Easter comes early this year, and not a moment too soon.

We need a break from all the death. The year 2005 seems oddly under its curse.

Take Philadelphia. There have been 80 slayings there so far this year — including a novena of death this month, with 23 people found killed in nine days in March. The deaths are coincidental — there is no serial killer. But the city is struggling to find ways to stop the carnage.

Or look at London. The city has long been fascinated with murder, from the sophisticated, fictional Sherlock Holmes to the horrible reality of Jack the Ripper. But recent headlines have combined the clean-cut and the macabre in a frightening way. One well-dressed man attacked another in broad daylight in a wealthy neighborhood while passersby begged him to put down his axe. Elsewhere, a London cannibal calmly went about his business in a downtown apartment.

Murder went mainstream in Wichita, Kan., too. That’s where a killer went on a terrifying spree of torture and murder for decades. It seems the police have finally caught the killer, a man named Dennis Rader. He isn’t the kind of creepy loner you’d expect. In his heyday as a murderer, he was also a Cub Scout leader. Detectives caught him in part because he is the president of his Lutheran church’s parish council — and thus had access to a computer that left its imprint on a disk the police knew was the killer’s.

Then, there’s Atlanta. Brian Nichols was in court for his rape trial when he killed his judge and, later, anyone who got in the way of his escape. It is only because of the quick thinking and Christian faith of a hostage — a woman who had herself seen her husband stabbed to death a few years before — that he was captured and is once again in custody.

In Aspen, Colo., Hunter S. Thompson did his part to mainstream death, along with his wife, who was on the phone with him when he shot himself.

“I know he is much more powerful and alive now than ever before,” she said. “His death was a triumph of his own human spirit because this is what he wanted. He lived and died like a champion.” How putting a gun in your mouth and widowing your wife while your grandson plays upstairs makes you a champion, she didn’t explain.

There have been weird ironies in our mainstreaming of killing.

The Passion of the Christ, about Christ’s dying to save sinners from eternal death, was too controversial to be nominated for a significant Academy Award, but Million Dollar Baby wasn’t too controversial to win. In a way, the year’s “best picture” was the anti-Passion. It was about a Catholic who is convinced he is damning himself by taking a woman’s life in a mercy killing, but does so anyway.

Another movie ignored by the Oscars was Farenheit 911. It was riddled with errors, outright distortions and cheap shots at the White House. It was also a passionate reminder of the horror of war. Nominators thought it was too controversial to touch — but they had no problem awarding a top prize to The Sea Inside, a foreign film that amounted to hagiography about a right-to-die activist.

The ironies in our justice system’s attitude toward death were even more frightening.

In California, Scott Peterson was in court, shackled and under guard, for killing his wife Laci. In Florida, Michael Schiavo was in court, free and living with a new woman and their two children, winning the right to kill his wife Terri.

Another sick irony was that Peterson was convicted and sentenced to death for two killings. His other victim was his unborn son, Conner. At the sentencing hearing, Laci’s mother made an impassioned plea that the killer should be punished not just for killing her daughter, but also for killing her grandson. The jury obliged. That means Peterson was sentenced to death, in part, for murdering a child he could have legally aborted.

Why bring all of this up on Easter Sunday? Because Easter is the day that makes all of this death bearable.

We’re used to reminding ourselves that Christmas isn’t about our gifts to each other, but God’s gift of his son. Well, the true meaning of Easter is about death.

Christ’s rising from the dead isn’t a fairy tale ending tacked onto a story to keep it from being anti-climactic. It’s the one thing that gives life meaning in a world where death — and killing — are commonplace.

We know the theology. Mankind, cut off from God and in the grip of sin, was hurtling hopelessly toward death until Christ took our sins on himself, then suffered, died and rose, reversing that trajectory. Death no longer has an absolute claim on the human race — there is eternal life with Christ.

If that theology seems a little remote or abstract, try this instead: Call to mind all the death you’ve heard about in 2005, then listen hard to the readings at Easter Mass.

You’ll be thanking God for Easter with a whole new fervor.