An Easter Message from Mount Michael
Easter Homily 2026
Given by Abbot Michael Liebl, with material from Cardinal Joseph Tobin originally presented Easter 2023
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From your vantage point, it is probably not obvious that the story of Jonah and the whale forms part of our Easter decorations – on the Easter candle and in the banners hanging from the balcony. Jonah the prophet fails to do as God asks. So he is swallowed by a whale for three days, and is then spared after repenting. It is a narrative about God’s universal mercy and the futility of running from divine purpose. But are we really to believe that a person could survive three days in the belly of a whale, and then be regurgitated?
In a similar way, given our experience with the reality of death, it is little surprise that the resurrection story is a mixture of shock, amazement and disorientation. For example, the disciples don’t come to the empty tomb and say, ‘Well, there you go; he did just what he said he was going to do.’ What was it like for the disciples in the first few hours after the empty tomb had been found, after Mary Magdalene had delivered her message of seeing the Lord? They can see for themselves that the tomb is empty. But now they find themselves on uncertain ground. So bright is the light on this first Easter morning that even the familiar face of Jesus becomes unrecognizable to them. But as the story goes in John’s gospel, the anxiously gathered disciples in their locked upper room were ‘filled with joy’ when they saw Jesus among them. They were jolted out of the usual and predictable. It is a bit like the story of Jonah and the whale. Hard to believe. It is surely not clear how someone crucified could be brought back to life. It turns out that the world was even more strange and wondrous than either the disciples or we ever imagined.
Easter is arguably the least commercialized of all the Christian holy days. Sure, there are lots of Easter bunnies, who incongruously seem to hop about delivering Easter eggs. But, as far as I know, no one camps overnight outside of the local CVS or Walgreens for fear that the jelly beans will be sold out. I am not sure that the martyr, St. Valentine, would recognize his feast day. Think about it – Valentine Day’s cards and heart shaped candies with little messages like love spelled L U V. I guess they wanted to make sure the word would fit. You know for sure the beer and booze barons pay a lot more attention to St. Patrick’s Day than they ever do to Easter. Perhaps the message of Easter is not so easily domesticated as those of the other feast days. There is something untamed about Easter – a message that is difficult to manipulate or to water down. It is a story that now spans nearly two millennia and features men and women who have been stunned by joy, unsure if the story of the resurrection could really be true.
Easter joy does not translate to a world that guarantees a permanently happy society – a world free from tension, pain and disappointment’. Easter joy affirms that whatever happens in an unpredictable world – love and reconciliation are ceaselessly at work. On Easter we can imagine like Peter and John peering into the darkness of an empty tomb that joy is possible. This joy is not simply the confident expectation of life after death, our deaths. If that is all Easter means, then Karl Marx was correct in condemning religions – especially Christianity – as the opiate of the people. What makes the joy of Easter resist domestication? The wounds. The scars. The resurrected body of Jesus still bore the scars from nail and spear, as Thomas himself demanded to touch. But the wounds of Jesus take on new significance in light of his resurrection. While clear reminders of the violence of crucifixion, the wounds in his body reveal something more. God’s work of resurrection—indeed God’s new creation —begins in our wounded world. The struggle for justice and mercy, the creation of beauty and the celebration of truth, acts of love and the creation of communities of kindness and forgiveness — all these all matter, and they matter forever. Take away the resurrection, and these things are important for the present but irrelevant for the future and hence not all that important after all even now. The vocation to holiness, to reflecting the image of God, is made possible by Jesus’ victory on the cross and is energized by the Spirit of the risen Jesus present among us all, among all of us wounded creatures bearing wounds and scars. The point of the resurrection is that cynicism, despair and death do not have the final word — either for human beings or for God’s creation. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not die, but might have eternal life.