Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 5 April 2026, Easter Sunday, The Resurrection of the Lord

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

What was that moment of resurrection like? Nobody saw it. Was it silent? or bright? Was there anything to see at all with our human eyes? It probably seemed like there was nothing happening. Up until the moment of Jesus’ death, if you think about it, nobody was in heaven. Only beyond the Cross could Christ go to work calling forth all the just people who had died in the milennia before and were waiting the moment of redemption. At the moment of resurrection, imagine the overwhelming joy in all creation—the promise of perfect community with God that we are still waiting for but has been underway already now for a long time.

God often does things in secret. His secret Mysteries are then revealed later when we are ready, when the world is ready to understand. The Epiphany of our Lord was the moment that God revealed the Mystery of the Incarnation of his Son in human flesh, Jesus’ conception in his mother, Mary, the secret event that happened months before. People were still looking for the Messiah not knowing he was already among them. The Last Supper was the moment that Jesus revealed, in his own sacrifice, the fulfillment of the Mystery of God’s covenant with his people many centuries before. He revealed himself as the lamb of sacrifice whose blood would be the sign for death to pass over us.

The resurrection of Jesus, another secret event, was not revealed until the next day when he appeared to his Apostles and faithful in different ways. They had been locked in their houses fearful of what would come next. A couple of his disciples decided to leave Jerusalem that morning. After all, they witnessed the cruelty of the mob and what they had done in killing Jesus. Who would die next?

The resulting confusion and fear are quite justified. We find ourselves in difficult unpredictable times. We can’t control this any more than fly. But we remember: we are not in control. God doesn’t do these things according to our plans, but according to his own. Sometimes we might wish he would follow our plan more, but I ultimately know he is God, not me. And it’s a good thing, because he knows how to overcome evil, how to rise from the dead, and calls us into his new life for ever. I have no idea how to do that.

Embrace the secret work of God’s love in your life, even in moments of suffering, insecurity, anxiety, even loss. We know he is working in all places and situations. We must trust this even if we can’t see it right now. This is how God has always worked, without a fanfare or show. Easter joy always comes out of our joining Jesus in his sacrifice of love. It involves a Cross freely accepted. And it is on that Cross with Jesus when he hands on to us his saving mission, to be his body on the Cross only in order to be his glorified body for ever, because of his gift of baptism.

People in the early Church called themselves people of the eighth day, because of this secret and unexpected development in God’s creation: God created for six days and rested on the Sabbath, Shabbat, Saturday. But Christ, God the Son rose from the dead on the eighth, the Lord’s Day, or Sunday. The work of creation is recreated on Sunday, every Sunday we celebrate resurrection. He is the alpha and the omega, the first day and the last day, the origin and destination for all believers.

Let us learn humility, then, and selflessness because these are the things that allow us to lay down our own entitlements and discover the overwhelming reality of God’s love and how we fit in his plan, not how he fits in ours. And let us commit to praying for one another every day, to help those most in need of God’s help.

We will hold each other close in prayer and all peoples will get through this time of difficulty together, faithfully in God and to what they know of him. It will be a new day like that day when, between the Cross and the empty tomb, Jesus will call us forth from all our locked places of waiting and suffering into the light and freedom of his love.

 

The Lord be with you,