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 “But the angel said to the women. ‘Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said.’”(Matthew 28:5-6).
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Alleluia. Christ Is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia.
Today we celebrate the Queen of Feasts, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. But what difference does it make that He was resurrected from the dead? It means absolutely everything that He did.
First and foremost, Jesus said that He would rise from the dead – repeatedly. So if He didn’t rise from the dead, there is no reason to believe in Him, if what He said would happen didn’t happen.
He did rise from the dead, and the existence of the Church throughout the ages bears testimony to it.
Does anyone think that if He didn’t rise from the dead, the Church would exist, and have grown throughout the ages?
200 years ago everything was changed when God decided to come among us fully and definitively in a man fully Man, but a man who was also fully God.
This man came to us to release us from estrangement from God, who is love. The second person of the Trinity, the Word, the agent of God’s creative activity, who was the one “through whom all things were made” came to us.
He came at the time of His Father’s choosing, in what St. Paul calls “the fullness of time,” to his own home, and his own people received him not” as St. John expresses it in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel. But in the next verse after that sad verse, St. John states, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
During His brief earthly ministry, Jesus had changed the lives of many people. His preaching, teaching, and healing; His intense encounters with certain individuals; His being in this world but not of this world had transformed many lives.
But can you imagine what went through the minds and hearts of these many people who had found healing, hope, and happiness from and through Jesus when they either saw or heard about His execution on the Cross?
Had they been deceived? Were they the victims of a gigantic hoax? Were they suffering from some form of psychotic self-delusion in what they thought as new beginnings?
Yes, a woman caught in adultery was not stoned, and had found forgiveness and understanding from Jesus. Yes, a man born blind had received his sight. Yes, Lazarus was called out of the tomb to live. But for such people and others whose conditions had been transformed, they surely asked why He was crucified, and then, “What do I do now?”
And was such a question not deeply within the chosen Twelve who had left family and labor for Him? They had scattered on the night of His arrest, but had reassembled in the Upper Room in order to hear the question that they each asked each other, “What do we do now?”
We don’t know when they all came back together in the Upper Room, but we do know that according to St. Luke the women who went to the tomb at early dawn on the first day of the week, who found it empty, and who were asked by two angels there, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” – these women told the Apostles of their experience, but “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”
The Apostles came to belief that Christ had risen (and how could they not?) when He appeared to them. He stood before them. He spoke to them. He showed them his pierced hands and side, He breathed the Holy Spirit upon them, He gave them authority to bind and loose sins.
Now they knew without a shadow of a doubt that He was the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; and they knew that all was now and forever different in the world and for them.
Do we know this as well? That from that point on (the Resurrection) all was fully different for the world? All we do here that is steeped in history and sacred tradition is all about a living Lord who has a living investment in and a living presence among us?
This living Lord lives for us to live and forever live in Him and with Him. With this knowledge, we can live confidently and peacefully no matter what befalls us. There is nothing greater in strength and in power that can befall us that did not fall upon the Son of Man, and He triumphed. For all to triumph who believe in Him, and who let His risen Life infuse theirs.
St. Paul declares, “…if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” He also declares, “Death is swallowed up in victory,” and then asks, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”
The two questions beg the answers – with the Resurrection, death has lost, and its sting has been removed. St. Paul then rejoices in saying, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The victory over death in all its dimensions, in all its draining, debilitating, and depleting effects happened because Jesus let Himself die to break death’s grip on man.
He knew it could be defeated if He let it win because then it would die in Him as He rose from it. Only He could do this – suffer death and defeat death. He did and has. So, if God was for us in Christ Jesus, who and what can be against us?
Alleluia. Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia.
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. |
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