EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST(2025)
Readings:
Acts 10:34, 37-43
Psalms 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-9
About today’s celebration, Pope Francis said: “Jesus is risen from the dead! This message resounds in the Church the world over, along with the singing of the Alleluia. Jesus remained two days in the tomb; but His death contained God’s love in all its power, released and made manifest on the third day, the day we celebrate today: the Easter of Christ the Lord. The words heard by the women at the tomb are also addressed to us: Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Death, solitude, and fear are not the last word. There is a word that transcends them, a word that only God can speak: it is the word of the Resurrection.”
Christ made good on all that He had promised. Perhaps that is what the youngest apostle John “believed”(20:8). All of the apostles would come to learn from the Master Himself what “being resurrected” truly meant in the days that followed the empty tomb experience. Even the evangelist John (or one of his students) decided to write an epilogue (Chapter 21) to his original effort because there was more to be said about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Although Jesus could try and teach His apostles several times that after His death God “would raise Him up,” they could not have imagined what that truly meant.
In spite of Easter being the quintessential Christian feast, if the truth be told, we too find the concept of a ‘resurrection’ hard to fathom. In a homily on the Easter feast, Pope Benedict XVI had this to say: “In a certain way the message of the Resurrection of Christ notably exceeds our faculty of imagination. It cannot enter into our minds as immediately as the message of Christmas. Birth is part of our experience [and thus] the story of God’s Son, born in a stable as the Son of Man, has the power to speak to our hearts directly…. The Resurrection, however, lies beyond our experience; the only life we know is bound up with death.” Easter requires a leap of faith. We are called to look beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can feel, and allow Jesus to take “the long imprisoned Adam and Eve, i.e. humanity, by the hand and leads them to freedom. Life is not a waiting room leading to the void but the beginning of eternity” (Benedict XVI). On this day we believe that Jesus opened the gates of heaven that one day we might enter in and enjoy eternity (another concept difficult for us to fathom since all we know is ‘time’). Centuries ago the psalmist says something that would only be fulfilled by the life and death of Jesus: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” (Ps 118:17).
Mary Magdalen beautifully demonstrates the difficulty humanity has understanding the Resurrection. When Mary arrives at the tomb and sees the large stone removed the only possible explanation is thievery: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put Him.” Who the “they” are is a bit ambiguous. For us all that matters is what is confirmed by the two apostles, Peter and John – the tomb is empty. Since we know the rest of the story we can correctly fill in all of the blanks. Indeed, the facts are given to us in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, by Peter, who John gives the privilege of being the first one to enter the empty tomb. “This man God raised on the third day and granted that He be visible, not to all people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through His name.”
The words above, attributed to Peter, can prophetically be applied to us, especially on this Easter Day. God has chosen us in advance to be witnesses of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. Peter could not have imagined at the beginning of Christianity the number of witnesses that would follow in the centuries after Christ. Countless as the stars in the heavens are those men and women who “believed” like John in today’s gospel. Like Peter and those first disciples we “ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead,” for in each and every Eucharist we are privileged to celebrate we proclaim Christ’s paschal mystery. Jesus is our God, our judge, our confessor, and we believe that it is in Him that we “will receive forgiveness of sins.” On this Easter Day and every day, may we be the best of witnesses to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, proclaiming with our lives all that He taught us, that we might one day enter through the gates of heaven and share the eternity prepared for all of us.
“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!” Alleluia, Alleluia! Happy Easter.
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