Bishop Mark Davies - Homily for Easter Morning

Homily for Easter Morning 20th April 2014

The first disciples made their way to the tomb “very early on the first day of the week.” It was “still dark,” St. John observes (Jn. 20:1). Yet, the darkness in which they walked was not merely the last shades of night; it was surely the shadows of their own despair. Before the emptiness of Christ’s tomb, as the sun rose on that first Easter morning, those women and men came to see and believe. “Till this moment,” St. John notes, “they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20: 10).
The English people came similarly to see and believe some fourteen centuries ago in a way which changed the way we, today, see the whole of human life. The historian Sir Arthur Bryant observed that, “The most important of all Britain’s invaders were those who came armed only with a Cross and the faith and courage that Cross gave” “they converted a savage tribal people and their rulers to Christ’s gentle creed of love and sacrifice, and to the revolutionary belief, inherent in Christianity, that every individual was a … soul of equal value in the eyes of God” (A History of Britain & the British People 1984). This was, indeed, a change from darkness to dawn. In the light of the Easter faith, the English people came to recognise the eternal value and dignity of every human person. How easily we have taken for granted the Christian civilization which was established in the earliest years of our nation. The Second Vatican Council reminded us “once God is forgotten” we are left in darkness (Gaudium et Spes n. 36) and without this faith respect for the inherent sanctity of human life and the God-given dignity of every person cannot long survive.
Today in our country many consciences struggle amid the shadows as they try to distinguish between good and evil in everything which concerns the value of human life itself. In a matter of weeks, a Bill will be brought before Parliament aimed at legalising assisted suicide. This Bill will seek to change long-established laws which uphold the sanctity of human life and protecting some of the weakest in society. It is hard to understand that, at a time when there has been so much public concern about the care of the most vulnerable in our hospitals and care homes, we would be contemplate weakening, rather than strengthening the legal protection offered to some of the weakest and most vulnerable. How much we need what Blessed John Paul II described as that “ever new light” shed by Christ on the true way of love and mercy “which our common humanity calls for” (Evangelium Vitae n.67)
In the run-up to Easter this year, the Prime Minister and other political leaders have each acknowledged publicly the difference Christianity makes to our country. At a time when the Christian contribution to our past – and, indeed, our present – is often air-brushed from memory, this is surely a welcome recognition. It is also a brave acknowledgement as an increasingly, intolerant secularism seeks to impose its grim orthodoxy on society. And yet, the difference Christianity makes must not simply be confused with the effectiveness of community projects and the generous spirit of service which Christian faith certainly inspires. Pope Francis insists the Church can never be regarded as a sort of NGO, a merely humanitarian agency. “If we do not confess Jesus Christ” the Holy Father says, we would no longer be the Church; everything we built would be like sandcastles if it were not based on our faith in Christ (Pro Ecclesia Mass 14th March 2013). So many good works flourish in our society today because they are rooted, built on Christian faith.
On Easter morning, we gather to renew the promises of our Baptism. As Christians, we are not first invited simply to do things but rather to believe something, in fact, to believe Someone! This is the faith, which in St. Paul’s words, has “brought us back to true life” (Col.3:1). Pope Francis recently wrote “I never tire of repeating the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Evangelli Gaudium n.7). Christianity is that meeting, that encounter with Christ; the same meeting with His Cross and Resurrection to which the English people came at the beginning of their history. It is to this encounter that you and I are called anew today, as the light of our Baptismal candles are re-kindled and we stand together to profess the faith we share with all the Church.
+ Mark
Bishop of Shrewsbury