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1. All the texts and readings of our Easter
Sunday Mass speak to us of the risen Lord. Everything
concentrates our attention on this one fact – “Jesus is
risen from the dead.” And our response is, as it was
expressed in the responsorial psalm – “This day was made
by the Lord; we rejoice and are glad.”
If we, this morning, can celebrate the
resurrection of Jesus with such simplicity and
spontaneity, we should be grateful to the first
followers of Jesus and all his followers down through
the ages for the faith they have professed in the risen
Lord. There is a sense in which we are carried along by
that faith, the faith of the whole Church. However, it
is also true that we ourselves must now profess that
same faith, make it our own and be witnesses of it in
the world in which we live, and we must also keep it
alive for future generations.
And it is right to remind ourselves that
here we are dealing with what is at the heart of being a
Christian. That is so much true that we can say – “…
with Jesus’ resurrection stands or falls Christian
faith. … It is the centre of our religion.” (Romano
Guardini, The Lord, Longman, Green and Co,
London, 1956, p 406). Very often, we tend to think of
the Christian way of life as a set of moral principles,
rules, and guidelines for life. That, of course, can be
a subtle way of avoiding the mystery that stands at the
heart of Christianity. And no matter how noble, how
elevated the moral code may be, if that is all, then we
have no right to call ourselves Christians.
So, it is here today, as we profess our
faith in the risen Lord, that we are truly Christians.
And that is why Easter Sunday is the most important of
all our Christian celebrations. We have every right,
then, to ask ourselves the question – how did this faith
in the risen Lord, the same faith which we so readily
and willingly profess, how did it begin?
2. We have just read Saint John’s account of how
it all began. It began with a woman, Mary Magdalen,
going to the tomb where they had laid the body of Jesus,
only to find the tomb open and empty. There was nothing
there where they had placed the body of Jesus two days
earlier. And, what was her reaction! It certainly
wasn’t to shout –“The Lord is risen.” No indeed, her
thoughts were much more fearful, mundane and down to
earth than that. The first thought that came to her
mind was that someone had removed the body. “They have
taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where
they have laid him.” – was what she reported to Peter
and John. Obviously it was strange and extraordinary
that the body should be missing, but there is no
question of Mary jumping to extraordinary conclusions or
mysterious meanings to explain it. She was confused and
so she went to tell Peter and John that the body was
missing.
They immediately ran to the tomb and John
tells us “They both ran, but the other disciple outran
Peter and reached the tomb first; …” And John concludes
his account in this way – “Then the other disciple, who
reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and
believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture,
that he must be risen from the dead.”
Now, what is there in all that to make us
believe that Jesus is risen from the dead? There is
nothing there to make me say – “yes, Jesus is truly
risen from the dead.” All that story tells me is that
his body was missing from the tomb when Mary Magdalen,
Peter and the other disciple went there. At the end
John tells us – “but as yet they did not know the
scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.” So, we
don’t really know what was in their minds, what it was
they really thought, on that first Easter morning.
3. Of course, we could go on further and read
about the several appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalen,
Peter and others subsequently, and we will do that
during the coming Sundays. We did read in the first
lesson of today’s Mass how Peter eventually preached
without any hesitation – “….; but God raised him on the
third day and made him manifest.” But it does seem
strange that John should begin his account of the
resurrection in such a matter of fact, almost offhand,
way – as we read in the Gospel. We should remember that
this is the same John who, in the rest of his Gospel,
speaks so eloquently and forcefully about Jesus being
the Son of God. You recall how he began his Gospel –
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the
beginning. … The Word became flesh and lived for a while
among us.” What a contrast that is to his account of
the resurrection, where he seems so hesitant, reluctant
even, to suggest that anything extraordinary has taken
place. He refuses to highlight the event in any way.
If anything, he concentrates his attention, and ours
too, on the fears, the doubts and uncertainties of those
who were the first witness of what happened.
4. But it is these same people, whose faith
seemed so hesitant at the beginning, who not so long
afterwards came to proclaim in no uncertain words, that
Jesus had truly risen from the dead, and they did so
with the utter conviction that it was true. It is their
faith that was passed on to succeeding generations and
which has come down to us today.
Surely it is their faltering steps and their
uncertain faith at the beginning, which gives a firm
foundation to our faith, much more so than it they had
been absolutely certain from the outset. And we should
be glad that is was so; that our faith has nothing to do
with fevered minds, or fanciful flights of imagination,
or emotional outbursts. We should be grateful that our
faith is based on the more solid ground of common human
experience for all its doubts and uncertainties.
All this, of course, means
that the risen Christ is not some strange and esoteric
presence coming to us from a world remote from our own.
It is rather that the risen Lord fits into our lives as
we find them for all their shortcomings and limitations.
He is here present with us as we make our hesitant
pilgrimage through life. So, we have every reason to
rejoice and be glad on this Easter Day. |
