Rejoice!
The Lord Jesus is risen!
Don’t look for him at the cemetery.
He’s not there.
If you claim to be a disciple I warn you:
He is coming to you.
I pray you don’t miss his coming.
I also pray that you allow him to touch you with the same effects like for St Thomas
who upon meeting Jesus
was shaken to the core of his being
and proclaimed: “My Lord and my God!”

When a little boy, who during his short life was paralyzed, blind and spoke only few words, died his father organized a gravestone for him. It shows the boy standing on his wheel chair, smiling broadly and stretching his arms to heaven. The plaque on that memorial states: “Confided to the chair most of his young life, he is now free of his earthly burdens.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers in faith! Today we follow Mary of Magdala, Peter and John to a cemetery as well. However what we find there is not a moving memorial. We find an empty tomb.
            I grew up on a farm where every spring we were getting excited when hens were sitting on eggs. One year a cousin of mine from the city came. She was joining us on our checking trips to the hen house. One morning she went there on her own and soon she was running back screaming: “Come quickly something horrible has happened. The hen is gone. Her eggs are damaged.” When we checked it for ourselves we were rolling laughing as we could see dry egg shells. Eggs had hatched. We took her on a searching trip around the farm where eventually we found the missing hen with a dozen or so chickens happily going about their business. What we realized was that our cousin had no idea of egg hatching.
Our first reading for this Mass shows us a Roman officer who knew some things about Jesus but Cornelius was like that cousin of mine. He was missing some crucial bits. When Peter came he told the man that Jesus was not simply a clever mentor but that Jesus was killed by crucifying, that after three days he was raised by God and that Jesus was appointed by God to judge everyone, alive or dead.
The parents of that little disabled boy believed that death freed him from his limitations. If today we are in this church it is because we believe that the death and resurrection of this Jesus of Nazareth has freed us from all limitations we are confined to due to our sinfulness. We believe that by accepting with trust the message of the Crucified Lord who was raised to life and glorified at the right hand of his Father in heaven we are given a chance to love and live to the full.
If you read today’s Gospel carefully you can discover that Mary of Magdala visited not only one tomb. That first tomb was empty but the other tomb had some people still alive in it. It was the house where the Apostles gathered. There was a grave atmosphere there. They were depressed, frightened, disappointed, and ashamed. Can you smell death in that room? What did get them out of that deadly mood? It was the message of the empty tomb of Jesus.
My Dear Fellow believers! You don’t need to go to a cemetery to smell death. You can smell death in many beautiful houses where you can find people who, like those Apostles, don’t live life to the full. They are controlled by their fears, selfishness, addictions, destructive desires etc. The Good News of the Crucified, Risen and Glorified Jesus Christ is the hope and remedy for that. Easter is God’s promise of freedom of all limitations stopping us from loving and living to the full.
In the name of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ I tell you: Do not be afraid. Believe Jesus. Trust Jesus. Give your life to Jesus. Then not a monument on your grave but your very life will show that freedom of limitations to love and live to the full. The freedom God provides for those who believe him, who trust him, who surrender their life to him. And when eventually that happy day comes for you to pass over from this life to the next you will hit the ground running in heaven. You will pass over from the life lived to the full here on earth to the life of glory in heaven where God is the satisfaction of all our good desires.

Have you ever had in your family this system of star awards for children? You know, for being good and doing good things the offspring would be awarded with star stickers which eventually could be traded for a movie ticket, a special dessert, or whatever. Now imagine this situation: The parents are downstairs when they hear a big bang upstairs and a child starts crying franticly. Would the husband say to his wife: Sweetheart could you go and check out the star chart on the fridge?... They would be running upstairs ignoring the star award system, wouldn’t they? Even if they broke their legs on the way they would still drag themselves upstairs.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We believe that God wants us to do good but this celebration of Good Friday faces us with even more striking belief: If we get into a trouble, when we sin, when we are at our lowest, even if no one else hears that there is a big bang piercing the highest heaven and waking up even the laziest angels and Our God, Our Heavenly Father is frantically rushing to help us. If you miss that point you will never comprehend and appreciate the story of Jesus’ trial, way of the cross, his crucifixion and his glorious resurrection.
Have you noticed that Jesus was never alone during his Passion? And I don’t simply mean that this Father was always with him. Jesus in his Passion was always for others like a parent drawn to where the crying of their child comes from. Let’s look at one person from the passion story.         The first pope. His name was Simon. His surname was BAR-JONAH. The name Peter which Jesus gave him was like a nickname. As you know nicknames capture some characteristics of the person.  Spiky may apply to someone whom you better keep distance from as they can sting you with their words or attitude. Softy may mean that you better be complimenting them all the time otherwise they will spend weeks sobbing. What does Peter mean? Rock.            We are very lucky that English reflects exactly the same dynamic of the word rock like Jesus’ native tongue: Aramaic. It doesn’t work in other languages but it works perfectly in English. What does it mean that someone is like rock? It means that the person is reliable, dependable, strong etc. However let’s go to another situation. Imagine yourself planning your dream cruise holiday and your friends upon hearing which ship you are going to board say to you: “This ship is rocking.” Would you be saying: “Hurray, let’s go!”? When Jesus called Simon Cephas in Aramaic – Rock he proved to be a good judge character. There were to be moments when Simon was to be like a solid rock: dependable and reliable, when people could support themselves on him. However there were also to be moments when Simon was to be rocky like in the Passion narrative we had today. There we are: that’s your Rocky One.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ! The reason that Christians has venerated Rocky One so much is that we all can find ourselves caught in the same dynamic. Each one of us could claim the name Rocky Eight Billion Something. There are moments when people can support themselves on us but there are also moments when people can get sea sickness from supporting themselves on us. That’s why this celebration of the Paschal Mystery enables us to put that rocky business in the context of Jesus. What Peter did that night of Jesus’ trial wasn’t to look well in his CV. But it must have been Peter who made sure that that bit was included in the Gospel narrative. Why? Because it was to reveal Jesus’ mercy. Afterwards Peter was so overwhelmed by Jesus’ forgiveness that he used the story of his shortcoming to expose the mercy of the Risen Lord.
Our Rocky One treasured for life that when he was at his lowest Christ came rushing to his help, not because Peter had enough star awards but because Christ loved his the same way he was loved by his Heavenly Father.

By accepting your cross you has shown me the way of life.

But I am afraid of the cross.

For me the cross is a scandal and disgrace,

…and folly…
for many of my contemporaries too…

It is so old-fashioned…helping.

It is ridicules and simply and expression of weakness and sentimentalism.

In our society there is no room for helping…

 In our world people move aggressively forward…

Well, there is a small group of religious freaks,

Why do they need to be so ostentatious with their feelings?

 They don’t even know him…

 What the point to get emotionally involved here?

 Doesn’t make sense…

 Forget it…

The show’s over… let’s go…

Time to take care of our daily businesses.
God has died and only few have noticed that…
In the modern world too…

            Do you know what TGIF stands for? “Thank God it’s Friday.” Usually people say it getting home on Friday after the whole week of working, don’t they? Have you ever heard anyone saying TGIF on Thursday night? I haven’t. However as we gather this evening to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper we all can say: TGIF. This celebration doesn’t belong to Holy Thursday but to Good Friday. Our Easter Christian sisters and brothers call this Eucharist the Vigil of Good Friday. In our own Catholic Tradition we have also Masses on Saturday evenings which are Sunday Masses, they belong to Sunday not to Saturday. It comes from an ancient Jewish tradition understanding the evening as the beginning of the new day. Here in Australia as we are blessed to have Good Friday as a public holiday. It sounds relatively appropriate to say TGIF tonight but for us followers of Christ it is even more appropriate to say not simply TGIF but TGIGF – Thank God it’s Good Friday. We are so excited, and rightly so, that we even sang Glory to God in the highest which was suspended on Sundays of Lent. What does make us so excited? What does make us say TGIF or TGIGF? If we are excited, if we say TGIF or TGIGF tonight, on Thursday night, it is because as St John put it in the Gospel passage for this Mass: “Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father.” As we gather tonight we are not bystanders ready to watch a bloody spectacle. Rather we are witnesses to the great Passover of Our Blessed Lord. Jesus is taking his final steps which lead him to his heavenly Father. They are not easy steps on a not easy road but the steps are directed by Jesus’ desire to fulfill the will of his Father.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Church gets excited again on the outset of the Paschal Mystery which the Vigil of Good Friday announces tonight. What we are beginning tonight will finish at Easter Vigil in a couple of days. It is going to be one long celebration spread over many hours. This is our Christian perception of Easter. Easter is not on next Sunday. Easter begins tonight. Tonight is the beginning of Easter Triduum or Paschal Triduum from which we draw the fullness of charity and life as we prayed in the opening prayer. Over next many hours we will accompany our Lord is his first Eucharist, Passion, crucifixion, burial, rest in the tomb and Resurrection. All these events were accomplished for us and for our salvation. “Jesus had always loved those who were his in the world, but now he showed how perfect his love was.” He washed the feet of his followers to show them that human greatness is not in bringing fire and brimstone from the sky. It is not in preforming miracles. It is not in ruling millions of people. It is in serving according to the pattern of “the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus drew those twelve men, and ultimately all of us, into the lifestyle he exhibited himself. The lifestyle of humility, charity and commitment. This lifestyle is not encouraged by our society as it wasn’t encouraged by the society the first disciples were to face. That’s why Our Lord has given us the mystery of the Eucharist: his Word and his Body and Blood to penetrate deep and hidden spaces of our soul so that we, in spite of our shortcomings, can deep down desire and strive for Jesus’ lifestyle in our daily dealings.
            “Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father.” One day our hour will come to pass from this world to the Father too. In the Bible we find what the last day of the Prophet Elijah looked like: “Suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared.” How many of you would be keen to get in? Wouldn’t you think that the flaming vehicle could take you to that infamous blazing place we all dread? Maybe that’s why God doesn’t send such vehicles to pick us up any more but “When the fullness of time had come God sent his Son.” His Son loved us with the same everlasting love and he entered our human condition so profoundly that now “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
            My Dear Fellow Christians entering the Paschal Triduum. I invite you to enter deeply into the mysteries we are beginning to celebrate tonight. I pray for each of you, and please pray for me, so that we may emerge from that Paschal Triduum 2016 with deep faith that here and now God the Father has put you and me in Jesus hands so that day after day he may lead and support us to make of our own lives a passing from this world to the Father as people deeply penetrated and profoundly transformed by the Easter mysteries.
            Thank God it’s Good Friday.

            What would happen if you placed a ball on the slope? It would keep rolling down until it got to the level ground, wouldn’t’ it? It would be an inevitable consequence. Could we apply this principle to our Blessed Lord? Was Jesus destiny inevitable when he was seized by the group led by Judas?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! It may look that Jesus was passed like an object from one authority to another during his trial. However at every step he was taking he was making a decision to keep on going. Every step he could withdraw from that painful path but he chose not to. Look at the final stretch of his way of the cross. He was uphill walking. When he was physically and mentally drained he still pushed himself to continue his way to Calvary. At every moment he could use his divine power which created the Universe to save himself but he chose not to. Why? Let’s leave for the time being the Passion Gospel and let’s go to the time when Jesus was a teenager. The first words of Christ recorded in the Gospel were addressed to Mary and Joseph when they found him in the Temple: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?” The last words of Christ were uttered in the Passion proclaimed at this Mass: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” Those first and last words of the Lord reveal to us that Jesus didn’t abandon his mission because he shared his heavenly Father’s love for us all. This love is not a sentiment but it is God’s longing to bring us again into communion with him. “I have longed to eat this Passover with you” said Jesus. Not just with the Twelve but with each and all of us. In a few days the Church will enter the most sacred celebration: Paschal Triduum which starts with the Lord’s Supper Mass and concludes with Easter Vigil. What happened during those days 2000 years ago we call REDEMPTION. Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself on the cross, was raised to life and glorified at the right hand of God the Almighty as Messiah, Lord and Saviour for our sake.
            What is SALVATION then? Salvation is when in faith and trust you accept the message of Redemption. When you believe that what happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago was God’s doing for us. Salvation becomes ours when be believe in Redemption.

            Imagine a journalist 2000 years ago reporting the event from today’s Gospel. “Recently there has been an incident in the Temple. A group of angry scribes and Pharisees brought a married woman who slept with another man. They presented her to a rabbi called Jesus. First Jesus expertly ashamed and dismissed the group. Next he said to the woman: “I don’t condemn you for what you have done. Go away in peace.” Jesus showed that he is not obsessed with sex and that he doesn’t see a problem with people having a bit of fun.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Would you say that it would be an accurate report of what St John recorded in the Gospel? It is not. It is not an example of reporting a story but making up the story by manipulating the facts. What did our journalist leave out? He left out the end of what Jesus said: “Don’t sin any more.”
            Let me give you a deeper report, a deeper reading of the Gospel passage for this Sunday. But first tell me: when the crowd of angry people slipped away, who was left in the Temple? The adulterous woman and Jesus. St Augustin who lived in 5th century put it more profoundly when he wrote: “When all others left, only two reminded there: Misera et Misericordia – Misery and Mercy.” There was a woman- misery- whose life was so corrupted and damaged by her sins that her own community didn’t see any other option but to stone her to death. There was Jesus- mercy – whose life was so sinless and filled with the Holy Spirit that he wanted to give a share of that to that miserable woman. That’s why his words: “Don’t sin any more” were more than a wish or a command. Those words of the Mercy, Jesus, transmitted the power of the Holy Spirit who can transform even those we judge to be unchangeable.
            Having read the Scripture passage carefully we see that both Jesus and the crowd agreed that the woman was a sinner however their paths parted on how to deal with the reality of her sinful life. The crowd slipped away when Jesus realised them their wrong motives. They felt embarrassed themselves. They didn’t care about the woman any more. Jesus reminded there. He showed the woman his compassion because he cared for her. Ours is a similar experience. We don’t tell anyone everything of ourselves. Instead we turn to the people we trust, don’t we? We entrust our painful and shameful issues to the people we trust. In the Gospel we can see that Jesus doesn’t invade the woman’s conscious abruptly. He slowly moves her to trust him.
            That’s the essence of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation: TRUST. That’s why the sacrament is safeguarded by the seal of confession which means that the priest cannot reveal the sins he has heard during the confession. The priest doesn’t own the Confession. It’s God’s sacrament. The priest is there so that we can be sure that what we have confessed with honesty, faith and contrition is forgiven. Even if we may feel that we don’t deserve forgiveness we still hear: “I absolve you from your sins: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That’s what we must cling to. Otherwise we can always doubt whether we have been forgiven.
            How important it is we can discover in the life of two Apostles. Both of them spent similar time with Jesus and both of them betrayed him. Who were they? Judas and Peter. However the way they handled realisation of their sins was drastically different. Judas kept his burden to himself. It led him to such despair that he hung himself. Peter didn’t keep his burden to himself. He was searching for Jesus to come to with his sins. Peter didn’t need a crowd to drag him to Jesus. Upon hearing of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning he was running there like crazy. After what he did during Jesus’ trial Peter was misery. However in the midst of his remorse eating him he still treasured one important memory: misery needs to meet Mercy. That’s what did happen when he saw his Lord at Easter.

Imagine standing in front of the gate to heaven and St Peter saying: “Please do come in. We have been waiting for you.” He opens the gate and the first person who welcomes you there is… Hitler saying: “Come I will introduce you to our heavenly Father.” Some people could wander then whether they are in heaven or in hell. We could go on and on through the list of the people whom we judge unacceptable to be forgiven. That’s the attitude of the elder brother from the parable.
            My Dear fellow Christians! In the Bible there is a book which is relatively short (only three pages) but perfectly capturing the theme of God’s forgiveness. It is the story of a man who was swallowed by a whale: Jonah. The man was chosen by God to preach to the people of Nineveh. It horrified him so much that he ran away. Why was he horrified? Imagine yourself walking into an ISIS camp and shouting: “Only forty days more and you will be destroyed.” Now you can understand how Jonah felt. It took “a violent wind on the sea and a whale” to “persuade” him to accept the mission. When it did happen he was walking through the city shouting: “Only forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.” His first surprise was that he survived that walk. He might have thought: “God’s great. He protected me. Now I need to find a good look-out to observe the destruction of the city.” His second surprise was that the people the people of Nineveh repented and the destruction didn’t happen. “He was indignant at this.” He even blamed God for being “a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness and relenting from evil.”
            Where was the mercy of God in the whole situation? It wasn’t in the absence of destruction Jonah preached. But it was in the grace God had given to the people of Nineveh who accepted the message and as the Bible tells us “they believed in God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least.” Probably Jonah thought: “If I had known that the message would have such an impact on the people I should have put ten chewing gums in my mouth to mumble the message so that the people didn’t understand me, didn’t repent and did get destroyed.” Jonah got cranky with God because he thought that God was too easy on the people of Nineveh. However God wasn’t easy on those people at all. On the contrary he was very tough. He called them to conversion. He challenged them while at the same time showing them his mercy by supporting them with his divine grace which they accepted and allowed to work through them. God didn’t destroy the people; he destroyed the evil that controlled the people there.
Let’s go back to the Gospel. I have already mentioned the elder brother now it is the time to look at the younger fellow. When did he experience his father’s mercy? It was when he realised that life of debauchery wasn’t fun at all but it was deadly. In the dictionary we read that debauchery is an excessive indulgence in sex, alcohol or drugs. The conclusion the younger son reached correlates to that of the Church in relation to mortal sin which as the Catechism teaches us: “destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law.” It is important for us to retain the awareness of mortal sins because they put us on the path to death, ultimately eternal death. However it is even more important for us to treasure the belief that God who sent Jonah to turn the people from the deadly path they were travelling will never grow tired of showing people his mercy which leads to change of heart and ultimately change of life style.
What would have happened if the young boy on the way home first had met his big brother and heard what his brother thought about him? He wouldn’t have any courage to keep walking the way of righteousness. How blessed the young man was that he met his father instead. That father from the Gospel is your father too. He is my father. He is the father of all, even those whom we judge unworthy of forgiveness.