Readings of the day: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9
Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!
Before I entered the Basilians, I was a
student at St. Joseph’s College in Edmonton, Canada. There, at the end of the Easter
Vigil each year, one of our Basilian priests would announce in Greek according
to an early Church tradition: Christos
anesti! Aleithos anesti! (Christ
is risen! He is truly risen!). Shall we try this here this morning?
Christos
anesti!
Aleithos anesti!
At St. Joseph’s College, after this
first exclamation in Greek the congregation would be invited to proclaim,
“Christ is risen; he is truly risen,” in as many other languages as the people gathered knew. Often, in our small St. Joseph’s College chapel, we would
approach twenty languages in which we would proclaim the central joy of our
faith: “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!” This multi-language proclamation
was always a very moving experience for me.
I won’t ask us to try to proclaim
Christ’s resurrection in multiple languages here today. I also promise that the
rest of my homily, after “Christos anesti;
Aleithos anesti,” won’t be all Greek
to us!
Nevertheless, I ask: What feelings do we
experience when we hear it proclaimed that the Lord Jesus is truly risen?
Perhaps first of all we may feel joy that our Lord is risen from the dead. We may
find it easy to give our voice to today’s Psalm: “This is the day that the Lord
has made; let us rejoice and be glad!”
We may feel a sense of thanksgiving to
God for Christ’s resurrection from the dead. After all, just days ago, on Good
Friday, we echoed the cries of the crowds of Jesus’ time: “Crucify him!” Jesus
Christ died to put to death our sin; our having called out for his death on a
cross. Now, through his resurrection, we are promised resurrection with Christ
to new and eternal life. We are promised by God’s mercy a new beginning, free
from sin, to be as our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles says,
“Witnesses to all that [Christ] did” for us; witnesses to our redemption by
Christ’s death and resurrection. We are promised, in the words of St. Paul to
the Colossians, that we, “too, will appear with [Christ] in glory.” And so we
may echo our Psalm today: “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his
mercy endures forever… I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the
LORD.”
Along with joy and a sense of
thanksgiving, it would be natural for us to feel somewhat confused at the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of us may be asking, “Why would we
feel confused”? Let us put ourselves into the events of the morning of Jesus’
resurrection as John describes them in today’s Gospel reading. Mary Magdalene
arrives first at the empty tomb, sees “the stone removed from the tomb,” and
then runs frantically back to Peter to tell him not that Jesus is risen, but
that “they have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they
have laid him.”
Mary Magdalene’s reaction to the absent
stone is of confusion and fear. Perhaps someone had stolen the body of Jesus
and hidden it elsewhere to make sure that his disciples would not do the same
or something more strange yet… Would we have reacted any differently than Mary
Magdalene to the empty tomb with no stone?
Peter arrives at the tomb still, we can
imagine, overcome with sadness and guilt for having denied Jesus and
contributed to his death. He sees the scattered burial cloths and, like Mary
Magdalene, is afraid and confused. Would we have reacted any differently than
Peter?
Only for the unnamed “disciple whom
Jesus loved” does the joy and thanksgiving at Jesus’ resurrection overcome the
confusion and fear at his empty tomb. The other disciples “did not yet
understand the Scripture that [Jesus] had to rise from the dead.” Would any of
us act with the faith of this beloved disciple in his situation? Perhaps some
of us may act with such faith, but if my experience at funerals is any
indication, many of us would react more like Peter and Mary Magdalene than like
the unnamed disciple who “saw and believed.”
The confusion, fear, and sorrow with
which most of us face the loss of loved ones are natural human feelings. For us
to hear, as in a Eucharistic Prayer frequently heard at funerals, that “the
hope of blessed resurrection has dawned,” for our deceased loved one and for
all of us, because of Christ’s own resurrection, often does not lessen our
confusion; our fear; our sorrow.
Our Easter celebration gives us a space
for our confusion; our fear; our sorrow at the death of a loved one, Jesus
Christ. And yet through our Easter celebration we are invited to move from
natural, human feelings of confusion; of fear; of sorrow toward joy and
thanksgiving because Christ is risen. This move may not happen immediately, and
so our Easter celebration lasts fifty days each year: From today, Easter
Sunday, to Pentecost, when we receive the Holy Spirit, the decisive
breath of joy and thanksgiving into our Church.
We now begin our fifty days to move from
confusion to joy and thanksgiving; fifty days from sorrow to the Spirit; fifty
days from not knowing “where they… laid” Jesus to understanding more fully the
Scripture that Jesus, and we after him, “had to rise from the dead”; fifty days
to proclaim in the language of our hearts the central joy of our faith: Christos anesti! Aleithos anesti!
Christ is risen! He is truly risen!
Alleluia!
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