by Sean Quinn
Newark, NJ – For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started two years ago, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., archbishop of Newark, celebrated Easter Sunday Mass before a filled Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark on April 17.
While commemorating Jesus’ resurrection, Cardinal Tobin acknowledged that today’s Catholics naturally would prefer to see tangible evidence of Christ’s power like the miracles Jesus performed for his contemporaries. But he said those who have faith without seeing are blessed. And Easter is the ideal time to reaffirm that faith, he said, much like Christ’s early followers did upon discovering his empty tomb.
“Mary Magdala and her two seeking companions did not see what they wanted…but they would come to believe while always longing for more,” Cardinal Tobin said during his homily. “Their Easter is so like our own — experienced days of light, growth, and still seeking all that we desire and hope for. Enjoy the not seeing, not being convinced yet believing. In short, enjoy entering into the belief of Jesus’ early friends as they lived his resurrection without seeing.”
The Easter Sunday Mass marked the conclusion of Holy Week, the Catholic Church’s most sacred time of year. It was also the beginning of the Easter Season, which lasts for seven weeks and culminates on Pentecost Sunday, the day the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’ Apostles and other followers.