An Easter Message, 2025
 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

In the Church again this year you will see the Easter Garden. It is just some grass, flowers, and the empty tomb with the stone rolled away. Every year I love to see this quiet demonstration of the Easter miracle. That hollow space, once the mark of death’s final word, now speaks of life uncontainable. The stone rolled away did not simply reveal what was gone; it proclaimed what had been unleashed. Emptiness, in the light of Easter, is not loss, it is release. Christ’s absence from the tomb is his presence in all the world.

So too, our memories, are empty tombs. Those quiet places in our hearts where voices have faded and faces dimmed are not empty in sorrow, but radiant with what has been given. The people we remember and pray for, from many years ago, remain with us. They share the mystery of the empty tomb of that shared memory, however fleeting, for their lives once touched ours, and in us, they still speak. In each gesture of kindness, each prayer whispered, each breath of love, they are part of the Spirit’s living stream that flows through us all.

We celebrate today not only the resurrection of Jesus, but the way his risen life fills ours. He did not rise to remain apart, but to be known in us and with us. Each week, as we gather at the altar, we receive that life: his body in our bodies, his blood in our veins. The emptiness of the tomb becomes the fullness of our life. It is no longer just we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

And so with the saints of every age, with our beloved dead and the whole communion of the faithful, we sing the song of victory, echoing the voice of the 15^th Century poet William Dunbar in words that come to us down the ages:

“Done is a battle on the dragon black,

Our champion Christ confounded has his force:

The gates of hell are broken with a crack,

The sign triumphal raised is of the cross,

The devils tremble with hideous voice,

The souls are ransomed and to the bliss can go,

Christ with his blood pays our ransom price

Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.”

The Lord is risen from the grave.

The tomb is empty.

And the world is full.

Alleluia.

A blessed and Happy Easter to you all!

-Fr. Tim Cole | Easter 2025