This joy filled day is a day of celebration for all, for the Lord has won for us victory over sin and the promise of Life Everlasting. Today, we might stand with John in the empty tomb, and pray to believe as he believed. Be with the other disciples in the upper room, listen to their fears and tell them your own.

See the Risen Christ among you and hear him say to you, "Peace" as he shows his wounded hands and side. Imagination can put us in touch with the reality that Christ is risen, that is our peace.

Be with Mary in the garden, recognising him in the gardener. Be with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and meet him in the stranger. Be still and hear his Spirit in your heart calling you by name and saying, "I am closer to you than you are to yourself".

Jesus is risen. We too shall rise. We have God's Word for it. "It is the will of the One who sent me not to lose any of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them to life on the last day. "The Spirit who lived in Jesus and raised him from the dead, now lives in us" (Romans 8:11). This is the reality we live.

When we acknowledge and confess the darkness in ourselves and in our world as alien to God, then, like Jesus we emerge from the darkness of death to the renewed light of the risen life that Christ has already given us.

Our Risen Jesus is the light of God who enlightens the inner centre of our person. In fact the Risen Lord reasserts that promise every time we receive the Eucharist who is Christ Risen. Every Sunday in the Eucharistic celebration, Jesus renews his suffering, death and resurrection for us to help us stay strong in the midst of our weakness. The Lord is truly risen, is within us and amongst us. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

The story of the Last Supper is retold in every Eucharist. It is the action of people who remember, people who see the past as vitally important to their present. Memories give meaning and context to everything that happens to us. Good, bad, exciting peaceful, loving, they all combine to help us know who and what we are.

Today, when we celebrate the Eucharist in memory of Jesus, we are calling upon God to remember saving us through death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus. We believe that salvation is made present to us, is happening for us here and now. God and we are remembering in a special way the key events in Jesus' life, his death, resurrection, ascension and eventual return.

The memories recalled at this Mass are more than an account of the Last Supper or of Calvary. They are memories of what he said and did at those various meals so that we can appreciate more what kind of people we are being called to be.

We associate many powerful memories with the Last Supper, Judas' betrayal, the washing of the feet, the long and moving talk of Jesus. The occasion speaks to us of freedom, of liberation, just as the apostles longed to be free from Roman oppression.

At this Last Supper Jesus is assuring us, by giving us himself as our food, we are freed from the slavery of sin. Sin has its basis in fear, fear of dying because we have no hope of an afterlife, fear of failure because we think that we are not lovable to God, fear of failure because we know we are so weak in the face of temptations, fear of suffering which we know must be our lot if we are to enter the Kingdom.

He assures us by giving us himself as our food that we too can overcome them. Eucharist is a sign that we are people who have been freed, but each of us has to accept that freedom and live it.