An Easter Message from our Pastor

My Dear Parish Family,

Christ is Risen from the grave, and there is a glory beyond all telling to be proclaimed and shared!! The first few hours of Easter Sunday morning, however, were nothing short of pandemonium. All four gospels relate this fact. Our patron, St. Matthew writes that an angel descending from heaven came and rolled away the stone, and that his appearance was like lightening, the guards were shaken and became like dead men because they were so afraid of the angel (Mt 28:2-4).

Later that same morning, Mary Magdalene and some other women came to the tomb and found it empty. They ran immediately to tell Peter and John what they thought had happened: “they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him” (Jn 20:2).

Place yourself in the sandals of these people for a moment. Imagine losing a very close friend or a family member. Having buried him or her just days before, you decide to place some flowers by the grave; but when you arrive you find the grave and the coffin wide open and the body of your loved one missing. Now, can’t you see why there was such pandemonium?

Peter and John run to the empty tomb to verify the women’s story. In the side chapel of our church there is a famous rendition of this scene. Don’t miss the details of what’s going on in the painting. John is outrunning Peter. John is young and clean shaven; Peter is scruffy. John has a tear in his eye, almost as if he’s thinking, “Could it be true? Could he really have risen as he said?” Peter, on the other hand, is lagging behind; there’s a darkness about him, in his clothing, and in his eyes; almost a worry, perhaps guilty and ashamed over his triple denial and betrayal of his Lord and Master.

The two disciples running towards the empty tomb represent all of us, who in the midst of the pandemonium around us (and perhaps within us!) are racing—even desperate—to find the answer to our deepest ques<ons and to our deepest longings; who really need the stone to be rolled away, and death and darkness to be defeated, and for life to finally triumph.

Well, dear friends, Easter is the most important feast we celebrate as Christian people precisely because that’s exactly what has happened in Resurrection of our Lord Jesus from the dead: the stone has been rolled away, death and darkness have been defeated, and life—real life in Christ—has triumphed. We need to take this mysterious, wondrous fact as personally as we can.

May the joy of Easter fill your hearts anew, and may the grace of the Easter Sacraments give us what we need to believe again and proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord!

With affection and a grateful heart for the blessing that you are,

Monsignor Anthony