The trouble today with the followers of Christ in the West is that so often we seem to have lost that sense of excitement and enthusiasm for our religion. So often we appear to be a Church without fire and commitment. Alas, we have become indifferent, tame and neutral with regard to the astonishing life-changing claims of the Gospel. Our Christianity has become far too comfortable and easy – consequently, far too often the followers of Jesus today seem only to display life-less-ness. But a dead religion is no earthly use to anybody. I wonder, how is your life affected by the Risen Lord? What do you do to show the world that you are an Easter person?

Forgive us Risen Lord, for allowing our Easter-ness to become stale or invisible. Help us to regain your freshness. So often we regard the resurrection as an optional extra, but if the claims of the Gospel are true – how dare we regard Christ’s resurrection and Christ’s abiding presence as optional?

On Easter morning we sing with a sort of new washed gladness that Christ is Risen, but do we stop to ask ourselves – how authentic is this gladness in us? I believe that the Easter morning joy is likely to remain optional – unless there is far more of it than the experience of one morning out of 365. It really is ridiculous to regard Easter as merely one aspect of our faith – an isolated event to be celebrated annually on one Sunday each spring. Unless the resurrection pervades and dominates the whole of our Christianity then we shall continue to miss out on the liveliness which God longs for us to have.

In so many parishes today, the elect seem merely concerned with survival. But the Lord of the Church shows through the glory of the Easter event that he isn’t interested in mere survival. Easter doesn’t speak to us about survival or existence – it speaks of New Life. Starting from now we need to rediscover that the risen-ness of Christ is our mainspring – only then can we hope to share in the permanent liveliness of Easter. As twenty first century followers of the Risen Lord we believe that the world was charged with new possibilities when God raised his Son – Jesus from the tomb. The only possible explanation for the transformation which occurred in the lives of the first disciples, turning them into a world converting power, was the reality of the resurrection. Alas, so often in the West there has often been more fear than faith in our Christianity, more gloom than joy! No wonder that so many turn their back on us and look desperately elsewhere for life, for meaning in life, and for the living joy that only a living faith can give.

Yet, whenever I read the New Testament I am struck by the fact that those books were written by men who passionately believed in a Living Lord. They don’t worry or argue how Christ has come alive. What they know, beyond doubt, is that Christ is alive. They themselves suffered and died – and some of them as horribly as their Lord had. But that didn’t make any difference. St. Paul, for one, was certain that nothing, not even death itself, could separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

God grant us the faith and grace to hear those words again, to have the courage and humility to accept them as the truth, and to live at all times in the Joy that comes from accepting and rejoicing in the liveliness that comes from knowing Jesus as Risen Lord.

With Paschal Blessings,

FATHER DAVID