Sermon LIX.
He is risen.
—St. Mark xvi. 6.
This is Easter Sunday, and the heart of every Christian is full of joy; for on this day the voice of God is heard assuring us that the dead can and will rise again to enter upon a new and never-dying life. To die is to suffer the most poignant grief, the greatest loss, the most grievous pain that man is called upon to endure.
However long or sweet may be the pleasure of the draught of life, and health, and prosperity that one may drink, all must find this one bitter drop at the bottom of the cup. It is death; and if God himself did not tell us, how could we know but that it is the end of all? "But now Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that sleep." Who says Christ is risen again? God. How do we hear his voice of truth, which cannot deceive nor be deceived? We hear him when we hear the voice of his divine church, which he has made "the pillar and the ground of the truth." This is, then, her joyful and triumphant news to-day. All who die shall rise again from the dead, because our Saviour, Jesus Christ, first of all rose from the dead, and promised that the change of a similar resurrection should come upon all mankind. And I say again that we know that to be true because the Catholic Church, the only divine voice there is in the world, assures us that it is true. Bitter as death may be, the hope of the resurrection is its complete antidote. Now I understand why the words, "a happy death," is so common a speech among Catholics. It implies an act of faith in the resurrection, and a confidence that he who dies has not only prepared himself to die but also to rise again. This is an important reflection to make on Easter Sunday, for there is a resurrection unto eternal life and a resurrection unto damnation, which, compared to eternal life, is eternal death. A philosopher said: "Happy is that man who, when he comes to die, has nothing left but to die." But the Christian says: "Happy is that man who, when he comes to die, leaves the world and all he has to do or might do in it, sure of a happy and glorious resurrection."
All Catholics believe that they will rise again from the dead, but I am free to say that many of them do not prove their faith by their works. They seem to think so much of this world, and give so much of their thoughts and words and actions to it, that certainly no heathen would imagine for a moment that they thought even death possible, or that there was any future state to get ready for. I wonder how any one of us would act or what we would be thinking about, if we were absolutely sure that in less than an hour's notice we would some day be called to be made a bishop or a pope, or a king or queen; or would be carried off to a desert island, and left there to starve and die without help.
We do not believe either fortune likely to happen to any of us, therefore we do not prepare for it. Alas! so many Catholics do not prepare for the sudden call to rise to a glory and dignity far higher than that of any prelate or prince, or to sink to a miserable state infinitely worse than to starve and die on a desert island; and why not? I say the heathen would answer, because they do not believe that either fortune will be likely to happen to them. If they did their lives would prove their faith.
Now, I know I have set some of you thinking, and that has just been my purpose. Have I a right to participate in the Easter joy of to-day, or am I only making an outside show of it, while my conscience tells me I am a hypocrite? Have I kept the commandments of God and of the church? Have I made my Easter duty, or resolved to make it? What kind of a life would I rise to on the day of resurrection, if I died to-night? What would Jesus Christ, my Judge and Saviour, find in me that looked like him, and therefore ought to give me the same glorious resurrection as he had? Dear brethren, that is what he wants to find in us all. That is what he died to give us. That is what the Holy Spirit is striving hard to help every one of us to obtain. Come, a little more courage, and let us rise now from all that is deathly, or dead, or corrupt, or rotten in this life we are leading, and Jesus will be sure to find in us what will fashion us unto the likeness of his own resplendent and divine resurrection to eternal life.