Priests should not tell tales: so I will refrain from repeating the story I told to the little ones of Darien one year about how the Easter Bunny in fact lays her eggs. They bought it hook, line and sinker. But since our kids decorated cookies last Sunday – and next Sunday they will be undertaking an Easter egg hunt – we do need to talk about bunnies.

First of all, the Easter Bunny isn’t really a bunny at all: she’s a he – and he’s a hare – and hares are quite extraordinary creatures. Usually shy and reclusive, speeding away in a cloud of dust whenever people come near, male hares engage in ‘boxing matches’ with each other in early Spring, and can be seen dancing the bare earth of awakening fields around Easter time.

“But it’s Pagan!” I hear you cry. Perhaps originally, but then, so is the name ‘Easter’ itself. That helps us to ponder the nature of Truth: what is true, is always true – but the light of Christ’s Resurrection dawn dispels all darkness. It does not chase away what is true, but instead shapes it; moulds it, and leads it, into the fulness of Divine Revelation.

St. John Henry Newman’s tomb is inscribed ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem – ‘from shadows and appearances into truth’ – religious practice always takes root more deeply when it resonates with the shadows and appearances God already planted as preparation for the Gospel.

So with the ‘March hare’ – we see a mythical creature who seems to dance triumphant over the power of death, breaking the brittle furrows of winter with his jubilant calpestation, thus he becomes an image of Christ, emerging triumphant this day from the gloomy barrels of the Earth. Literally, a christening of an older symbol of hope. In that shadow, we now see the Truth that was to come.

But we also see a creature who, in insular Celtic art, was depicted as a kind of three-in-one – a prefiguring of the Blessed Trinity itself: for, ancient depictions of the March hare have three animals dancing in a ring with conjoined ears – and these came to grace the wooden roofs of churches, particularly in the South West of the British Isles.

So the hare is both a symbol of Christ and a symbol of Christ’s intimate relationship with the Most Blessed Trinity – a symbol not to be rejected for fear of being pagan – but to be embraced as a new insight into our Risen Lord, who speaks not only in direct Revelation, through Scripture and Tradition, but his calling cards are written into the very fabric of the Earth He made. As he said: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” (Lk. 19:40)

Indeed they do. As do the birds of the air, and the flowers of the field: they too cry out to greet the Risen Lord, who “has done all things well.” (Mk. 7:30)

I wish you and all your families a very Happy Easter from me and all my Staff here at the Oratory. God bless you all.