April 20th, Reflection for Easter Sunday

In my first year of priesthood, I was given the great opportunity to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I remember that the day we were scheduled to enter Jerusalem, we had to get up very early in the morning. We made our way to the church but the streets were completely empty. We got to the church and the pilgrims who joined me waited at the chapel where we were going to celebrate Mass. The chapel just so happened to be the spot where our Lord was nailed to the Cross. Right next to it was the spot where the Cross was raised up and our Lord died. I was taken by our tour guide to the Latin church sacristy to prepare for Mass. As we were making our way to the sacristy, we passed by this edifice that was magnificent in structure and very ornate. It was right in the middle of the church. When we passed by it, the guide had us stop and peek inside the small edifice. He told me, “Father, this is the tomb of Christ.” It was incredible to have a few moments gazing at the tomb and peeking inside by myself and experiencing the power of the empty tomb in those few moments of silence.

Today we celebrate the most important day in the liturgical year. We celebrate the foundational mystery of our faith. We celebrate the victory of Christ over death and sin. In today's Gospel, we hear the moment that the disciples began to witness the Resurrection of Christ. Like myself at that moment at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, John and Peter peek into the tomb but find it empty, only seeing the burial cloths and the cloth that covered our Lord's head neatly folded. In the first reading, we hear the preaching of Peter to Cornelius regarding the Resurrection of Christ. It's fascinating to consider the story of the Resurrection in light of the lives of the apostles and even the Catholic faith in general. The Resurrection is the central event of our Christian; without the Resurrection, our faith is vain. St. Paul attests to this when he writes, 

“[I]f Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:14-19)

If Christ had not risen from the dead, then why would the Apostles have given up their lives in such terrible and gruesome ways to witness a lie? We even see that the Gospel of John, who was a first hand witness to the Resurrection, that the Resurrection is defended. If someone had stolen the body, which was an argument of the enemies of the faith at the time, then why would the thieves have taken their time to fold the cloth covering the head, or why would they leave the burial cloths? This central mystery to our faith continues to be important for us today. In it, we see the Christian hope of what we are to anticipate. Where the Head is, the body will follow. It is our hope, my dear brothers and sister, that we too will raise with and in Christ. It is our hope that we too will participate in the victory over sin and death. But, like the Apostles and the early Christians, we must always give witness to this hope in our lives. The best way to do this is to live out Easter Sunday constantly. And how do we do that? To always preach the resurrected Lord by the way that we live our faith, that is, a life that shows that we truly believe in the Resurrected Christ. We can experience the resurrection in our lives by firstly experiencing it when we are raised up from spiritual death to life, i.e., from sin to a new life in Christ. This is accomplished perfectly in the sacrament of confession. Second, we can experience the resurrection by the way that we bring the Resurrected Lord to our neighbors. How often do we bring the joy of Easter to our brothers and sisters? How often do we help our brothers and sister experience the Resurrection in their own lives? My brothers and sisters, during this Easter season, let us allow Christ to fully manifest his glorious resurrection in our own lives and so that we can bring the joy of Easter to others.