“Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” [John 20.9]

{INTRO ­optional, when congregation has candles}

I remember the first time I ever led the Easter Vigil ceremony. It was completely dark. The only light came from a fire burning at the entrance to the Church. And, just at the right moment, a little girl asked her mother “Mummy, why is it so dark?” I don’t know what her mother said, but what I wanted to say was “because this is what the World would have been like if Christ had not been raised.” We would have been, as St Paul says, “the most unfortunate of all people. But Christ has in fact been raised, the first fruits of all who have fallen asleep.” That little fire at the entrance lit the Paschal candle. That Paschal candle came into the Church and spread throughout the Church to all the little candles you now hold in your hands. Look closely at it for that is the symbol of God’s presence - his heat and light in your life.

But I will remember that little girl’s question for a long time“why is it so dark?” Because it is the same question that so many people have asked of the Paschal Mystery, even from the very first Easter Sunday‘Why was it necessary that the Christ should suffer? Why was it necessary that he should rise from the dead?’ }

I have a friend called Colin who is a cocaine addict. He has now not used cocaine for eight years, but he knows that the seeds of addiction remain in him. But, as he says, he likes being alive and so he has learned, slowly, gradually and painfully not to use cocaine. For him, he believes, the alternative is death. He works with an organization called Narcotics Anonymous - an organization which has helped many addicts all over the world to come to terms with their addiction. He tells me his experience is that for an addict to give up his drug, he must rise from the dead. And so, when Colin meets an addict he offers them a simple choice. Do you want to live or do you want to die? Many people, in fact most people, in the agonies of cocaine addiction, just want to die. Their agonies are such that they just want them to be over. They have to be given the hope that life ­ let alone life free of drugs - really is possible.

The first thing is that without God it is not possible. Without God, people just do not have enough reason to choose life. Life, for them has constricted to a little circle of white crystal on a piece of tinfoil. Life has nothing better to offer them than that. And if that’s the best there is to life, then why not take the alternative?

The second is that without God, people do not have the strength to choose life. I do not believe there is any worse suffering in the world than the knowledge that the only pleasure you have in life is a trick of the mind played by the chemistry of the most mind-altering drug known to medical science. Only faith gives the strength to deal with reality as it truly is.

The third is that without God, people do not have the hope to choose life. Without some prospect that all this ultimately means something, there is no point in living through all the suffering that is required to become clean and dry ­ drug and alcohol free. It’s just not worth it. Only the genuine hope life is worthwhile gives people the hope to invest the remainder of their time on earth.

What is true of those drug addicts is - I believe - true of us all, but perhaps in smaller ways. We all have our addictions and bad habits - most commonly an addiction to having my own way. We all need to be healed. And that is why the Christ had to suffer and to die. That he should have been to death - the lowest point any of us will ever reach - and redeemed it all. We cannot go lower than Christ has already been - for us. We cannot make ourselves less than he has already made himself - for us. He has destroyed death and restored life - for us. “And that we might live no longer for ourselves but for him, he sent the holy spirit as his first gift to those who believe - to complete his work on earth and bring us to the fullness of grace.” That grace is being fulfilled in us every day within the Church. That is our privilege and our responsibility. Like Colin, we who have been brought back from the dead have the responsibility of continuing to choose life. And also of bringing others the same chance to choose life. Until we ourselves have been raised, we too had failed to understand the teaching of the scriptures - that he must rise from the dead.

Let us stand and choose life together and renew the Promises of our Baptism.

Mount Street Jesuit Centre,
114 Mount Street,
London SW1K 3AH.
ENGLAND.
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