2026 Easter Message
The first witnesses of the Resurrection did not begin in triumph, but in confusion, grief, and uncertainty. Yet from that very place, they were sent—to proclaim Christ crucified and risen.
That same mission remains for us today.
Please click below to watch a brief Easter reflection from Sycamore Trustee Father John Raphael, ’89, inviting us to live the Resurrection not as sentiment, but as a concrete mission entrusted to all those who believe in His name.
These are among the first words spoken by the Risen Jesus.
This sounds nothing like the Alleluias we are accustomed to at Easter and not even like the Hosannas of Palm Sunday!
Where is the joy? Where are the excitement and enthusiasm that we long for—the joy we feel as soon as the Gloria of the Easter Vigil announces to us that Christ is risen from the dead?
It was not there on the first Easter morning!
On that day Jesus first encounters a woman who remains utterly bereft. Later that day he casually saunters up to two downcast disciples who are lamenting the great tragedy they had recently witnessed.
Mary Magdalene responds plaintively to one she does not recognize:
“They have taken away my Lord…Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me…!”
The two disciples respond a bit arrogantly:
“Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know about these things?”
Both responses are very different from the way we welcome Easter, but they both have so much to say to us today, even as we cry out, Alleluia!
Our Easter joy is reduced to sentimentality if it does not remain deeply connected to our experience of the Passion of Jesus.
The Gospel accounts of Easter make this connection vividly clear. It was a betrayed, condemned, denied, beaten, stripped, mocked and crucified Messiah who rose from the dead on Easter morning.
Just because it all took place in three days doesn’t make it any less dreadful.
The responses of Mary Magdalene and the Emmaus disciples show us how horrifying this experience was for them.
Our communal reading of the Passion narratives on Palm Sunday and Good Friday attempts to communicate to us the depths of Jesus’ suffering as he offered himself for us.
Why is this important?
It helps us to authentically live out faith in the resurrection of Jesus today!
The responses of Magdalene and the two disciples remind us of the messiness of the Incarnation and how it is drawn up into the messiness of our redemption.
We have this instinctive desire that all things go well, in exactly the same way that we want them to go. We are deeply disturbed when things go awry.
We forget that God does not work like that!
Just a few days ago, we heard Our Lord himself pray to the Father, not my will but thy will be done!
The resurrection of Jesus ultimately brought great joy to those closest to him, but not at first sight! Yet, even after that joy, they all eventually had to begin the hard work of making the message of the resurrection known.
It would bring them trials, persecution, imprisonment and, for many of them, death.
You and I are called to live out the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus in the same way. We rightly sing, Alleluia!
We revel in the sights and the sounds of Easter, the lilies and the trumpet blasts that herald the feast of our redemption.
We joyfully celebrate the gift of our own baptism which makes our participation in this mystery possible.
We, too, must now go to work to make the message known!
This is our mission at Sycamore Trust. Out of love for our beloved Notre Dame, we commit ourselves to making this message known.
Whenever and wherever our Risen Lord is abandoned, denied, mocked or scorned, we proclaim the same Jesus to be Risen, triumphant over sin and death.
Our celebration of Easter is deeply rooted in our commemoration of the Passion. We know that we must journey with him in his sorrow if we are to fully share in his joy!
Always, as we journey, we turn to the one who always knew who he was—at the foot of the cross and in the glory of his resurrection, Notre Dame, Our Mother! Through her intercession, in season and out, on this Easter day we joyfully proclaim:
Christ the Lord is risen, Alleluia!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Rev. John J. Raphael, ND '89
Rev. John J. Raphael, ND '89, is a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, Pastor at Christ The King Catholic Church in the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood and member of the Sycamore Trust Board of Directors where he leads the organization's Apostolate.
