EASTER - Our Lord’s “Great Work” April 5, 2026

When we celebrated the coming of Christ into the world at Christmas and its associated feasts, Epiphany and Candlemas, they were the preparation for Our Lord’s “great work”, for which He had been sent to earth by His heavenly Father. After Easter, the Ascension completes Christ’s glorification as man in heaven, and Pentecost celebrates the sharing of all the graces Christ won for us by His death and resurrection through the coming of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father and Son send to us to make us holy.

      Easter is the culmination of all that Christ came to do. All His teaching, all His miracles, are incomplete without His Passion, Death and Resurrection. And those three, Passion, Death and Resurrection, are all one. Easter does not reverse the tragedy of Christ’s sufferings, but completes them. Christ does not even lose His wounds in His risen state, but shows them to the Apostles as trophies of His victory. For whereas those wounds were truly terrible when inflicted upon Our Lord in His Passion, they have now become like jewels, glowing with light.

     Christ surrendered Himself to the powers of darkness for a short time, and those powers did appalling things to Him, as we have recalled during the last week, especially on Good Friday. But the Resurrection is a sign to us that the darkness cannot overpower the light of Christ’s rising. 

A blessed Easter to one and all. May the Risen Christ fill you with His peace.   ~ Fr. Paul Dobson.