Dear brothers and sisters, at the Last Supper Jesus revealed to His disciples that He was not dying out of necessity, but that He had
freely accepted death for them and for the world. And so, taking Bread He gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body,
for you. And, after the Supper, taking the Chalice in the same way He said, ‘This is my blood poured out
for you and for many’.
This is why Paul can say, ‘When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup we proclaim His death until He comes again’. He did not mean we proclaim just the physical death of Jesus of Nazareth, since all men have to die, and there is nothing special in that. He means that, in the death of God’s Son we proclaim the death of God, God’s dying to Himself so that we might live. We proclaim that there, on Calvary and in the Tomb, God proved forever how much He loved the world, sending His Only Beloved Son to die to save us from eternal death and grant us new life.
In this way St. Paul explains the Resurrection for which we hold expectant Vigil this night. Just as Jesus gave His Body, broken
for us, and His Blood, shed
for us and for many so, too, He now shares His Risen Body and Glory
with us, for He is Risen not for Himself but
for us and for many. In His death, as Paul says, He invited us into the Tomb to die with Him, and the great Stone was closed over us so that,
on the first day of the week and at the first sight of dawn, as the same Stone was rolled away, we might rise to new life with Him in His Resurrection. So the Resurrection is above all God’s great act of love
for us and for the world. It is only a glory in that it is the glory of God’s love
for us. It is only power and might in that it is His power
on our behalf and His might
for us and for our salvation.
God’s love is always both gift and challenge. Again Paul says, ‘As Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too (are called to) live a new life’. In what does this new life consist that we are challenged to embrace? We could think of it as taking four breaths.
The first breath we breathe of the new life of the Resurrection is the worship of God. Living the Resurrection means, first of all, spending our lives in praise and thanksgiving to God. The first cry of our new-born life is in the Psalm,
‘Alleluia! Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love has no end.’ The word,
Alleluia comes from ‘
Hallel Yahweh’, or "Praise the Lord, Give thanks to our God". In this Easter season we will sing many
Hallel Psalms, filled with "Hallelujahs."
The second breath of the new life of Easter is in resolving to quit sin with the Lord’s grace, contemplating the wounds that still adorn His Risen Body and blessing God for His forgiveness. The meaning of Jesus’ Passion Death and Resurrection is that, by it, Jesus introduced a grace into the world that leads to the abolition of sin. As Jesus hung on the Cross He destroyed our sinful flesh and His side was opened up to unleash a torrent of water that would carry us to freedom from the slavery of sin. He let us die with Him so we could be
finished with sin. So we should
throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. (Heb 12:1). As we make our way out of the Tomb with Him may we leave behind our death robes,
considering ourselves dead to sin.
The third breath of this new life is the breath of witness to the Risen Lord. The women in the Gospel teach us how to tell our story and give our own personal testimony of how we came to believe the Lord has conquered sin and death and is alive.
The women tell us that giving our witness is about
remembering Jesus’ words. It is about pondering the Gospels with such devotion that we meet the Lord we love there, we remember His words and live on His promises that, in the end the good will rise again and triumph.
The Christian wisdom we share with the world is the same as the wisdom the women passed on to us: ‘
Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?’ for the Risen One is not to be found among dead things. There are many dead things in our world that so-called Christians still live among, deceiving themselves that they can remain in these dead things and still have Christ and His mercy in their lives. They hand Him over to death every time they choose not to stand up for Him in their family circle or at work or among their friends, even sometimes betraying Him with their own tongues. They bear wounds of bitterness, of grudges, of lack of forgiveness that they prefer not to be healed. They use their bodies as if they had nothing in common with the flesh of the Risen Lord. We have to go to them, get alongside them, remind them gently and joyfully,
Not to look among dead things for someone who is alive?
The women remind us that we do not need to know how to explain all the facts or see everything for ourselves in order to tell our story. They believed without seeing the Risen Lord. The rolled-away stone, the absence of His dead body, the testimony of the two men proving all Jesus said to be true was more than enough for them. So, too, for us. We do not need to know everything. All that matters is that we tell what we do know with interior conviction, certain of its truth and knowing its life-changing implications for the world.
The final breath we breathe of the new life of the Resurrection is our commitment to the Church, even if it is not always easy. When the women told all that they had heard and seen the Apostles, and the whole Church gathered with them, considered this story of theirs to be pure nonsense and told them to their faces. Even in this moment of the first fruits of the Resurrection, the women had to suffer humiliation from the Church and the frustration of a community that did not really believe. But they did not abandon the community. They remained, and the other women who were with them patiently told their story too. After some time their testimony moved Peter. They persuaded him to remember all the Lord had predicted and their account eventually brought Peter into the light with them too. He went running to the tomb, bent down and saw the binding cloths and went back home, amazed at what had happened.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was not with the women who went to the Tomb. Nor is there any account of Her presence at any of the appearances of Her Risen Son to the Church. Some say they met in private in a mysterious encounter never told. Others prefer to see Her Son’s words to Thomas as referring, first of all, to Her. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’. Whether She saw her Risen Son or not Mary believed He was Risen and knew His Resurrection was
for Her and for many. United with Her Risen Son She prays for us that, free from sin and living in the praises of God, we will be joyful witnesses of His Resurrection so that the Church may believe and, through our conviction, the world may have life in Him.