Sermon in a Bottle

Easter Sunday.  "This man God raised on the third day."

It's hard to preach on Easter.  I feel I am fighting colored Easter eggs, new outfits, chocolate bunnies, and larger numbers of the faithful crowding the usually half-empty pews.  It's like the guy on Palm Sunday who says, "Geez, every time I come to Mass some idiot is trying to poke my eye out with a strip of palm."  And it's hard for me to fight the temptation at the end of Easter Sunday Mass to say, "The Mass is ended.  See ya next Christmas! Alleluia!  Alleluia!"

I try to counter such negative thoughts in my Easter sermon by briefly repeating the liturgies and the insights of the Triduum.  Of foot-washing the old and the young, of being faithful to Jesus' command at the Last Supper to "do this in memory of me," of a horrible death by crucifiction and a totally shocking empty tomb, the joy of new Catholics through the waters of baptism and the oil of the Spirit.  And I do lots and lots of smiling.