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Coming to Mass on Easter Sunday is also a deeply ingrained custom for many of us -- and whether you are a regular or a visitor, you are very welcome at Westminster Cathedral. But today is more than the foundation of a good habit, however excellent it may be. This is a day of the deepest significance, for our age and for every age. This is a day when, with Peter and John, we stand in spirit at the empty tomb and are filled with wonder. This is the day that the Lord has made -- we rejoice and are glad.

The Easter story is a wonderful one -- ‘death with life contended, combat strangely ended; life’s own champion slain, yet lives to reign’, as the Easter sequence puts it. But if it is to be more than a story, it must, like Christ himself, come alive. The theologian Romano Guardini once wrote that ‘The Christian faith stands or falls according to whether or not one believes in the Resurrection... The Resurrection is at the heart of faith.’ Pondering on the Easter Gospel; imagining ourselves alongside one of the key characters; allowing ourselves to be carried away a bit by the enormity of it all -- these things can all help as we strive to deepen our appreciation of the Resurrection. Of course there will be questions along the way; but today is a day to ask God to fill our hearts with joy, and to give us the perseverance that he gave to the first witnesses to the Resurrection, just as he has to countless Christian people down the ages, transforming their lives as he did so.

If today is a day of joy, it is also a day of love. What love is shown to us in the Resurrection. It is so great that it can -- it must -- be stronger than all the shortcomings we may see in the Church or in the world. It is a love that brings hope; it is a love that encourages us to be witnesses. One great witness, Pope John Paul II, will be canonised next Sunday. He has written that ‘Peter, the apostles and the disciples understood perfectly that their principal mission was to be witnesses to the risen Christ. Every Christian, in every age, is a witness to the risen Christ.’ That is the challenge for us this Easter -- to witness to the risen Christ, in whatever ways we can. To do so is to follow a great cultural tradition, to be sure, but, like our presence at Mass today, it is so much more. It is statement of what Easter means for us; it is an affirmation to the world that Easter joy is alive; it is the best of reasons to say, as we do again today after something of a pause, ‘alleluia’.

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