Easter Wednesday
‘Many years ago…’ — I find myself saying that with increasing frequency now — I was on a tube train in London and overheard one person say to the other, ‘Easter is on Sunday this year.’ And I thought, ‘Umh, so we really are living in a post-Christian culture.’ More recently, a friend who was with us over Easter, had mentioned his visit to another person who responded, ‘Oh, do they still do that sort of thing?’- consigning us all to history, which makes our witness even more vital, more important; that need for others to recognise Christ at the breaking of the bread and the hearing of the word. But this will not happen if we too have not risen with Christ, able, not only to stand and declare our faith, but, like the lame man in the first reading, to leap with joy and, like the disciples at Emmaus to have our hearts ‘burn within us’ as we discover Christ, not only in our formal liturgy, but in all our encounters with others and, indeed, with all creatures. So there’s a call here for continued conversion. Today, we have the privilege of receiving an already baptised Christian into the Catholic Church and a Catholic in need of confirmation to complete her sacramental attachment to the Catholic tradition, or rather, in both cases, they begin their journey once again towards the heavenly Jerusalem to deepen their recognition of Christ in all things so that God may be all in all for all of us. It’s all or nothing.