2nd Sunday of Easter – 12 April 2026
The late English writer Daniel O’Leary once related a striking moment of epiphany narrated by the Irish mystic John Moriarty. Moriarty was walking through muddy patches in the meadow near his Kerry home, wondering how those “hints of heaven” could emerge from such a drab place. “How could something so yellow as a buttercup come up out of soggy brown earth?” he asked. “How could something so purple as an orchid and so perfect as a cowslip come out of it? Where does the colour and perfection come from?”[1]
That question presses itself upon us with new urgency even now. We look at the world and see the mud all too clearly—the devastation of war in Iran and Lebanon, the chaos, the grief, the fear that entombs whole communities. And yet, at the very same moment, humanity stretches beyond itself in wonder, reaching toward the heavens through the Artemis program, preparing once more to touch the surface of the moon. How can both be true at once? How can such darkness and such brilliance coexist?
As were the first disciples, we are surprised by the power of life when it appears—especially when it appears in unlikely places. As O’Leary himself observed:
“The spirit of Easter is utterly free, utterly beyond our control. It is the deepest meaning of all our experiences, of everything that exists. It is in the harshness of war, in the tenderness of touch. It lives in the darkness of despair, in the glimmer of hope. It parts the veil, it rolls away the stone, it changes the focus; it transforms our way of understanding ourselves and our world. It points away from the perfection of angels to the damaged beauty of the human miracle.”
Perhaps it is to that “damaged beauty” that today’s Gospel takes us. The disciples are locked away in fear, much like so many today who live under the shadow of conflict. They are enclosed, trapped within anxiety and uncertainty, as whole nations can feel trapped within cycles of violence. They are at a dead end. The future presents without promise. All they have is darkness.
And yet, the Risen Christ comes to them there.
He does not wait for them to emerge from fear. He does not demand that they resolve their chaos before encountering him. He enters the room as it is—just as he enters our world as it is: fractured, wounded, divided. He comes into our Irans and Lebanons; he comes into the anxious rooms of our own hearts; he comes even as rockets rise toward the moon, reminding us of what human ingenuity can achieve, even while human reconciliation remains unfinished.
Further, in that room the disciples are not met by a Christ resplendent in untouchable glory. Rather, they are met by the Risen One who remains the Crucified One. The wounds are still visible. The Resurrection has not erased them; it has transformed them. The wounds are no longer signs of defeat, but sources of life—places from which healing can begin. In this lies the great Easter mystery. Resurrection does not remove our wounds—personal or collective. It does not magically erase war or suffering. Rather, it opens a new possibility within them. It allows woundedness to become a place of encounter, a place where something new can begin. As O’Leary wrote:
“resurrection does not sweep us away to a painless place but reveals the redemption in our suffering now. The lost paradise is regained in the soil of our fields and in the seasons of our souls. There is no sin, loss, betrayal, shame or despair that is final. Somehow or other, in the end, all is harvest. Resurrection is what we were created for.”
This is why the symbol of Easter is not floodlight but candlelight. The candle does not eliminate the darkness; it dwells within it. Its light is gentle, vulnerable, yet unmistakable. It does not overpower—it invites. It creates a space where shadows can be held without fear.
So too with peace.
In the Gospel, the Risen Christ speaks the same words three times: “Peace be with you.” This is no casual greeting. It is the sign of Resurrection. Peace is not the absence of conflict imposed from above; it is the presence of a transformed reality arising from within woundedness. It is what the disciples receive in that locked room. It is what our world most desperately needs—in war-torn regions, and in the hidden conflicts within ourselves.
And this is where the contrast of our world becomes most striking. We can reach the moon through the brilliance of science and cooperation, as seen in the Artemis mission. But we cannot reach peace without transformation of the human heart. We can map the stars but still struggle to disarm hatred. We can traverse space yet remain imprisoned by fear. The Resurrection invites us to measure progress not only by technological achievement, but by the depth of reconciliation we are willing to embrace.
When peace begins to take root—however fragile, however partial—then the Resurrection is already at work. When anger softens into openness, when resentment yields to receptivity, when isolation gives way to companionship, then the stone has already begun to roll away.
Resurrection is what we celebrate. As O’Leary concluded, “The landscape does not change but our eyes do. We watch for the small hourly miracles deepened against eternal meaning.” Even amid the smoke of war and the fire of rockets, the quiet miracle remains: peace offered, peace received, peace lived.
O’Leary gave his final word to the poet Pauline Mattarasso, and may it be ours too:
“Reaching her arms so high
she thrust them through
to peg love’s laundry in the sky.
And white against the blue
her banners flew.”
[1] Daniel O’Leary, “Song of the Earth,” The Tablet (26 April 2014), 6.
