Easter time is such a time of hope that I think that when Easter comes around we all look around for signs of hope in our world.  And, goodness knows, we need them these days. The economy being the way it is, people worried about their jobs and their homes, with two wars raging with many of our sons and daughters engaged in battle, and terrorism on the home front and abroad, people tend to feel insecure.  And then, even in the Church, the Church is going through a very troubled time, of course, with the suspicions it seems going higher and higher up the ranks of the hierarchy, and we wonder where will it all end. 

So, we need signs of hope and Easter does provide them to us. But in addition, my point today is that God also gives you signs of hope, if you are attentive to find them in your own lives.  Now in the Church today we see the signs of hope:  bright colors, the candles, the flowers, the Baptismal font where seven new Catholics were baptized last night and, in all, 18 were received into full communion with the Church.

We hear the readings telling us to lift our eyes above, not to be just focused on the things here below but to look up and see what is to be seen.  So, the message of Easter is that within our world, with all its tragedies, there is good news if we can find it.  With all its darkness, there is light if we can detect it.  And, with all its death, there is life if we can become aware of it.

So I encourage you to become aware of the signs of hope in the world around you.  I will give you one example from my own life.  Some years back both my parents had died recently and I was living in Dublin at the time (not this Dublin, the other one—the big one) and I had been the older brother as well as the Priest, so I had to do most of the preparations and it occurred to me that I really hadn’t grieved properly and I felt kind of paralyzed because I hadn’t grieved my parents’ death properly.

So, on Easter Sunday of that year I asked my community in Dublin if instead of staying for the community celebrations, I could borrow one of the cars and drive down the country.  And so, that’s what I did.  And it was a typical Irish day:  a day something like today, dour and dismal, glum and gloomy.  And, I arrived down at County Wexford in the little village of Bunclody and went to the cemetery where my parents were buried and I had the whole place, of course, to myself completely, and I just knelt down at the gravesite and I thanked God for the gift of my parents, for the love that they had always bestowed upon us and I asked that they be safe in Heaven.  And I cried quite a few tears and then, all of a sudden, without my realizing it, I looked up and I saw that the clouds had parted, that the sun had come out and it was actually shining brightly and it continued to shine for the rest of that day.  It was as if God was saying to me, “Declan, you don’t have to worry about your parents. Leave them in my hands; they are in good hands.  Believe in the resurrection of the dead. Believe in the resurrection of Christ. Believe in the resurrection of your Dad and Mom.”  And I knew with absolute certainty that my parents were happy with God and I have never doubted it from that day to this.

I think occasionally in our lives we’re all given these little signs of hope, if we can only open our eyes to see them—I think God does give them to us.  Occasionally, the clouds do part and we become aware of the brilliance of the sun. 

So, if today you are living in a clouded place I pray that you may behold the signs given you in your outer world and your inner world, the signs that God is alive, the signs that Christ is alive, and may you share in that life now and in the world to come.

Amen