“The Song of the Resurrection” - Easter Sunday - 4.9.23

“The Song of the Resurrection”

By: Fr. David Schmidt

Sacred Heart Church (Regina Coeli Parish) - Emsworth, PA

Happy Easter! Today, we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His triumph over sin and Death, paving the way for our salvation.

For my homily today, I’m going to give you what’s called the Kerygma which is the basic proclamation of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Many people in the world, including Catholics, have many misconceptions on who we believe God is and what we believe as Catholics. This is so important to understand because our image of God effects our entire worldview. If we don’t see the world through a proper lens, it effects the way we interpret everything that goes on in the world, especially the role God and the Catholic Church plays in it. It most importantly effects our understanding of the importance of the Resurrection.

So, as we celebrate the Resurrection this day here is the version of the Kerygma, the basic proclamation of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and the Catholic worldview, that Christ put on my heart to share:

God is love. God’s very being is love. And the Catechism tells us, “By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.” (CCC, 221)

The entire universe shouts God’s desire to be in relationship with us and for us to share in the love of the Most Holy Trinity. There is no other reason why the universe exists, why each one of us exists, except that God deeply loves us, and desires to be united with us in heaven for forever. God didn’t have to create the world, but He created the world out of the abundance of His love, out of His deep yearning and desire for each one of us. He had each one of us in mind when He created the world. There has never been a moment when we weren’t on His mind. There has never been a moment that He has taken His loving gaze off of us.

When God created each one of us, He formed us in our mother’s womb with such great care and tenderness. He delights in every aspect of who we are because that’s the way He made us- our personality, looks, strengths, weaknesses, quirks, etc. When He created us, He had a plan for our life. A plan of love. Our whole life is about God seeking to win our hearts. How does He do this? By singing to us.

When God created the world, He sang it into existence. The whole universe is a song of love by our Creator. God sings this song of heaven, this Song of Songs, into the depths of our hearts. God’s song of love is the most beautiful and divine melody that we could ever imagine. The saints and great mystics are the ones who heard God singing into the depths of their hearts and they danced in tune with that song all the way into the heavenly kingdom.

The great tragedy of humanity is that we have rejected God’s love. In our pride, we wanted to be God without God. This is the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and of every human being that has followed. However, despite our rejection of God, He did not give up on us. God has never stopped singing to us because it is impossible for Him to ever stop singing. He loves us too much, and the song that He sings is an eternal melody.

Because of our sin, God revealed new dimensions of His Song. We now see that it is also a song of His redemptive love and of His merciful love. In the OT, God sang this song to His people Israel. The people whom He loved. He expressed His desire to enter into a marriage covenant with them. However, they continued to reject Him, but our God never stopped singing His song of love and mercy to them.

Then, it came time to reveal His love to the world in the most beautiful way. In this great act of love, the Father sent His Son into the world to take on our flesh and become man born of a woman. His Son, walked this earth, singing the song of eternal salvation. Christ sang this Song of Songs all the way to the Cross. The Cross is where this song of heaven reaches its climax because it is at this moment the infinite depths of God’s love is revealed to the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This is how much God loves us. God does not hate the world. He loves the world. He loves each one of us with an infinite love. And He proved that love for us by dying on the Cross and saving us from our sins and the clutches of the devil. Not only did Christ die for us, but He rose from the dead. His promise to us is that if we die with Him, we will also rise with Him on the last day. We will rise on the last day with resurrected bodies and spend all eternity with God in heaven as we forever listen and dance in step with God’s song of love, the Song of all Songs, forever and ever.

This isn’t just some nice story along with all the other stories in the world. This is the truth. This is the reality in which we live. Everything else we hear about God that is not what we have heard today is a lie. God is love. He loves you and He loves me. And He desires for each one of us to be with Him in heaven forever.

How do we train the ears of our heart to hear God’s song of love being sung in the depths of our heart and soul? By praying. By coming to Mass and receiving the Holy Eucharist. By going to confession. By receiving the Sacraments of the Church. By following God’s Law and Commandments. By loving one another. And by praising God.

Most people in today’s world have fallen deaf to the music of God. God is singing His song of love to us, but we have strayed so far that we longer can hear it and have drowned it out completely with the clanking of the world’s music. It is a loud, ugly, clanking noise that resembles the horrifying noise of hell. Only through prayer and the Sacraments, and loving God and neighbor, can we be purified of the world’s noise, so that we can hear the divine melody in our hearts.

Finally, as I said at the beginning, God has a plan of love for each one of our lives. That plan includes each one of us not just dancing in tune with the song of God’s love but becoming the song itself as Jesus did. We know how beautiful it sounds when a group of people get together to sing. And we can only imagine how much more beautiful the song of heaven sounds when each of us sings a unique part of the melody by living the lives that God is calling us to live. We can’t sing anything beautiful on our own. We can only beautifully sing the unique song that God sings to each of our hearts.

When we learn to hear and dance in tune with this song, and become the song itself, then this sweet melody pierces through the noise of the world of sin and death, and people around the world and in the Church will begin to hear this song once again, giving them hope amidst the darkness, leading them to turn from their former way of life by turning back to God, and dancing and singing in tune with the song of God’s love, as this divine melody, the Song of all Songs, the Song of the Resurrection, leads them to the heavenly kingdom where they will dance and sing with the Blessed Trinity and all the angels and saints for all eternity.