Easter Day Festival Mass
Summary
Our Festival Easter Mass starts at 10.30am. Here we bless the Easter garden and renew our baptismal vows: we die with Christ and are raised by him into new life.
Our readings for both services recount the resurrection and a God who can transform death and failure to new life and hope. This is ultimate power and yet it is shown in vulnerability: God never coerces us, never exerts power over us and so we remain free to respond. In Acts 10. 34-43 Peter responds with confidence, joyfully proclaiming the resurrection. Yet in Mark 12:1-8 the first witnesses of the empty tomb stay silent, for they are afraid. The angel at the tomb offers the possibility of a new beginning, calling the disciples to return again to Galilee. The choice is ours: will we risk following Christ who has gone ahead of us, or we will we hang back, fearful of the new life offered?
FIRST READING
Acts 10.34-43
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.
This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.
‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
‘This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord – a lasting ordinance.
GOSPEL
Mark 16. 1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
