Homily for Holy Saturday, 3 April 2021 by Fr. Joe Tedesco

Christ is Risen. He is truly Risen. Praised be Jesus Christ! Now and forever!

Easter is the celebration, and fulfillment of Christ’s self-transcendent loving service. The glorification of selfless love into new life, into divinization, into the sharing of God’s own life.
Truly the glorification of the Son. And our sharing in his Life as people of faith. Our life of following Him is not in vain. Christ is the way forward; truly there is no other.

Through the days and rituals of Holy Week, we journeyed through the Passion of Jesus that told us clearly the cost of love. And we felt Jesus’ Love for each of us and for every person. Easter shows us the power of love and we can now savor it’s victory.

The many unique realities of the Easter story, we just heard, tell us of the universality of the Resurrection Good News. We heard the man in the white robe make the historic announcement, “Do Not be Afraid, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, he has been raised he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him.”

We heard about the three women who were the ones who encountered the empty tomb first. These women were the ones instructed to announce the Good news to Peter and the others. The important witness value of these women is that they were there at the crucifixion. They also accompanied Jesus in his journey to Jerusalem. They were long standing disciples and demonstrated their continued faithfulness to Jesus. We would do well to imitate them. To be faithful to Jesus as they were. And we, too, will come to that unity with Christ that we sense these holy women experienced.

So, they announced the Good News that Jesus‘ Resurrection opened the tomb. The finality of death is broken, the stone was rolled away. What a powerful image for the world. What a message, death is not the end. Love does conquer all things!

Tonight, we heard again the biblical revelation, that brings us to this self-transcendence, like Christ. That brings us to our conversion, our transforming experience and to put us in touch with the mystery of divine power at work in us. So, we seek to live with deeper faith and trust, the only way to understand our lives in God and touch the mystery of the Risen Christ within.

We too can give witness to Christ. We have come to know and to believe in the Risen Christ. Our lives are to be this proclamation. The resurrection is the light in our darkness. Easter begins the endless day of Christ.

How much our world, our current reality needs hope, needs the recognition of selfless love as the way forward. Not the individualism that demands personal liberty at the cost of the common good. Christ gives us hope – we keep looking at him. To grasp all he has taught us about God, about love, about our life together. It is community life that will sustain the world.
It is by selfless attention to the needs of all for the greater good that is our hope.

We are monks because Christ has called us to live in his love, to live in his new life, to touch in our prayer experience, his eternal reality now, in the mystery of God’s love for us. We give our lives to monastic life as witnesses to the power of resurrection, the power of new life that is ours, in faith. A life of prayer for the church and the world. To give witness to kingdom values, to contemplative living, that changes our response to all situations by focusing on God!

With this renew commitment to Christ, we will sing the Liturgy of the Hours of Easter all week. It’s one day. And the Easter Season is called the Great Sunday. The celebration goes on and on so to let it seep deep within and to take hold of every aspect of our lives. So to move closer to that point of transformation of our hearts and the hearts of all to Christ.

So, our time belongs to Christ. The whole Paschal mystery, the Passion, death and resurrection envelopes us in the glorious result of loving service. What hope is ours as we embrace this new life in Christ. And that we come to our life of self-transcendent loving service, as we seek to be one in Christ. If Holy Week teaches us anything, it must be that we hold on to the depth of this revelation, of oneness with Christ through our loving service.

Christ is the one who embodies this gift so powerfully. Shows us how to live it so wholeheartedly. We see it tonight in our Eucharist right here on our altar. Eucharist is the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And His offering of love for others. Tonight, Eucharist takes on special significance, for it celebrates the paschal event on the actual anniversary of its occurrence. And we do what Jesus asks of us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Our salvation is offered to us in this sacramental way. Jesus himself, the Word made flesh becomes the essential contact between us and God. Jesus is touching our lives here and now as we receive him in the Eucharist. This Easter night is indeed a special night for us.

We have new life in Christ Jesus the Risen one.