Sometimes I am asked whether Christmas or Easter is the most important holiday for the Church. People are often surprised by how quickly I answer: Easter. Everything in our Church is oriented toward Easter. It was the first and the most important feast celebrated by the Apostles after our Lord ascended into Heaven. St. Paul writes of the Easter mystery, “If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is groundless, and your faith, too, is groundless. Worse still, we are convicted of giving false testimony about God; we bore God witness that he had raised Christ up from the dead, and he has not raised him up, if it is true that the dead do not rise again. If the dead, I say, do not rise, then Christ has not risen either; and if Christ has not risen, all your faith is a delusion; you are back in your sins. It follows, too, that those who have gone to their rest in Christ have been lost. If the hope we have learned to repose in Christ belongs to this world only, then we are unhappy beyond all other men.” (1 Cor 15:14-19, Knox translation)

Without Easter, our faith is a delusion. Without Easter, we have no hope.

With Easter, everything has changed.
With Easter, all is made new.
With Easter, our faith no longer ends in death but opens into eternal life.

Why?

Because Christ has defeated our great enemy: sin. He has ransomed us from the slavery of sin that leads only to death, a death that is not merely physical but also spiritual, because it cuts us off from the God who loved us enough to create us. He has rebuilt the bridge between God and humanity, the bridge destroyed by the sin of Adam. God himself came to this earth to restore what we had destroyed: our relationship with him.

The Entrance Antiphon for Monday of Holy Week captures this perfectly. It reads, “Contend, O Lord, with my contenders; fight those who fight me. Take up your buckler and shield; arise in my defense, Lord, my mighty help.” (Psalm 35:1-2)

Humanity cried out to God for help.

The events of Holy Week are God’s response. On Holy Thursday, as he began his Passion, he took up the defense of      humanity and contended with our true enemies: sin, everlasting death, and the forces of evil who seek to drag us down   with them. On Easter Sunday, we learn that he has emerged victorious. The gates of hell are conquered. The holy souls      of our forefathers are set free. The gates of eternal life are opened.

The sequence for Easter ends:
Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining.
Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!

Christ, our King, has obtained for us, on this day, eternal life. Let us rejoice!