Homily: Easter Sunday: 2007

Dear brothers and sisters, I believe our generation is, as Henri Gheon said long ago, an era "whose glory it was to have lost faith, hope and charity." We have lost faith, even though I personally don't feel, as the polls would have us believe, that 75% of church-going Catholics don't believe that the Communion they receive is really the Body and Blood of Christ. And I'll tell you why. Pollsters can so twist a question that they can manipulate most responders into giving any answer at all. For example, they could ask: "Are you in favor of putting a woman who has an abortion in prison?" and if the person says "No," they could report that that person was "pro-choice." And yet that was a trick question, a false dichotomy of possibilities -- you can be against abortion and still not be in favor of legally punishing the mother. You can, in fact, be in favor of a so-called third way, in which you favor offering financial, emotional and physical support for the distressed mother in order to make abortion less attractive. But you are still "anti-abortion"! However, I do think that due to the crisis of catechesis in this country, the pressures of this world, the dark night of the soul so many of us experience, the bad example of so many Christians themselves, this generation -- and the one immediately preceding it -- have lost, or severely weakened, faith.

And how can any doubt that many have lost hope? They see only a murky future before them, if they see a future at all. How many now say they are better off than their fathers (at their age)? Or hope to be better off than their fathers are now . . . materially, physically or spiritually? They see all the wars, the hatred, poverty, racism, cruelty, environmental disaster, totalitarianism in the world today that they hesitate even to bring a child into it.

And surely we would have to be blind to see this generation has lost charity. There is above all a crisis of love in this country. People live and go about their lives lacking the love they deserve from their parents, lacking the love they deserve -- and were promised forever -- from their spouses, lacking the love and respect they deserve from their children. Many lack close friends and don't even know their neighbors!

I put to you today's feast is the remedy to this great loss. Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead -- the glorious defeat of death and opening of the gates of heaven -- is the answer. The answer to the loss of faith: this is the great rock to which we can cling, indeed, "[I]f Christ has not risen, vain then is our preaching, vain too is your faith." It is the promise of a new resurrection for all our dead and for us all. And not for our souls alone, but for our bodies too which will also rise, and for our hearts and minds right now.

Our Lord's glorious resurrection is the remedy for the loss of hope as well. For did any man suffer as He so suffered? And did He not die? He looked so very dead! Yes, He suffered as none of us have suffered and He really died, with all that that entails. But that was not the end of the story. We throw our lot in with those who have seen and heard and touched the living, risen Christ. It may be that we cannot see where He has gone, but hope is the faith in things not seen. And blessed are they who believe and have not seen.

And finally, today's feast is a remedy for this crucial loss of love. If Christ is no longer dead (nor any of those who live in Him), then neither the love we show for others nor the love we receive is in vain, for it is not to end in death. I think deep down we all realize this. The life we live in this passing world cannot be all there is, for the good MUST be rewarded -- and in their short lives on earth they often are not -- and the evil must be punished. As the father of Hans and Sophie Scholl, the doomed young people who dared to peacefully oppose Hitler back in those dark days in Germany, said at their trial -- shouted, in fact: "There is another justice!" And there is. Today's feast proves it. Alleluia.

Let us now profess our faith . . .