If you have been coming to church for every Liturgy since the Lord’s Supper Mass you may feel that you deserve some rest now, or maybe even a day off. As you are seating now you may be looking forward to a calming homily too. A lot has happened already. Maybe we should take it easy tonight?
         My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We have reached the Paschal Vigil, the summit of the Triduum and in fact the summit of the whole year. However it is not the time to be tourists celebrating their achievement like those who climb the mountains. The Divine Word we have been given moves us on.
          Let us listen to the young man in a white robe whom the women encountered when they went into the tomb of the Lord Jesus: ‘You must go and tell his disciples and Peter.’ The command: ‘You must go’ is rather easy to comprehend.  However we are moved on from this Sacred Liturgy not to an aerobics class or for jogging. We are sent to ‘his disciples and Peter,’ for us they are the people around, to tell them: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has risen.’
          The Gospel of Mark we have just heard gave us an account of three women who went to the tomb of Christ. Did they see the risen Christ? They did not. Still, they were made the messengers of the Resurrection. We did not see the risen Christ either. Still, we are invited to be messengers of his Resurrection. Even more, we have assurance that the Resurrection has taken place and we are part of it. St Paul in the Letter to the Romans put it in these words: ‘When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in his death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.’
          Even if our life resembles the darkness of this night we treasure this Easter Vigil because this Vigil celebrates the light and new life even as the darkness overpowers the earth. Tonight is filled with the mystery and reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our own mortality, which becomes evident in various ways, is also filled with the mystery and reality of Jesus Resurrection. From our own existential darkness we are sent to take the Good News of Jesus Resurrection to the people around us, to tell them that as they share in Christ’s death they will also share in his Resurrection.
           Happy Gospel spreading. Happy Easter.

This Holy Week hasn’t been the most successful for our Australian Cricket team, has it? The big question now is this: ‘Is there any chance of redemption for those involved in the ball tapering?’ However the more voices I have been hearing the more I see that the solution of the situation is believed to be in replacement not in redemption.
          My Dear Sisters and Brothers! I don’t know what the Cricket players could do to redeem themselves because I am not sure whether there is willingness in the society to forgive them. However what has occurred to me from the whole situation is that the essence of our Christian faith is about having been redeemed not about redeeming ourselves. As if we could! Could the criminals on the cross redeem themselves? It was beyond them. However next to them there was someone who could do it! In the Scriptures we read: ‘Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.’ From that first Good Friday when the Lord was crucified the grace has got a name and a face: JESUS CHRIST.
           The innocent Son of God was lifted up, but in fact he was drowning in the greatest misery which was gobbling down the two criminals like swamp. Jesus was suffocating surrounded by the sins of past, present and future generations but at the same time he offered a chance for all people to find support on him and not to degenerate in the abyss.
            One of the first ones to find support on Jesus was Peter; the other was one of the two criminals crucified next to Jesus. They were given the grace to see their own sins in relation to Jesus. They saw that by their sins they sinned against Jesus. They were like the tax collector who praying humbly in the Temple said: ‘God, have mercy on me the sinner.’ He did not compare himself to others. He did not say: ‘God, have mercy on me a sinner’ as if he were just one of the many similar sinners.  He faced the divine light of truth and from that revelation he declared himself ‘the sinner.’ The criminal on the cross owned up to his sins and it led him to Jesus in extraordinary way. In all Gospels there is only one human who called Jesus by his name. It was the criminal dying on the cross next to Jesus. In excruciating pain, filled with contempt for himself and despair he turned to Jesus like no one else did. He turned to Jesus as if they were friends for ages. In a sense the criminal discovered that God wanted that relationship with him for ages.
            We call him now a good thief or a good criminal. What was good about him? It was the goodness which was poured into him by Christ himself. That last breath of Jesus was the breath giving new quality to the man and to all of us as well. Jesus breathed from the cross upon the humanity like God breathed upon the first human being. We have been given the breath of justification and redemption.
            Can we be redeemed? We have been already. In a few moments when the cross is solemnly unveiled it is our yearly reminder that God is willing to forgive us our sins not because he suffers from dementia and cannot remember them but because he has chosen to forgive us. The last words of Jesus on the cross recorded by St John were: ‘It is accomplished.’
Our redemption heave been accomplished. Believe it my fellow Christians.

        If you are familiar with the book Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1911, you may remember a ten year old orphan Mary Lennox who discovered an abandoned garden at the country estate of her uncle. She was able to access it after finding a lost key. With a help of a friend she brought the garden back to life. The garden finally contributed to the healing of her sick cousin Colin Craven. This beautiful book was however more than a story for children. Frances Burnett wrote the book as a way of dealing with the death of her eldest son Lionel who died of tuberculosis at the age of 16. If the key in the story opened the gate to the secret garden the book itself opens the gate to the soul of a loving and grieving mother.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Mass of the Lord’s Supper opens the gate to the most beautiful soul which ever walked this planet: Jesus Christ. St John writing an account of that last meal wrote: ‘Jesus had always loved those who were his in the world, but now he showed how perfect his love was.’ Let us pay attention to what happened at the Last Supper as those events allow us to see what was going on in the soul of Jesus.
St Paul in the Letter to the Corinthians wrote about the Eucharist: ‘This is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.’ Then he went on to write the earliest account of the Consecration of bread and wine. How familiar we are with that action, how much we love it, how often we participate in it.
The very old St John, who at the time of writing the Gospel had witnessed how the communities celebrated it, but who also witnessed some divisions and quarrels appearing already in those communities, in his unique way spoke about the Eucharist: ‘This is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.’ Then he went on to write about the Lord of heaven and earth kneeling and washing the dust covered feet of his Disciples. Similar to the command of the Lord: ‘Do this as memorial of me’ when giving his Body and Blood, St John wrote that the Lord Jesus gave also another command: ‘You may copy what I have done to you’ when his stunned Disciples looked at their own feet just washed and wiped by the Messiah. Are we familiar with this gesture too? Do we love it too? Do we perform it often? We do when we outdo each other in being servants in the Church.
I treasure an event from the life of Bishop Douglas Warren from Wilcannia-Forbes diocese. One day he was asked to celebrate a funeral. However due to some miscommunication in the family a priest from interstate was also asked to do that. When the priest arrived to the small bush church he found a man wearing a simple alb and quietly organising things in the sacristy for the funeral. He never met the bishop so he took him for a sacristan or an acolyte helping in that isolated community. He said to the ‘sacristan’: ‘I see that you know the liturgy and this church well. You are going to be a great help for me during the Requiem Mass.’  ‘I would love too’ said the ‘sacristan’. What happened next was the bishop walking into the church and carrying the processional cross followed by the priest vested for the Mass. During the whole Mass the bishop served as an altar boy. When he was asked after why he didn’t explain to the visiting priest that he was the bishop of the diocese he answered: ‘He was so excited to preside over this special Mass that I couldn’t take it from him.’ That’s an example of copying what Jesus did at the Last Supper, being a servant, not looking for a way to glorify myself. It applies to all of us the clergy and lay people as well.
A few centuries after St John wrote his Gospel, St Augustine reinforced it in his own community of Hippo as he kept saying to the people at the time they were receiving Holy Communion: ‘Receive what you are.’ You are the Church, the Body of Christ; now receive the Body of Christ.
St John’s account of the Last Supper with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet exhibited not only Jesus’ affection for the Twelve but was also a gift to be perpetuated in the community of his followers until the end of time. Then our Church community becomes like that secret garden where the humanity can be healed and restored the way Colin Crave was in the Burnett’s book. It is because the Body of Christ sacrificed on the altar matches the Body of Christ in the pews as Christians sacrifice their ambitions to be humble servants of each other.
Do you know where the Risen Lord was first seen? It was in a garden. May you community here be such a garden where parishioners and visitors may encounter the Lord Jesus: on the altar and in the pews.

            At the outset of the Holy Week, which is marked by the Palm Sunday, we are given a Divine Word, the Good News, which was articulated by the people who greeted the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Hosanna is an ancient cry for salvation. It translates as: ‘Save us! Bring about salvation!’ Imagine some people trapped in a vehicle involved in a serious accident. Their cry ‘Save us!’ captures what the Scriptures express in Hosanna.
We find this cry in the Psalm 118 where it is immediately followed by ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Thus the cry of the people for their liberation: ‘Hosanna!’ is answered when that cry still resounds.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! As we, as the Church, shout today ‘Hosanna!’ it is not only repeating what the crowds in Jerusalem did. We, the People of God gathered in this land of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the Third Millennium, are a portion of the human family. By our various relationships we are connected to so many people and thus we are also connected to their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, achievements and failures which result in discouragement, confusion and resentment. From the midst of that situation, our modern situation, today on Palm Sunday, and in fact at every Mass when we sing: “Holy Holy, Holy Lord… Hosanna in the highest!’ we cry for salvation: “Save us! Bring about salvation!’
We may be overwhelmed by distort and discord which we witness in the society. We may be frightened by how countries face other countries and how the fundamental right of individuals to life has been gradually removed. Inspired by that, in unison with the whole Church spread throughout the world and with all people whose condition cries out for the hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring, we cry out: “Hosanna! Save us! Bring about salvation!’
            However our cry today is also our way of evangelising, preaching Good News. As I said before, in the Psalm 118 the cry for salvation was immediately answered. The cry of the people in Jerusalem was answered too as the Saviour entered their city for their salvation. The cry we articulate today has been also answered. The Saviour who entered the Holy City two thousand years ago hasn’t abandoned his human sisters and brothers. In the mystery of the Holy Spirit sent from his saving Death and Resurrection he offers all the salvation which is about re-establishing our broken relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus our Hosanna is not simply about the future but about the present. Because of Jesus saving Death and Resurrection our Hosanna is joyful as it announces ‘the Salvation has come.’
            If those trapped in the crashed vehicle could express their need to be rescued by crying Hosanna, upon seeing an ambulance and fire brigade arriving they could cry Hosanna again. This time it would mean ‘the rescue has come.’
            In our liturgical Hosanna, today and at every Mass, we are called to be both attentive observants of what is going on in our Church and our society and believing disciples of the Lord who announce and celebrate his coming and his salvation.
            Have a Blessed Holy Week and a life changing Paschal Triduum.

A couple of months ago Pope Francis recognised the death of the seven Trappist monks, who were killed in Algeria in 1996, as martyrdom. Some of you may remember a 2010 movie ‘Of Gods and Men’ which captured the final days of those martyrs. I believe that the life and death of the Trappists from Tibhirine and the timing of recognizing of their martyrdom by the Church challenges us to see beyond a simplistic white and black approach to life. When the world faces a new wave of migration some people could use the story of the Algerian martyrs as an argument against Muslim migrants. However such argumentation would do a grave injustice to the sacrifice those seven men made. Their martyrdom was about living the radicalism of the Gospel: loving unconditionally to the end. Their martyrdom was not a statement against anyone. Each of those monks was, in his fragility and personal limitations, a witness to the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ. It was about living the faith in the Lord Jesus who let destroy the temple of his own body on the cross so that new life could spring forth, the new life, which was flourishing in the monks from Algeria.
Their story cannot be perceived as a story of some good Christians living among bad Muslims because the monks loved the Muslim neighbours and were loved by them as well. In fact the group of the nineteen Algerian martyrs, among whom there are the seven Trappists, includes also Bishop Pierre Claverie. He was shot in front of his residence together with his Muslim driver.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Second Reading for this Eucharist brings to our focus the cross. St Paul wrote: ‘While the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here we are preaching a crucified Christ.’ This preaching is not limited to a single event from the Good Friday two thousand years ago when the Son of God was crucified for us and for our salvation. To preach a crucified Christ one must live and love the way Jesus did. His life and love was not an investment only into those who appreciated it but it was offered to all.
Most likely we are not exposed to such extremes like the Algerian martyrs. However as Paul speaks about the foolishness and weakness of the cross we need to look around and to identify the people whom we choose not to love. We may have valid reasons not to love them but it is not the way of the Lord. It does make sense according to the standards of this world but these standards are not Jesus’.
That standard of giving oneself to others is captured in the First Reading where the Ten Commandments were proclaimed to us as they were proclaimed to the People of Israel who had just experienced the liberation from the Egyptian slavery. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that: ‘The gift of the Commandments is the gift of God himself and his holy will. In making his will known, God reveals himself to his people.’ The Ten Commandments are a blessing for us as they enable us to preserve our liberty in Jesus Christ. They protect us from sacrificing others, their temporal and eternal life, for our sake. Furthermore the Ten Commandments give us a grace to live fully the foolishness and weakness of the cross so that the glory of the Resurrection could be manifested in us.
In a scene from ‘Of Gods and Men’ Fr Christian stops a band of gunmen from entering the monastery which was a place of peace. Then the leader of the band points his rifle at the monk and says: ‘You have no choice.’ The answer of the priest was profoundly Scriptural: ‘I always have a choice.’
My Dear fellow Believers! As you walk out of this church take with you the words of Fr Christian: ‘I always have a choice.’ When you meet or think of the people you have your ‘valid’ reasons’ not to love say those words of a priest martyr from Algeria: ‘I always a have a choice.’