While it may not be surrounded by the same kind of excitement as Christmas, Easter is the most essential and central celebration for Christians. Christmas is the celebration of God becoming man in Jesus Christ. Easter is the culmination of the life and work of Jesus.
During Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter), we celebrate the great saving mysteries of our faith.
We celebrate the gift of the Eucharist – the Lord’s Body and Blood, which is given to his disciples and to all of us at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday.
We celebrate the Lord’s suffering and death on Good Friday, where our Lord, who was without sin, dies to take away all of our sins.
Easter then is the triumph of good over evil; the destruction of sin; the promise of hope; the chance to live with God in heaven. By dying and then rising, Jesus destroys the power of death. Death is no longer an end. Death is a transition to eternal life. Jesus is truly risen, body and soul, at Easter!
From the beginning of time, God desired to make man in his own image and likeness. God desired that man should live in a communal relationship with himself. Because of our imperfect nature, we have turned our back on God over and over again, through sin.
The beauty of Easter is that God never turns his back on us. God consistently gives us the opportunity to live in his love, if we are people of faith, hope and love.
In the midst of a chaotic and often confusing world, our Father in heaven extends his hand to us in the most remarkable way ever known to man – by sending his own Son to suffer, die, and rise for the sake of our salvation.
When we think about how much God loves us, he loves us to the point of death. God has made the ultimate sacrifice for us. Our necessary response is belief in the gift of the Lord’s resurrection and living out that faith, by expressing the love of God to all those with whom we come in contact.
This Easter let us all recognize what a tremendous gift God gives us in offering up His only Son for our sakes and let us show to the world that this gift has a real effect in our lives, the most important effect possible – the salvation of our souls.
Father Robert Keighron is a priest at St. Helen’s Roman Catholic Church in Howard Beach.
