The world has changed.

Surrexit Dominus vere, Alleluia!
The Lord has risen indeed, Alleluia!

We wish our Parents, Families and Friends
the holy joy of Easter!

Our Holy Father
Pope Benedict XVI
Easter Sunday, 2011


At the conclusion of the homily of the Easter Vigil ,
speaking of Easter Sunday and all Sundays,
the Holy Father said:

The structure of the week is overturned.
No longer does it point towards the seventh day,
as the time to participate in God’s rest.
It sets out from the first day
as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord.

This encounter happens afresh
at every celebration of the Eucharist,
when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his disciples
and gives himself to them,
allows himself, so to speak,
to be touched by them,
sits down at table with them.

This change is utterly extraordinary,
considering that the Sabbath,
the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God,
is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament.

If we also bear in mind how much the movement
from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm,
the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking.

This revolutionary development
that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history
can be explained only by the fact that
something utterly new happened that day.

The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’ death.
It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord.
In truth, this encounter had something unsettling about it.

The world had changed.

This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death.

A new form of life had been inaugurated,
a new dimension of creation.

The first day, according to the Genesis account,
is the day on which creation begins.

Now it was the day of creation in a new way,
it had become the day of the new creation.

We celebrate the first day.

And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation.
Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
And we celebrate the God who was made man,
who suffered, died, was buried and rose again.
We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation.
We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence.
We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord,
it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason,
truth stronger than lies,
love stronger than death.

We celebrate the first day because we know
that the black line drawn across creation does not last for ever.

We celebrate it because we know
that those words from the end of the creation account
have now been definitively fulfilled:
“God saw everything that he had made,
and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

Amen.