“He is risen, he is not here” (Mark 16.6) After the devastation of Our Lord’s passion and death, we can scarcely imagine the joy of Our Lady and the apostles at seeing Jesus risen again from the dead. They loved Our Lord and knew Him to be the greatest man in their lives. Now they knew that He had overcome death.

We cannot share in this joy unless we believe in the resurrection. If we think of Our Lord simply as a figure in history, the celebration of his life will be like recalling any other historical triumph, such as England winning the World Cup in 1966, or VE Day: nice to remember and learn from, but not a matter of immediate personal experience.

We also need to understand the tragedy of the passion of Christ to know the full joy of Easter. The resurrection is not an event isolated from the passion, it is Our Lord’s triumph over sin and death. In our life here on earth, we must be a “Good Friday people” who understand the victory that Christ won over sin and death, before we can be an “Easter people.”

Genuine faith in the resurrection motivates us to action. This is not simply a bland humanistic agenda of “peace and tolerance” (which is always inevitably selective) but also an intolerance of sin and evil in our own lives, and a desire for supernatural grace and life, and the charity that goes with it.

Faith in the resurrection is a prerequisite of faith in the Holy Eucharist (Our Lord cannot be present in the Eucharist if He is not risen.) We share with Our Lady and the apostles the joy of the presence of Christ. We can ask them to pray for us to increase our living faith.