Easter Sunday: April 5, 2026

Happy Easter to all of you!  I’m glad you chose to spend the morning with us here at St. Patrick,  and I hope the rest of the day brings you time spent with family and those you love, celebrating the Lord’s resurrection for Christ the Lord has risen today, alleluia!

So a child was sitting at the kitchen table dying Easter Eggs.  Her grandmother walked in and asked if the girl knew why we dye eggs on Easter.  She said, sure grandma, Jesus died on Good Friday so that we can dye on Easter Sunday. . .

Okay, a very bad joke.  So, how about;  how does Easter end?  With an R!

And why does the Easter bunny want to win a gold medal at the Olympics?  Because he heard it’s 24 carrots. . .

Now believe it or not, there is actually a tradition of telling jokes on Easter Sunday that stretches all the way back to the early Church.  Saints Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom as well as others, began the practice of the RISUS PASCHALIS, which is Latin for the Easter Laugh.  The tradition was based on the idea that the resurrection of Jesus was God’s ultimate “practical joke” on the Devil.  The rationale was that Satan thought he had won, when Jesus died on the cross, only for the tables to be turned on Easter morning.

Pope Benedict in his book, Images of Hope wrote about this practice of the Easter Laugh, and how it especially became popular in his native Bavaria during the 15th century.  He also mentions how in the 17th century, the practice had to be suppressed by a decree of Pope Clement the 10th because, again in Bavaria, priests got a little carried away in telling a few off-colored jokes. . .

Yes, today is a day for laughter because Christ the Lord is risen today - Alleluia!

So this is A day of new beginnings, because love is still alive.  This is the day the Lord has made, and so we rejoice, and are glad, and we laugh. . .  For today, with the resurrection of Jesus, we know:  Sin does not have the last laugh. Pain and suffering and death and violence don’t have the last laugh. All the things that can snuff out joy and life do not have the last laugh.

For as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary found out, as the first day of the week was dawning,  Jesus is not in the tomb.  He has been raised just as he said. And we who are believers have been raised up to new life in him, and so we must think about what is above and not of what is on earth.

It is through the Paschal Mystery we have just celebrated, the death and Resurrection of Jesus,  that sin, sorrow, suffering and death have lost their power to overcome us. And so we must offer our thankful praise.  For we can look the cross right in the face and say, you don’t get the last word and simply laugh when evil seeks to convince us of its strength and power.

So today, remember the time Esau asked Jacob to round up his 37 sheep and bring them to him, and so Jacob brought Esau 40 sheep, because 37 rounded up is 40. 

Or remember the parade of aging easter bunnies who could only hop backwards, for they were a receding hare-line.

May the joy and laughter of Easter fill your hearts more than I just filled this Church with groans,  at some sub-par jokes.

For Christ the Lord is risen today – alleluia! 

HAPPY EASTER!