians throughout the world, Eastern Christians especially, greet one other on the Holy and Glorious Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

Christ is risen! Let this greeting ring out in our hearts and homes!

Christ is risen! Let no one be sad, worried, or fearful on this Holy Day of Salvation!

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

We've completed the season of Lent, we've sought to renew our Christian lives in a spirit of repentance and conversion. Some have been more diligent than others. Some have worked harder than others. But should those less fervent be deprived of the joy of Christ's resurrection? Most certainly not!

Our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople (398-404 A.D.), delivered a famous Easter homily in which he told the faithful of the great Cathedral of Holy Wisdom: "Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day! You who have kept the fast, and you who have not, rejoice today, for the table is richly laden! Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith. Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!"

On Easter Sunday the churches of the Byzantine tradition read from the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (1:1).

This reminds us of the opening verses of the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (1:1). Genesis describes the creation of the present world, while the resurrection of Our Lord is the beginning of a new creation, and we, who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Our Lord, are already called to participate in that new life and to help change the world around us according to God's plan.

In the midst of the anxiety and uncertainty of the age we live in, the resurrection is for us the only sign of true victory and peace. As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us in his Easter greeting of 2006: "All those who are still oppressed by chains of suffering and death look for hope in the risen Christ, sometimes without even knowing it."

Indeed, the Risen Lord is our very hope, our very joy, and so let us rejoice in the knowledge that Christ has already overcome all that instills fear in our hearts. See how St. John Chrysostom concludes his famous and inspiring Easter homily:

O death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!
Christ is risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ, having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

May Our risen Lord bless you and your families as you sing out to each other: Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

+ Ken Nowakowski, OSBM
Eparch of New Westminster