The Catholic Church exists to proclaim the Risen Lord, Archbishop William E. Lori told more than 1,300 people who filled the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland to capacity for the 11 a.m. Easter Mass April 9.
“Standing in the light of Christ, we proclaim: Life is stronger than death,” the archbishop said in his homily. “Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies.”
The Church exists, Archbishop Lori said, not as a “mere human organization,” but as the “Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ, the sacrament of the Risen One.”
Speaking just days after the Maryland attorney general’s office released a devastating report on historic sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, mostly from the 1940s until the 1990s, the archbishop acknowledged that in the past, representatives of the Church “betrayed the Lord’s gift of self, especially in deceiving and harming the young and the innocent.”
In referencing the Church’s role in past failures, the archbishop noted that “we cannot undo the past, but we can lay our failings at the feet of the Risen Lord, beg him for forgiveness, and beseech him to heal those who were harmed, and, indeed, to heal the wound which such betrayals have inflicted on the Body of Christ.”
Archbishop Lori encouraged the congregation to “take heart.”
“It is in the darkness that light shines most brightly,” he said. “It is in the night of sin that the new life of grace appears in its splendor. Wherever we may be in our journey of life and faith, let us walk together, as we open our hearts to re-encounter the Risen Lord standing in our midst.”
During the Easter Mass, the archbishop baptized two new members of the church, while also confirming one of them. Throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore, more than 500 people were expected to be welcomed into full communion with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, receiving the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist and/or confirmation.
Kristen Shaab, a parishioner of the cathedral who had not attended Mass since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, said it was important to be present at the April 9 Easter Mass at her home parish.
“I feel like it was a good sense of rejoicing and community for Easter,” said Shaab, speaking just minutes after the cathedral’s choir sang a rousing version of the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.
Shaab acknowledged the pain many are experiencing in light of the attorney general’s report.
“I think, hopefully, people can find forgiveness in their heart and that we can come together,” Shaab said. “I think it’s an important time for everybody to come together.”
Dr. Elie Saad, Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Science at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and his wife, Juliette Baroud, an engineer at Johns Hopkins University, attended the cathedral Mass with their six-month-old daughter, Christy.
Originally from Lebanon, the couple said it is important to hold onto Christian traditions.
“We came here for the church and to be in contact with God,” Saad said, holding his smiling daughter in his arms. “There are always going to be good people and bad people. It doesn’t affect our faith.”
Archbishop Lori noted that in a divided world, the truth about the dignity of human life is revealed in the flesh of the Risen Lord, a “truth that goes beyond every philosophy and every ideology.”
“On the face of the Risen One there shines the glory of God that definitively separates appearance from reality, and deception from truth,” he said. “Gazing at the Risen Lord, we discover in the midst of our rapidly changing world that which is permanent, that which has value, that on which we can rely.”
Email George P. Matysek Jr. at gmatysek@catholicreview.org
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