Easter Sunday 2026
April 5, 2026
I. Lift Up Your Hearts
Moments ago, St. Paul’s words to the Colossians were proclaimed: “If then, you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Thus does St. Paul invite us on this Easter morning to lift up our hearts!
Lift up your hearts as you listen again the words of our first reading…words that the Apostle Peter addressed to Cornelius, the devout Roman centurion, about the truth and reality of the Lord’s rising from the dead . . . Listening to Peter’s words, we might think, “This is nothing out of the ordinary; it’s what we’d expect him to say.” But we should think again. When last we met Peter in the Church’s liturgy, he was hovering about the shadows as Jesus was arrested and condemned. Accused of being a follower of Jesus, Peter denied three times the One he had confessed to be the Son of God, the Messiah and Lord. Now, days and weeks later,
Peter speaks to the Cornelius about the Lord’s Resurrection with assurance. He speaks as a witness of the Resurrection, surely because he saw the empty tomb and ate and drank with the Risen Lord— but also because his life was profoundly changed: Peter, who denied the Lord three times, had become a new person in the Risen Lord. So he speaks to Cornelius, not only about the fact of the Resurrection, but about its transformative power. Peter’s life was changed. Cornelius’ life would be changed. The Resurrection has the power to change your life and mine. Therefore, lift up your hearts!
The scene changes. It is the morning of the Resurrection and Mary Magdelene hurries towards Jesus’ tomb. Her love for Jesus is undiminished by his Passion and Death, perhaps it burned even more brightly in her redeemed soul. Her purpose is to complete the anointing of the lifeless body of Jesus, done hastily, as he was laid to rest on the eve of the Sabbath. She finds the heavy stone at the tomb’s entrance rolled away – the heavy stone that symbolizes the enormity of human folly and sin, a burden too heavy to be lifted by anyone other than God. Mary Magdalene is troubled, for she knows the tomb is empty. She runs to the apostles and announces, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb & we don’t know where they put him.” With but a few words, she becomes the first herald of the Resurrection. With the burden of sin lifted from humanity’s shoulders, and Mary Magdelan’s announcement echoing across the centuries, let us run with Peter and John to the empty tomb. Peering into the tomb with the beloved disciple John, let us ‘see and believe’ – and believing, lift up our hearts!
II. The Power of the Resurrection Undimmed
Marveling at the Scriptural accounts of the Resurrection, let us be reminded that the Lord’s rising from dead is not confined to the past. How could a love so great and transformative be confined to a single moment in history? How could victory over sin and death belong to the Lord alone, and not to us who are his followers? This, truly, is what we celebrate today!
At the heart of our faith stands the Risen Lord, Victor over sin and death. As one author put it, “Easter is Christmas fulfilled and glorified, a true and still more splendid Epiphany, Lent’s radiant and happy goal. Our Lord’s Incarnation and Passion are consummated [in his exaltation].” (Dame Ameliana Loehr, Year of Our Lord, p. 150). Throughout the year, the Church unfolds the Easter mystery for us, keeping its power alive in us through Sunday Mass and the Sacraments, enabling us to live as women and men of the Resurrection in our daily lives. Therefore, lift up your hearts!
But let us be realistic. The Resurrection did not end sin and strife. The victory of the Resurrection must be won in every generation and in the heart of every person. Even in the immense joy of Easter, let us not deny the sin and chaos in our own lives, nor the sin and chaos in our world – from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, to the persecution of believers in Africa, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, to the maltreatment of the poor, the vulnerable, and the newly arrived. Before undergoing his Pasch, Jesus said to his disciples, “In the world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” With that assurance ringing in your ears, lift up your hearts as you advocate for peace, for justice, and for tranquility at home and abroad.
Even amid the world’s confusion and mischance, the Risen Lord and the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead are at work in minds and hearts, across the world and in this Archdiocese. There is an extraordinary increase of those who entered the Church this year. Last night at the Easter Vigil, nearly 2,000 persons entered the Church in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, many of them young adults, many of them in college. Here at the Cathedral there were thirty-nine: Some were baptized, immersed in the Lord’s Death and Resurrection, partaking of that newness of life the Risen Lord won for us. Many others professed the fullness of faith and with the newly baptized were confirmed and received the Holy Eucharist for the first time. Talking with young adults entering the Church, I find they are looking for something solid on which to base their lives; they are looking for Someone on whose love they can rely and a community that shares that love, one with another. As you reflect on how the Spirit of the Lord is at work in our midst, I invite you: “Lift up your hearts!”
Now the Risen Lord calls all of us who are his followers to renew our baptismal promises: our promise to reject the promptings of Satan and to embrace the Church’s faith, not only in mind and heart but in how we practice and live our faith day by day. Moments from now I will ask if you reject Satan and all his works; I will ask if you believe the Father who raised Jesus from the dead, in the Son who conquered sin and death by his Cross and Resurrection, in the Spirit who breathes into us the new life of the Resurrection, and in the Church in whom the Risen Lord dwells in the power of the Spirit. As I lead you in the renewal of your baptismal promises, I will, in effect, say to you, “Lift up your hearts!” And you will respond, in effect, “We have lifted them up to the Lord!”
III. A Joy That Refuses to Fade
My friends, Easter is not merely a day— it is a season, a way of life, a joy that refuses to fade. The world may try to pull our gaze downward, but Easter insists we look up— towards hope, towards mercy, towards the God who rolls away stones we cannot budge. So as you leave this Cathedral today, do not let Easter end at the church doors. Let it echo in your homes, your workplaces, your conversations, your acts of kindness. Let people wonder—in the best possible way— why you seem lighter, braver, more joyful than you did last week. And if someone asks why you’re smiling so much, you can simply say, “Well… it is Easter. And the tomb is still empty!” Lift up your hearts! Christ is risen and joy is ours. Alleluia, alleluia!