Yes, it is sin which casts the shadow on our Easter; it is the love and affection for it which still remains in us; it is that compromising spirit which is even at our best times holding us back, keeping us from fully loving, trusting, and giving ourselves up to God, for fear that we might lose something by doing so; it is this that makes us afraid to approach him and to share in his joy. As for mortal sin, that, of course, takes the happiness of Easter away altogether; to one who is in its darkness the thought of meeting God brings, and can bring, no thought of joy. But even venial sin brings its dread with it,too. {215} And what is the remedy for this dread? It is very simple. It is only to try now to begin to love with our whole hearts him who has loved us, and given his life for us; whose delight is to be with us and to have us come to him; to keep nothing back from him--in short, to live here in our feeble measure the life we hope to live in heaven. This is the way, and the only way, for us to enter now as we would wish into the joy of our Lord. ------------------- Sermon LXIII. The Triumph Of Christ. _This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it. _ --Psalm. cxvii. 24. [USCCB: Psalm cxviii. 24.] The festival of Easter is, above all things, my brethren, a day of joy. Just as we love the sunshine more after days of cloud and tempest, so also is our joy keener and more intense when it follows sorrows. It is for this reason that the joy of Easter is greater than that of Christmas, or of any other season of the Christian year. For we have been passing through a time of sorrow. We have beheld in Passion-tide our dearest Lord in suffering. We have beheld him as the King of Martyrs, worthy of the title, because his pains were so far in excess of anything that mere man has ever suffered or could ever suffer. We have seen him in his agony in the garden, when the sins of the whole world and of all time were presented to his vision and pressed heavily upon him, filling his Sacred Heart with deepest grief. {216} We have called to mind his betrayal by his trusted friend and disciple; his arraignment before impious and unjust judges; his cruel condemnation and death. Despised and rejected by his own chosen people whom he had come to save, a robber and murderer preferred before him, we have beheld him abandoned to the tortures of the heathen soldiers, scourged, and spit upon, and crowned with thorns, and finally led forth to die a malefactor's death upon the cross. And worse than all is the thought that he was forsaken by those whom he held most dear, those whom he had chosen to be his special friends and disciples, and who had been his constant companions in his public ministry. They all forsook him and fled, leaving him to die.