We all know that here in the United States we use one day as a symbol of life before everything changed, that date is September 10, 2001. With the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon the following day, we recognize that this was the last date when we could say that all was well in the country and the world. This day even dwarfs the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How many even know that this even happened.

Tonight we celebrate an equivalent to September 10 in a different time. This is the day ontologically before everything changed. Jesus’ ministry was powerful, but it was reserved to the Jewish community of the time. Indeed, even Pilate had no idea about Jesus until He was standing before him. Jesus’ ministry was not Earth shattering, it was not world changing. He had excited and angered various people in Judah, but no more. All that changed beginning the first Holy Thursday with Jesus’ arrest and subsequent death and resurrection. So this moment is not only a commemoration of the Last Supper, it is also the reality that we know and the Apostles were yet to understand, the world is about to change. Indeed, as we know, they are so content in their roles that they fall asleep while our Lord intensely undergoes the first stages of his final act for our salvation with no human intervention for comfort.

What is this day saying to us today. Imagine it is September 10 it is the last day we can say all is well. Where are we going to be in our thoughts on Easter Sunday when we come to the end of the Triduum and commemorate that moment when the world changed radically? This is an important question for us tonight. Are we ready to commemorate that change? What if that means we need to prepare for our own change?

The Apostles will go through a radical change that will take quite sometime of adjustment. They will go from content, to terror, to overjoy and happiness. How will these three days change you? We are here after the fact by almost two thousand years, but this is a weekend that as happens every year we need to make a choice. It is a time to say, how will the death and resurrection of Jesus change my life this year? How is my life different because I have embraced the fact that Jesus death and resurrection changed the world? What separates me from those who do not believe in not only my life and attitude and direction?

If we look back fifty two weeks, we can look back at the Boston Marathon bombings, but in the commemorations that happened these past days, we can see how people whose lives which tragically and dramatically changed last year, are today in a mindset where they did not let that tragedy take them down and Monday, we will be celebrating the Boston Marathon yet again. Our world changed again last year, but our attitude known as Boston Strong was also born on that day. This is such a dramatic reality that even Vatican Radio addressed it even citing the terms Boston Strong.

All the tragedy of our world has not changed it as much as the powerful event of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Two thousand years from now we may not know of such a powerful event as September 11 or for that matter the Boston Marathon bombings, but the events of these three days which also happened two thousand years ago are commemorated as if they happened yesterday and each event affects us personally in a way that no tragedy ever did.

There is great effort to get people to believe that this day never happened so that the changes that they sparked may be undone. What does that mean? It is simple, if these days did not happen, then as St. Paul says we are not saved and there is no hope for us. Then we life and we die and that is about it. There is no Heaven for any human being and life becomes meaningless in the long run. This is the promise that those who seek to silence the voice of Christianity have for each and every one of us. However, since we understand the reality of these days, we can see how much we see the world differently from those who want to lead us back to a time of no hope in the interest of having their particular sphere of the world their way. Yet for two thousand years that effort fails continuously because this did happen and the world changed and we are given the opportunity of eternal life which this world cannot promise. That truth is even more powerful than all the tragedies of the world because that truth gives us a hope that no tragedy can take away. These three days affect your life even today in ways that September 11th never will. Yet, they represent a dramatic change for something so great and wonderful that you and I look forward to it in powerful ways.

Let us spend the next three days in the awe and wonder and emotion of the Easter Triduum so that we may be more open to the question How will the death and resurrection of Jesus impact my life this year?

God Bless You,

Fr. Robert J Carr