“Christ is risen, and makes all things new.” The resurrection is not just about Jesus rising from the dead; it is about the renewal of all of creation. “Let all the earth cry out to God with joy,” for Christ is risen, and with him all creation.

With the resurrection we are now in the new time, when the sea produces an unlikely catch of fish, and the net is not torn.

The resurrection of Jesus is also about our own resurrection, which we anticipate with hope. We pray that our Easter “joy will come to perfection in heaven.” But we know that there is a life to be lived, a life of struggle for the sake of the gospel.

Like the apostles, who were “full of joy that they had been judged worthy of ill-treatment for the sake of the Name,” we have to be willing to suffer pain and persecution before we “rise and come forth into the light of day.”

By persevering in the effort to bring good news to the earth and all its inhabitants, we will one day join in with “the voices of every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” in a song of praise and honor “To the One seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

God is preparing a great springtime for Christianity, and we can already see its first signs. In fact, both in the non-Christian world and in the traditionally Christian world, people are gradually drawing closer to gospel ideals and values, a development which the Church seeks to encourage.

Today in fact there is a new consensus among peoples about these values: the rejection of violence and war; respect for the human person and for human rights; the desire for freedom, justice and brotherhood; the surmounting of different forms of racism and nationalism; the affirmation of the dignity and role of women.

Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio,1990: 86