The message of Easter is one of great joy. After the penitential season of Lent and Holy Week Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday, the most important feast on the liturgical calendar, beginning a season of fifty days of rejoicing and giving thanks, marking the occasion of the triumphant victory of Jesus over sin and death on the Cross. Even in times of struggle, sorrow and great challenge; Christians have come to experience consolation and peace through the triumph of the Cross and looking towards the Virgin Mary, the model disciple, at the foot of the Cross.
The perfect love of Jesus heals and transforms the human heart. It is by surrendering, letting go, handing over, the struggles of life – big and small – to Jesus on the Cross that one can find a path to real inner fulfilment, a peace which money can’t buy, and a treasure which has eternal value. The practice of faith offers a way to freedom from the many things which can enslave human beings – such as attachments to material things and the distractions of contemporary culture.
Christians can enter into the blessedness of Christ through the practice of contemplative prayer. A silent space is especially important to encounter Jesus in the frenetic ‘always on’ technology dependent world in which we live. In the Catholic tradition, an opportunity to sit with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration offers a special way to prolong the nourishing real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist while the Sacrament of Reconciliation offers the grace of being reconciled and embraced in God’s healing love. The gift of faith and the grace of growing in friendship with Jesus infuses the human heart with a supernatural love and a kind of interior peace that is infectious and bears fruit in acts of kindness, mercy and compassion.
Easter Sunday is followed by the celebration of the Sunday of Divine Mercy in the Catholic Church, symbolising the importance for Christians of witnessing to mercy in the midst of a world that is sometimes characterised by false ideologies fuelled by greed, glamour, and the attraction of wealth and fame. Practicing mercy however offers a sure way to a dignified, hope-filled and peaceful way of life, witnessing to the Risen Lord, guided by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself promises “Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.” (John 14:27).
