ST Stephen’s Cathedral dean Fr Anthony Mellor was encouraged seeing thousands of Catholics at the Masses from Chrism Mass to Easter Sunday.
He said the Good Friday liturgy had about 1200 people and another Sunday Mass had about 1000 people.
St Stephen’s Cathedral seats about 750 people, but people made do, finding standing room where they could, he said.
Fr Mellor said it was “great to see so many people” wanting to engage at Easter especially after a couple challenging years with COVID.
“I think Christmas and Easter have shown very positive signs that people will come to celebrate as family and community at these big events,” he said.
“Christmas and Easter still hold a spiritual meaning for people in a secular world.
“I think those numbers show us that people are still seeking and searching (for) meaning in their life.
“How that flows into the rest of the Church’s year is a different question, but there is something for us to build on.”
In his homily at the Easter Vigil, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said the Gospels had hidden parts in the story that human curiosity wishes to know – what did Jesus look like, what was he doing in Nazareth so many years, what happened in the darkness of the tomb when Jesus resurrected.
“(The Gospels) tell us little that we wish to know, but they tell us everything we need to know,” he said.
“That’s because they seek not to satisfy our curiosity, but to stir faith. It’s faith alone that opens the eye to see the Risen Lord and that opens the ear to hear his voice.”
Like the people who met Jesus after his resurrection, “recognition of him isn’t immediate”, he said.
“Mary Magdalene at first thinks he’s the gardener, and recognises the Risen Lord only when he calls her by her name,” he said.
“The disciples in their boat on the lake, at first don’t recognise him on the beach. It’s only when John cries out, ‘It is the Lord’, that Peter jumps into the water and swims ashore with the others following behind in the boat.”
He said the same was true of the two who journeyed to Emmaus with him, who only recognise him at journey’s end when he breaks the bread, “in a clearly Eucharistic moment that their eyes are opened”.
“Faith alone opens the eyes and the ears to see and hear him who has been raised from the dead,” he said.
“Faith enables the encounter with Christ crucified and risen, which is Christianity.
“In that encounter with him, and only there, the human being discovers the full and magnificent truth of who God really is and who the human being really is.”
