The Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey, received a round of applause following his homily at the Easter Vigil in St Aidan's Cathedral in Enniscorthy.
Dr Comiskey celebrated the vigil on Saturday night despite speculation that he would stay away because of the controversy about his handling of complaints of sexual abuse against the late Father Sean Fortune.
Journalists were prevented from approaching the bishop for a comment following the ceremony, which was attended by a capacity congregation.
In his homily, which was warmly applauded, Dr Comiskey made no direct reference to the debate about Fortune and other cases of sexual abuse in the Ferns diocese.
He spoke about the centrality of the Resurrection story to the Christian faith and also referred to a Russian poem which forecast, during the persecution of the Church, that "the green grass" would one day come again.
"Standing on today's pretty barren landscape, I too believe that the green grass of Easter is coming again, but only to humble and broken hearts. I wish all of you, the people and the priests of Enniscorthy, a wonder-filled and very happy Easter," he said.
He told his listeners they should never doubt God's power or that the Resurrection was at the heart of their faith.
"Easter was and will always be the Father's response to the death of Jesus, and Easter is the response of the Father to your death and my death.
"Either you believe that or you don't. If you believe, you're a follower of Christ; if you don't you're not. You either have the faith or you don't.
"Never in all my time did I ever hear a woman say to me or to anybody else, 'I think I'm a little pregnant'.
"A woman is either pregnant or she's not. She's not a little pregnant, she's fully pregnant. And so also I say to you, 'do you believe that Christ is risen?' If you don't, you do not have the faith, because this is the faith," he said.
He told the congregation that if they confessed with their lips that Jesus was Lord and believed in their hearts that God raised him from the dead, they would be saved.
"And what I do, and have been doing for a long time now is, I keep saying those things, 'Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is Lord'."
The idea that Jesus might rise from the dead and everybody else stay asleep was blasphemous. "Either he rises and we all go up with him or he doesn't rise. And then we are told by the word of God that if Jesus is not risen, then we are the silliest and stupidest of people. So the origin of what we celebrate tonight comes right from the heart of God."
Faith was a matter of the heart or it was nothing, and in many people's lives it was nothing because they tried to limit God's work to what they could understand. "I have heard so many people say to me, 'I don't believe in the Resurrection'. 'Why don't you?' 'I can't figure out how it could happen.'
"Do you think that God is limited to my tiny little head? That God can only do what I can think of? Sure that's not faith at all. 'Because I can't figure it out, God can't make happen. This arising from the dead, who can figure that out?' But we either believe it or we don't."
Journalists who went to a side entrance of the cathedral to try to obtain a comment from Dr Comiskey when the vigil concluded were told they were on private property and must leave.
