3rd Sunday of Easter 19 April, 2026 Sermon

3^rd Sunday of Easter  19 April 2026 Revelation

God likes to reveal Himself in stages. He wants us to know Him, to interact with Him. He appreciates that we can only take things in, bit by bit.

God can be seen as a remote figure, not greatly relevant.

There is a lot we cannot know about God, but there is always something more that we can know.

We learn about God from the Scriptures, from the Liturgy, the teachings of the Church, the inspiration of the saints.

We come to appreciate His perfection, His benevolence to us.

We discover the need to keep God central in our lives. We do not push Him to the side, whether through some grievance with Him, or through indifference or distraction.

Some of His mysterious nature He reveals to us when we are ready to absorb what He tells us.

Take the Emmaus story. The disciples had a good start in that they were weeping for Christ.

Then they took a wrong turning by admitting defeat too quickly.

Then they recovered again by recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

God wants us to know him better, to understand his words, miracles, prophecies etc

The success of Our Lord’s coming was total as regards Himself but not yet complete at ground level.

To help others grasp this teaching, it means some have to take the lead and give good example; to make God present in this place and time.

Much of the world is godless so it is a huge task, but this is a good place to be in the process – here in the house of the Lord.

Some things we understand, and one of those things is that God wants people to know him,  

If we call on God only when things are going wrong, that is treating Him like a repair-man. We don’t expect to know the names of all the people that do jobs for us; we do need to know God's name.

With God it is highly personal, and He wants us to respond  in that way as far as we can.

He wants us to take an interest in Him; to be aware of His personal presence, really acting for the good.

Everyone should be doing this. It would be a much better world if they did; for the moment we will have to get by on reduced numbers!

Once we start on the path of knowing God we will be drawn further and further along that path. God is loveable even though mysterious.

We pool our talents and see the whole Body moving forward.

We help each  other to find Him, and know Him better. One person is up, the other down; another day it can be the other way round.

Our public communal worship is important.

Today many see  the point of religion as ‘helping people’ and that is the only point for them.

But we need to know God as well, for our own benefit and because He commands it. He does not need our love but He desires it.

Those who want to know will know. Seek and you shall find. Mt 7,7

Does it look like nothing is moving in the spiritual world? There are things going on that we cannot detect from the physical senses.

However the holier our lives the more aware we become and the more we do find out.

Meanwhile we walk with the Lord, like the two disicples.

2nd Sunday of Easter A 12 April 2026 Sermon

2^nd Sunday of Easter A  12 April 2026 Expectant faith 

It was one thing to rise from the dead. Jesus then had another task to perform, and that was  harder – to convince people, including even His disciples that He had indeed risen!

The last chapters of each of the four gospels give accounts of the kind of resistance He met. The apostles just could not believe it; they were not used to things going that right.

We are so accustomed to bad news that when we hear the good we are inclined to doubt it. What’s the catch, we might say.

Our world is in many ways hostile to the faith, and this can affect us. We still have the faith but it is harder to flourish when surrounded by negative factors, such as ridicule, scepticism, denial, persecution etc.

Even those who had been with Jesus for years still had trouble believing His word, though they had seen so many miracles.

Jesus told His disciples He would rise (Mk 8,31),  so why did they not believe it?

The disciples believed, but not yet enough. They were too much accustomed to the world of death to be ready for resurrection.

Now they had more life in their midst than they could handle. They were joyful, but needed a new way of grasping things.

For our part, are we thinking resurrection? We are in the same position as those first disciples.  We need to build up our faith, our expectancy of  God's marvellous actions in our midst.

And as always when we need something big it is from God that our help will come.

Jesus gave His followers a necessary lift. He appeared to them over and over until it finally sank in.

He does the same for us, not with appearances, but evidence of His goodness in our midst.

Much of it comes through the saints, canonised or not, who have given witness by their lives of the truth of the Resurrection. They have gone out into the cold wind of resistance in all its forms, and kept the flame alight.

We share in the Resurrection of Christ, firstly by coming to faith in Him, then by acting according to His teaching, then also by receiving Him sacramentally.

The apostles reached a level of identification with Christ such that even the shadow of  Peter would heal the sick (Ac 5, 15-16) or contact (Ac 19,11-12) with handkerchiefs, aprons,  of Paul.

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One thing the apostles had to do was organize the Church, sending people here and there, esgtablishing new dioceses and parishes (as we would call them now). All one Church, just getting bigger.

It means that disciples come and go from different necessities, which means sometimes sad farewells, as more and more varied needs musdt be attended to.

Thus, in this parish we have reached a need for some re-positioning, and this always means some sadness, but of course some new friendships can be made, and life goes on. In our case resurrection life.

We are destined to meet again, in Heaven if not before.

In our particular case the moves are not so dramatic, all being in the same city.

But near or far, we are always bound by our link with Christ. We are at one with all who are at one with Him.

1 Th 5, 11 Therefore  encourage one another, and build each other up. Just as in fact you are doing.’  That’s what we will do, by God's grace.

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Vigil 2026 Sermon

Holy Saturday 4 April 2026  Keeping vigil

When we keep vigil it means we are waiting for something to happen which has not happened yet, but we greatly hope it will happen.

It can be associated with anxiety, like attending to a sickness; or with joy, as in welcoming a returning traveller.

We have both anxiety and joy in our dealings with God.

We are anxious if  certain problems we face seem larger than we are and might be too much. But we continue to wait and pray for a happy resolution of the problem.  In  our anxiety we reaffirm our trust in God.

We are joyful in our vigil as we sense the power of God  coming through, like the first light of dawn breaking up the darkness.

Our Easter vigil is of the joyful kind, as vigils go. We know that whatever anguish we feel at Christ’s death, the certainty of  His resurrection will be stronger.

This is why we have a Saturday Mass for the Resurrection, and not just go straight to the Sunday. The Saturday Mass forces us to express trust in God to bring events to their best conclusion. Expectant waiting is something we get used to in our faith life.

On Sunday morning we allow ourselves to feel the full force of Jesus’s resurrection. That is more straightforward. He is risen and will never go back to the tomb.

Fortunately the joyful side will eventually be the whole reality and not have to share the stage with anxiety and other negative factors.

Jesus spent only three days in the tomb and every other day outside of it, and He certainly will not be going back there.

This is ‘keeping vigil’ - the more we expect things to go the right way the more joyful we are in anticipation.

And the better we will behave, because we learn a divine patience, God is always acting for good. We know that even if we cannot detect the precise way He is doing that.

We  have just heard many readings, shedding light on various aspects of our faith. Whenever we mention the past, it is to remind us how much trouble we have seen, but gradually we will emerge from the rubble and have only joy!

We reclaim the past not ignoring it, but drawing wisdom from it.

Then finally tonight we go into the Mass as the crowning event , still anticipating, because other things need to happen – but we are more secure because we have come so far. Those readings are our own story, which is still being written.

After it all, we express gratitude for what has been and what will be.

We do not become jaded or cynical, thinking that talk of a better future is just wishing on a star.

We will not become cynical if we pray consistently. We do  not accept that the world can never change.

Worlds can change if people change. And that much any person can achieve.