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At Easter Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan rejoiced in the Resurrection of Christ and remembered with affection his predecessor, Cardinal Edward Egan, Archbishop Emeritus, who died one month earlier to the day.
“What a magnificent morning in the life of our faith, in the life of our Church, He has risen as he said, Alleluia, Alleluia,” Cardinal Dolan told a standing room only congregation at the 10:15 a.m. liturgy April 5.
Sunshine streamed brightly through the wide-open cathedral doors as the faithful joyfully filed inside after patiently waiting in the long lines outside.
“I welcome all of you and thank you—thank you for who you are and what you do for Jesus and His Church,” Cardinal Dolan said, acknowledging in particular the many present “who are essential to the work of the Archdiocese of New York,” to the work of expanding “the message, the mystery, the life and power of the resurrection through the Church.”
He recognized those new Catholics who had just come into full communion with the Church at the Easter Vigil on Saturday, some of whom returned to the cathedral for Easter Sunday Mass.
After asking the former catechumens and candidates to stand so the rest of the assembly could acknowledge them, the cardinal offered hearty congratulations in honor of their “first full day as a Catholic.”
Among the concelebrants were Auxiliary Bishop Dominick Lagonegro and Msgr. Robert Ritchie, the cathedral rector.
To further illustrate the Easter message, the cardinal recalled that at Easter a year ago, he learned that his then-1-year-old- grandnephew Charlie had spoken his first word. The youngster reportedly resounded an adamant “No” when told he would have to share his Easter candy with his cousins who were joining the family later in the day.
Although amused by his grandnephew’s word choice, “no,” the cardinal reminded the congregation, “is a word most inappropriate on Easter Sunday morning because this is the day when God our Father thundered, thundered out a ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ to everything that He intended for creation and His creatures.”
“This is a day of ‘yes,’ not of ‘no.’ Good Friday was a day of ‘no’s,” a day that Jesus’ followers had, perhaps, been tempted to think that ‘no’ was going to be the last word, the cardinal continued, as it was “a day of death, a day of lies, a day of darkness, a day of evil, a day of defeat, a day of ‘no.’”
Although God had said “yes” from the beginning, He gave man the free will to say “yes” or “no,” the cardinal added. “From the beginning, unfortunately, we had used our free will to say ‘no.’ We call that sin. But He would not take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Even at the Crucifixion on Good Friday, when man said “no,” He would not accept “no” for an answer, the cardinal said.
“This,” Easter Sunday, “is the day that God our Father says ‘yes’ to everything that is good and true and beautiful and noble and life-giving and freeing in the human project.”
The cardinal conceded that man can, at times, be tempted to think that life “is one big, long string of Good Fridays. We sense a lot of ‘no’s’ in the world today, do we not?”
Being people of realism, “we don’t run away from all of those ‘no’s,’ but we’re also people of hope who realize that ‘yes, yes, we’ll triumph,’” the cardinal said.
“Easter always is victorious over Good Friday.”
