Sunday Homily, 22 March 2026 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

What’s missing from the complement of signs of Jesus?  Now that we’ve heard the last of them, the raising of Lazarus, what comes next?

Jesus called his miracles “signs”, so that they point on to something ordinarily beyond our grasp.  All his signs overcame some natural impossibility:

The lack of wine at Cana

The mortal illness of the courtier’s son

The disability of the man at Bethesda

The hunger of the 5,000 in the wilderness

The properties of the Lake's water

The disability of the man born blind

The very death of Lazarus

Over these things, there is no adequate human power.  But these impossibilities Jesus overcame with his divine power.  He shows himself in a new way each time:

He is the generous giver of the new wine

He is the health of the sick

He is the wealth of the beggar

He is the bread of life

He is the master of the elements

He is the light of the world

He is the resurrection and the life

So, what comes next?  What is the last impossibility to overcome?

What comes next is the resurrection.  This is when he raises himself from the dead.  The dead among us have no power to do anything for themselves.  So, Jesus will die our death, to demonstrate that he has divine power at the very moment we know he is powerless.

The resurrection will show us that Jesus cannot be beaten, and so that he is trustworthy.  The resurrection will speak to us of the place he must have in our life, and so of our loving obedience.  The resurrection will move us out of the mire of grief and into the gladness we were always meant to have.

Overcoming the impossibility of Jesus doing anything for himself while he lies dead in his tomb, the resurrection dispenses with the notion that this life is the goal of our existence.

All of Jesus’ signs blessed the recipient for more of this mortal life.  The resurrection of Jesus obtains God’s gifts to get us into eternal life.

Thanks to Jesus, we can do something for ourselves when we die, but it must be done before our time comes: we must believe in Jesus as the Son sent by the Father.  That much will change this life so that this life of ours will be changed for ever.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Parish Priest