A happy Easter Sunday to one and all!

First of all let me greet you all a very Happy Easter! Indeed, Christ has died, Christ is risen and today, Christ has conquered death! But before we go on our usual Sunday Gospel reading for this Easter Sunday, allow me to reprint from Wikipedia what Easter is all about.

Wikipedia says  “Easter, also called Pascha, is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year.[1] It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion around AD 33. Many non-religious cultural elements have become part of the holiday, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians alike.

Easter also refers to the season of the church year called Eastertide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter. Easter is termed a moveable feast because it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Easter falls at some point between late March and late April each year (early April to early May in Eastern Christianity), following the cycle of the moon.

After several centuries of disagreement, all churches accepted the computation of the Alexandrian Church (now the Coptic Church) that Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after March 21 (the ecclesiastical spring, or vernal, equinox). Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover meal, based on the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7).

The Gospel of John, however, speaks of the Jewish elders not wanting to enter the hall of Pilate in order “that they might eat the Passover”, implying that the Passover meal had not yet occurred (John 18:28; John 19:14).[2] Thus, John places Christ’s death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lamb, which would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible’s Hebrew calendar.[3] According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, “In fact, the Jewish feast was taken into the Christian Easter celebration.”

Now that we’re finished with the history of how Christians celebrated Easter Sunday, let’s now open our Bibles to John 20: 1-9 about the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. “On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.” 3 So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.

4 They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; 5 he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. 6 When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, 7 and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. 8 Then the other disciple also went in, the one who arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. 9 For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

This story is the very foundation of Christian faith. If you as a Christian do not believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent by his Father in heaven to be amongst us and to suffer and die for our sins, and on Easter Sunday, he rose from the dead, then maybe you should get better education about our Christian faith so at least you will know whether you really belong to Christianity? The only thing we really have is that gift of faith given to us by God himself.

But for Simon Peter, Mary Magdala, John the beloved, and yes our Mama Mary, the mother of Jesus, they were witnesses to the numerous miracles that Jesus did during his ministry. Perhaps the most famous of them all was the Sunday Gospel three Sundays ago about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. They knew that Jesus Christ was the Messiah when he raised Lazarus from the tomb. But while the Jews mocked Jesus while he was hanging on the cross for him to save himself, the Apostles knew that Jesus had to die so that the Glory of God will be revealed to all.

Finally let me say that Christianity is the only religion that I know that accepts that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to this earth to die in order to save us from our sins. People of other faiths find this blasphemous, but for Christians, this is the very core of our faith. 

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