Easter Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

The Three Marys at the tomb - Monaco Lorenzo 1396 - Louvre, Paris. Wiki Image

The Resurrection of the Lord - Pascha

Christ is risen, he is truly risen!

Though the recent debate about the sudden recovery of Christianity amongst us may not be quite the numerical success story as some people suggest, one thing seems to be at least true and verifiable, that our faith is far from dying! I tend to ignore the religious culture wars, the noise of those who prefer the Tridentine Mass. or the nostalgia for things past. These are not the heart of the proclamation of our faith, they may be worthy and important debates, but we are a Church firmly committed to the teachings and journey of the Second Vatican Council.

The vision of 'aggiornamento' that John XXIII believed in has had immense and positive effects, like you I hope, the richness of the Scriptures are now open before us, we hear them in our own languages and are able to study them together.

We pray for the world and its needs in our restored intercessions at Mass, Sacramental rites and the Liturgy of the Hours, whilst the whole journey to Baptism and Confirmation in the Rites of Initiation with the restoration of the catechumenate has become something important for the local Church.

It is here, now at the Easter ceremonies where we see a steady growth of people seeking to join us in the family of the Church through baptism and confirmation. This is the life of Christ gently pushing through the clamour and conceits of our present age, it is like many other things in our Church life, a demonstrable symbol of the Spirit at work and the Lord Jesus Christ coming amongst us. So this Easter/Paschal season pray for all the newly baptised and those confirmed that they may grow as disciples of our good Lord, and also that we may renew in our own lives the faith we profess this season as we renew again our own baptismal vows.

As we celebrate the resurrection perhaps we might do well to immerse ourselves in the two gospels given us for the day mass, that from John 20: 1-9 and Matthew 28:1-10, both of whose accounts place at centre stage the ministry of the women. It is high time we all recognised the importance of their place in the narratives of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus . They are there for a purpose, to demonstrate that in Christ there is as Paul tells us in Galatians 3:28 :"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus".

The place of the women in the Easter stories is an antidote to any attempt at creating false status in our tradition, because their role teaches us that social, ethnic, and gender distinctions cannot affect one's spiritual standing or equality before God. Hierarchy, particularly in ministry is not about any specialised place in the Kingdom of God-even if some choose to try and make it so. The women whose status was less than the men at this time, nevertheless become the first witnesses to the risen Lord, a detail because of its sheer oddity, in terms of the guaranteed witness statement of that time where women had no voice, which gives strange and wonderful truthfulness to the eyewitness accounts of the gospels that underlines the truth of his rising from the dead. Here again is the Spirit pointing out to us that these women emphasize the new and powerful removal of barriers to create unity in the Kingdom of God.

Christ's death and resurrection reveals an equal access to salvation through faith in the risen One, not power or personality. We still have a lot to learn from the Lord, and much to do in our life of faith, but we go forward bathed in the new light of Christ's resurrection. For at the heart of our faith is a person not a system, Jesus the Chris our incarnate Lord whose total embrace of human life and experience means that we too, his sisters and brothers of every age and race and gender belong to the risen Christ and the life and light of the Triune God dwells in us.

Christ is risen from the tomb, trampling down death by death and to those in the grave he has given life!

Lectio

Hymn

1. Battle is o'er, hell's armies flee: raise we the cry of victory with abounding joy resounding, alleluia, alleluia.

2. Christ who endured the shameful tree, o'er death triumphant welcome we, our adoring praise outpouring, alleluia, alleluia.

3. On the third morn from death rose he, clothed with what light in heaven shall be, our unswerving faith deserving, alleluia, alleluia.

4. Hell's gloomy gates yield up their key, paradise door thrown wide we see; never tiring be our choiring, alleluia, alleluia.

5. Lord, by the stripes they laid on thee, grant us to live from death set free, this our greeting still repeating, alleluia, alleluia.

Simphonia Sirenum (1695) tr. R A Knox (1888-1957) - Words: © Burns & Oates, Music: the Executor of the late Dom A Gregory Murray OSB (1905-1992)

Poem by Diarmuid Ó Murchú

What happened [to] the women on the first Easter Day
Breaks open a daring horizon,
Inviting all hearts to discern.
Mid the grieving and trauma of loss,
The horror to stand at the foot of a Cross.
A body we think was buried in haste,
And a tomb that was empty but restless in taste.
Empowering a strange group of women. [stanza 2]

What happened to those on the first Day of Easter,
The faithful disciples by Magdalene led?
A subverted truth the patriarchs dread.
Beyond all the theories that time has construed,
Beyond the oppression we have too long endured.
The first ones commissioned for Easter proclaim
A woman-led mission we've brutally maimed.
But we can't keep subverting empowerment. [stanza 5]

Resurrection still flourishes and always it will,
Imbued with a truth that time will fulfil.
What women empowered at the dawning breakthrough
will bear fruit in season
despite all the treason.
'Cos justice will render what deserves to endure. [stanza 6] [1]

Ó Murchú reflects:

Of all the Gospel material related to women, none is more enigmatic and empowering than the role of the women in post-Resurrection space . . . I [wrote of] the women on Calvary remaining faithful to the end. For those women, it was anything but an end. Even when the male disciples fled in fear, they remained to await a new frightening dawn that would propel them into a mission transcending all other missionary endeavours recorded in Gospel lore. The early church seemed unprepared for the archetypal breakthrough and proceeded to consign the women to historical invisibility.