EASTER SUNDAY (2022)

Readings:Acts 10:34a, 37-43Psalms 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23Colossians 3:1-4John 20:1-9“Today is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.”When is empty not a bad thing? An empty wine glass, an empty wallet, an empty bank account, an empty gas tank – those “empties,” and so many others, are all bad things. But on this Easter Sunday weekend, even if indirectly, an empty tomb proclaims a gloriously good thing, that the Lord’s promises to His disciples might be coming true. Jesus had bluntly told His disciples several times that in Jerusalem He will “suffer and die, and in three days be raised!” They surely did not know what to make of the last part of the phrase, and they foolishly thought their ‘bravery’ would keep the first part of the phrase from happening. Now, after seeing Jesus scourged and led away to Calvary they remembered that Jesus had warned them this would happen. Given the possibility of grave robbers, the disciples were not positive that Jesus had been “raised,” but the empty tomb would soon be taken as positive proof that “the Lord is truly risen, alleluia!”Today the Church begins the great Easter season, a time when the Church liturgically confirms Jesus’ resurrection from the dead with scriptural accounts of His many appearances. In John’s gospel, immediately after today’s gospel passage, Mary Magdalen, who was left at the tomb by the other two disciples, is privileged to enjoy a personal appearance by Jesus, whose visage had changed so much that she assumed him to be the gardener. Mary Magdalen stayed behind when Peter and the “other disciple” (thought to be John) ran off to tell the other disciples, no doubt already cowering behind closed doors. The evangelist John frankly tells us that “they did not yet understand the Scripture that He had to rise from the dead.” Perhaps Mary Magdalen needed time, like a previous Mary, to ponder in her heart all that was happening – the empty tomb; the angels! Perhaps that is why she is privileged in John’s gospel with the very first of appearances.Like the early church we, too, will never fully understand what “rising from the dead” means. We are equipped, not with actual appearances, but with the accounts of “witnesses chosen by God in advance,” who “ate and drank with Jesus after He rose from the dead.” Those personal appearances overwhelmed any feelings that this rising from the dead is impossible! But even some of them could not bring themselves to believe (e.g., Apostle Thomas). All of us are called to weigh the evidence at hand, and there is much, but then there is that “leap” of faith, that bridges the gap between what our mind thinks impossible and what has been shared with us by trusted individuals and sources (Scriptures). We believe because we “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Our lives “are hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears” at the end of time, then we also “will appear with Him in glory.” It is the only way to explain a God who chose to suffer and die, that we might have eternal life. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!”