God Has Made All Things Well

Homily of Most Rev. Charles John Brown D.D., Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines

Easter Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection | April 20, 2025

Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, Asuncion St., Malate, Manila

The Lord is truly risen this morning. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Our hearts are filled with joy and happiness. So, for me, as your Apostolic Nuncio, who lives very close to you, just around the corner, on Taft Ave., I am very happy to share your Easter joy this morning, the Resurrection of our Lord.

I came on foot this morning with Rev. Fr. Vjekoslav Holik, the Secretary at the Nunciature, who just read the Gospel (John 20:1-9), and two of our wonderful sisters who work at the Nunciature, and a visitor from Italy. We all came like little pilgrims coming to the empty tomb, to witness with you, Jesus, risen from the dead.

The Most Holy Days

These days have been the most holy days of the Liturgical Year. Certainly, most of us, participated in Holy Thursday. We saw the moment in which Jesus, at the Last Supper, gave us His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity in the Eucharist. He gave us the gift of His life on Holy Thursday. Then many of you, some of whom I saw walking around on Holy Thursday night in the Visita Iglesia, we followed Jesus that Holy Thursday night as He was taken from office to office, from official to official, from Caiaphas to Annas, to Pilate, back and forth, and then led to His crucifixion on Good Friday. Then we participated in Good Friday, the solemn and sad day in which Jesus is crucified. Jesus dies on the cross, abandoned by almost everybody, all His followers, all the apostles except for one, all abandoned Jesus. None of them were with Him except one apostle when He died on the cross; and all of you know who that apostle was, Saint John, the Evangelist. At the foot of the cross was Saint John, Mary, the mother of Jesus (Mama Mary), and Mary Magdalene—small little group.

How different Good Friday was from Palm Sunday, which we celebrated earlier. Palm Sunday, everyone was yelling, “Hosanna in the highest! Hail, the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest!” That was on Palm Sunday. On Good Friday, they are all gone. His disciples are fearful. They are hiding. No one has the courage to be with Jesus, except for Mama Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint John, and the other Mary there at the foot of the cross (Jn. 19:25). It seemed on Good Friday that the story of Jesus was all finished. The story had ended in sadness and defeat, that death had conquered life. When Jesus dies on the cross, He gave up His spirit. He said, “It is consummated.” [or “It is finished.”] (Jn. 19:30).

Then this morning, an amazing thing happened. Something completely unexpected, unimaginable. The women go to the tomb, [including] Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, whom the Church calls the “Apostle of the Apostles”. Why is she the apostle of the apostles? Because she was faithful to Jesus at the crucifixion on Good Friday, and she is the first to go to the tomb. What does she see? The door of the tomb is open. The stone of the tomb is rolled back, and she looks in, and the body is not there. Jesus is no longer there. She runs, running with joy and happiness. Runs to Saint Peter, and tells Peter, “The tomb is empty. The Lord is not there.” Then Peter and John come running in the Gospel today. John, who was younger than Peter, runs faster, arrives at the tomb first; but he then allows Peter to go in. John waits at the door of the tomb, even though he arrived first, and then lets Peter go in, because Peter was the Prince of the Apostles, the first of the apostles. They go in, and they see that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is no longer there

So, what has happened? Jesus has risen from the dead. Jesus has conquered death. Death no longer is something that should have a hold of fear on us because Jesus has gone through death into new life. In this week, we will see the appearances of Jesus (Matthew 28:8-15, John 20:11-18, Luke 24:13-35, Luke 24:35-48, John 21:1-14, Mark 16:9-15). Then on next Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, we will see Jesus encountering Thomas (John 20:19-31). Thomas, the doubting Thomas who says, “I don't believe that he really rose from the dead. Unless I touch the wounds in his hands and put my hand into his side, I'm not going to believe this.” Next Sunday, you'll see the answer. Jesus will appear to Thomas, and when Thomas touches Jesus, he realizes that Jesus has risen in his body. The resurrection is not just a kind of phantom or spirit. It is Jesus in His body, risen from the dead, His body has risen, and Saint Thomas will encounter that one week from today.

So, we have this tremendous joy in our hearts today. The first thing we realize about what has happened is that Easter is not just a beautiful story. It is a beautiful story, but it's not just a beautiful story. Easter is not just a legend, a story, a myth that people have taught us. Easter is a fact. Easter is something that happened. The tomb was empty. The dead body of Jesus has come back to life and begins to appear unexpectedly to people: to Mary Magdalene, certainly to Mama Mary, to St. Thomas, and others. They see His body, they touched His body, and it teaches us that He is truly risen from the dead. Not just a spirit, not just a phantom, not just our imagination, but physically risen from the dead. That is the fact of Easter, and that is the center of our Catholic faith.

Because we believe that in Jesus, through Him, with Him, and in Him, we, everyone who is present in church this morning, who receives His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, which is His risen body, His resurrected body, we too, you and I, will go through death into new life. In what we confess at the last words of the Creed every Sunday, at least in the English language, we say we believe in “the life of the world to come”, “the life of the world to come.” 

That life is in Jesus. That life made Him go through death, that life is in His body, and His body sanctifies our bodies in and through the Eucharist. So, the Eucharist is the transfer of the resurrected body of Jesus into our own bodies. So that we will go through death the way He did. That's why Easter fills us with great joy, and that's why Easter is not just a legend or a myth or a story, but Easter is a fact.

God has Reversed the Greatest Evil

Easter also tells us that God has reversed the greatest evil. What is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world? Human beings crucified the Son of God. He was abandoned by His friends, and put to death unjustly, the innocent Lamb on the cross, put to death unjustly. The worst thing that could happen. God came into the world to give us love and light, and what did we do? We crucified Him, the worst thing in the world, but then is reversed by God, and becomes the most beautiful thing in the world, by the resurrection. God has made all things well.

There was a great English saint. She's not canonized, but we consider her a saint: Julian of Norwich, in the 14th and 15th century, 500 years ago. She had visions of Jesus, and Jesus told her, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Jesus told her, “I have reversed. I've corrected. I fixed the worst thing that happened in the world, so I can fix anything else that has happened as well.”

Christ Gives Us Hope

That gives us hope, even when we commit sins. Because sin is always something that is bad. Sin is always something that hurts us. Sin is always something that damages us. But if we come back to Jesus after having sinned, and say, “I'm sorry”, and receive His grace and His life, then Jesus can use the effects of our sin to make us holier than if we had never sinned before. So, many of the saints in the Church are sinners who became saints, because they received the gift of Jesus's new life; and they understood that God can reverse the greatest evil and make it the beginnings of something good and beautiful. This is the power of God.

We should always have hope in God. God can do all things. God's plans are not our plans. God reverses the greatest evils and makes them good, but He does it in His way, not in our way. That is why we need to trust God. Trust Jesus. Know that if we come close to Him, if we follow Him, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. He has reversed the greatest evil and made it the source of the greatest good. He can do the same thing with the smaller evils, the smaller sufferings that all of us experience, but in His way, not necessarily in our way.

When we look back in our lives, we'll see things that we suffered, that were difficult and painful and were hard for us; but if we look at those things in our lives through the eyes of God's grace, through the light of the resurrected Jesus, the light of Easter, we see that God can use those painful things to make us holier, to draw us to Him, to make us experience His love more and more deeply. That is what gives us as Christians, as Catholics, great joy on Easter Sunday.

So, today, the Lord is truly risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Conclusion and Exhortation

I want to thank all of you for having prayed for Pope Francis during these months. As all of you know, two months ago, he was very, very sick. He himself was getting close to death, and yet, because of the prayers of people all over the world, and especially people praying here in the Philippines, because I know that you are praying, he is really recovered in an almost miraculous way, and he is doing much, much better. Thanks be to God, and thanks be to your prayers.

So, as a representative of Pope Francis here in the Philippines, I thank you for having prayed for him, and I ask you to continue to pray for him. Let us stay close to Mama Mary, during this Easter Season. We celebrate the Easter joy now for seven weeks: a week of weeks, seven times seven until the Feast of Pentecost. White vestments, [symbolizing,] a joy that is super abundant, a joy that can't remain in one day or one week, a joy that repeats itself for a week of weeks, all the way to Pentecost—seven weeks from today, a week of weeks, a joyful time of celebration because the Lord has truly risen.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Transcribed by Joel V Ocampo

Photos from DZRV 846 and Our Lady of the Assumption Parish