Easter Sunday reflection with Fr Terry Tastard - 8 April 2012

Resurrection - Caroline Lees

'He is going before you.' This was the angel's message to the disciples. Jesus was ahead of them. When they got there, they would find that he was there already. This message, so specific to the disciples and Galilee, speaks to us too. God is always outstripping us. Sometimes our life changes according to plan. Sometimes we find ourselves elsewhere by chance. No matter: God is already there.

It is true on the cosmic level and true on the personal level. I watched Professor Brian Cox explain brilliantly in his TV series on the cosmos how, across immense, unimaginable aeons of time, the universe will run down and finally become extinct.

Well, yes. But the universe is not a chance creation. We believe that it is the creation of a loving God, and within this still unfolding universe, God is already at work, drawing creation back to himself. He does it through his Son, and the power of Christ's Resurrection. In Christ, God has defeated death and placed in the hearts of all his followers the way to life eternal. We are the answering part of the universe. We respond to God's love with our love. We speak our Yes to God's Yes. We are where the love that brought the universe into being is recognised. We are the people of the resurrection, where God is already ahead of the forces of death and decay, bringing eternal life, a life which is so much greater than they can ever be. Through faith and baptism, we are the place where God makes this a reality.

Human achievements are immense. Our glittering cities turn night into day. We can extract oil from the seabed or turn sunlight into electricity. Our scientists have unlocked the mysteries of the human gene and pursue the atom into ever smaller units. We can orbit the earth and speak to people on the other side of the world. Yet, for all our achievements, we are powerless in the face of death. Death comes to the most powerful people in the world, just as it comes to the humblest; to the cleverest and to the simplest. It is a great leveller.

Here, in our moment of greatest weakness, God still goes before us. Through Christ he has been the human face of love. Through Christ he has entered into suffering and death. Through Christ he has opened the way to eternal life, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. He outstrips and outflanks the forces of death.

The love that God shows us in the cross points us forward to the resurrection, for Christ has shown that his love for us is greater than his love of life itself. In his book Introduction to Christianity Pope Benedict (at that time Joseph Ratzinger) wrote this about the cross and resurrection: 'Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger than death and more than death.' On Good Friday God shows us exactly that kind of love. In this love, Christ lays down his life for the world. And in this same love, the Father raises up Christ as a sign that love has overcome death. Christ has gone ahead on our behalf, he is part of that redeeming love where the Father outstrips sin and death. Love has overcome death, because love incarnate has laid down its life for others. Then in the sacraments this love is given back to us as the source of life, a life that reaches past the here and now to carry us into eternity.

Fr Terry Tastard is Parish Priest of St Mary's, East Finchley, in north London. For Eastertide you might find useful the palm-size book of meditations which he wrote to accompany the icons of the resurrection painted by the Russian-trained iconographer Caroline Lees. The book is beautifully illustrated. It is called The Way to Life (St Paul's Publishing: ISBN 085439 721 3) and carries a foreword by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.