Archbishop's Easter Message
It’s very hard for us to keep news to ourselves, especially good news. We tell our bad news to others so they will console us, but we tell good news because we cannot contain our happiness. This is especially true of the news of new life, for example a mother expecting a child.
All around us, all the time, there is good news and bad news about life: 1) soldiers and civilians dying violently every day in a war; 2) a new medical break- through; 3) a friend or neighbor losing his or her job; 4) a young boy scout found alive after being lost in the woods for several days; 5) millions of people without adequate health care. Good news and bad news. We all know personally that good news can change lives and save them, spiritually. That is most true of the good news of the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This transforming power of Christ’s rising has been the experience for Catholic Christians from the beginning of Christianity, from the first Easter Sunday onward: the women came to the tomb early in the morn- ing to prepare properly the body of the dead Jesus. They were worried about the size of the stone at the tomb’s entrance, and how they will roll it back. Instead, the angel greeted them and proclaimed the good news for the very first time: “Jesus of Nazareth has been raised up!” That kept on happening: there was fear in the upper chamber, and a lack of recognition on the road to Emmaus; there was Mary Magdalene’s meeting the risen Jesus and thinking at first he was the gardener. It keeps on happening now: we can be preoccupied with our own version of the stone in our lives, too heavy for us to move, and miss the good news of the empty tomb and the presence of the risen Christ with us.
This good news fills the empty places of our spirit with meaning and joy, and a destiny, now and forever – if we let him, this Risen, Jesus, Our Good News, will be the Sun in our lives: the light who shows us how to see – and how to respond to – each moment he gives us. With the Church we proclaim: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it. Alleluia.”
Most Reverend George H. Niederauer
Archbishop of San Francisco
