Happy Easter, St. Simon Parish! Welcome home. I love you all. Whether you have been here every Sunday or are joining us for the first time in a while, you belong here. We are glad you are with us. If you have a family member, a friend, or a neighbor who has drifted from church, today would be a beautiful day to reach out with a gentle invitation. Sometimes all it takes is one kind word to open a door. Today we celebrate the highest feast of the Christian year: the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, just after Jesus’ arrest, Mary Magdalene sings on behalf of all his stunned friends: “This was unexpected. What do I do now? Could we start again please?“ That question echoes across the centuries and into our lives. It is the question of everyone who has ever faced a loss, a setback, or a season of darkness and wondered if there could be something more.
The women who went to the tomb on that first Easter morning had no script for what was about to happen. They had watched Jesus die. The earth had shaken. The stone had sealed the end of the story. They came carrying grief and spices, expecting nothing more than a final act of love for a dead friend.
And then, everything changed. The earth shook again, the stone was rolled away, and an angel spoke: “Do not be afraid. He has been raised.“ Before they could process the news, Jesus himself appeared. As they clung to him, overwhelmed with joy, he gave them a commission: “Go, tell the disciples to go to Galilee. There they will see me.“
Galilee. Why Galilee? Because Galilee is where it all began. It was where they first heard Jesus’ voice, where they left their nets, where they witnessed healings and heard parables that turned the world upside down. Galilee was the place of their first encounter with the living God. It is where they first fell in love with Jesus. Now Jesus was sending them back to the beginning so they could start again with new eyes.
This Lent, we journeyed together under the theme “Return to Joy: Untying the Knots of Life.“ We carried knotted cords as reminders that we don’t have to untangle everything alone. We walked with Brother Mickey McGrath through story, art, and song, discovering that God is already at work in the tangled places. We fasted, we prayed, we made room. We accompanied Jesus through his suffering and death. And now, on this Easter morning, we discover that the greatest knot of all has been untied. Death itself has been loosened. The tomb is empty. Love, as it turns out, is the last word.
That is what Paul proclaims: you have passed from death to life. Your real life is now hidden in Christ. We can no longer say, “It is what it is,“ as if suffering and darkness are the final truth. Christ has entered into the deepest human pain and emerged on the other side, drawing all of us with him. Whenever we face grief, loss, or struggle, we know that Jesus has walked that road before us and walks it still beside us. He does not promise us a life without suffering, but he promises that suffering will never have the last word. Resurrection will.
So today, I want to invite you to do what Jesus told those first witnesses to do: return to your Galilee. Go back, in your memory and in your heart, to the moment when you first knew God was real. Maybe it was a quiet experience of prayer when you felt the Lord speaking directly to you. Maybe it was a moment of breathtaking beauty in nature that stopped you in your tracks and filled you with gratitude you couldn’t explain. Maybe it was holding a newborn child or grandchild and sensing, in that tiny face, the fingerprint of the Creator. Maybe it was a moment of unexpected kindness from a stranger, or a word of forgiveness that set you free. Whatever it was, that was your Galilee. That was God breaking through. And God is still breaking through.
Easter faith invites us to keep returning to those Galilee moments. Each time we do, we see them with deeper eyes. The Resurrection is present wherever love overcomes fear, hope rises from despair, and beauty surprises us in the midst of ordinary life. Peter, in his great Easter sermon from Acts, says it plainly: God raised Jesus up, and we are witnesses. We too are witnesses whenever we recognize the risen Christ at work in our world.
Perhaps today, gathered here together, we are creating another Galilee moment. Perhaps this very morning, in the music, in the Word, in the Eucharist, in the faces of those around you, Christ is meeting you again. May we leave this place with the joy and courage of those first Easter witnesses, ready to share the good news: Love is the last word. The knots have been untied. We can start again. Alleluia!
God bless,
Fr. Brendan