Homily for Sunday, 17 April 2022– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

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

The Motherhouse Chapel of the Vincentian order, the Congregation of the Mission, in Paris includes a Latin inscription along the arch above the tabernacle and high altar: Pertransiit benefaciendo, “He went about doing good.” This inscription is surrounded by illustrations of Vincentians doing works of goodness and charity, especially among the poor, for which the order is so famous.

When I lived in Paris, my apartment was across a courtyard from the Vincentian Motherhouse. So this inscription in the Motherhouse chapel, Pertransiit Benefaciendo, “He went about doing good,” resonates especially with me. It is taken from the reading we hear this Easter morning from the Acts of the Apostles. In our reading, St. Peter describes Jesus’ ministry in this way as he preaches in the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who would become an early Gentile disciple of Jesus Christ. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” Peter proclaims; “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

The earliest Church, in the years right after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and God’s sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, had a problem. I would describe it as a good problem to have. The problem is that—if we follow the Acts of the Apostles’ account of events—on the one hand, the Church was expanding; people were being baptized, both Jews and Gentiles like Cornelius, exceptionally quickly and in great numbers. Acts gives us a sense of an early Christian Church blessed with great fervor; great piety; people dedicated to going about “and doing good,” following Jesus’ own example. Acts says that, in these earliest Christian communities, “nobody had need”; the wealthiest gave of their excess to support the least well-off. All was well. This was, without doubt, the work of the Holy Spirit, as Acts so often emphasizes. Peter says of Jesus in Cornelius’ house that he was “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power.” Truly, this could have been a description not only of Jesus, but of any Christian disciple; any of us. Each of us, sisters and brothers, have been “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power” from the moment of our baptism. We have been anointed, after Jesus himself, to go out and do good.

On the other hand—and the earliest Christian disciples would have been acutely aware of this, especially as the Church expanded rapidly beyond the Jewish world and into the Gentile world, its cultures and customs—nobody directly witnessed Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The Church had a problem.

The person closest to witnessing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead directly is Mary Magdalene, in John’s Gospel from which we hear on this Easter morning. But when Mary Magdalene arrives at Jesus’ tomb, the resurrection has already taken place, only Mary does not know this yet. The stone at the tomb’s entrance has been rolled away. John very deliberately says that Mary arrives at Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark.” Mary Magdalene does not (yet) encounter the risen Christ. Instead, her first encounter is with darkness; confusion; emptiness. Mary Magdalene presumes the worst when she returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter “set out” to the tomb to investigate. But, like Mary Magdalene, they, too, encounter darkness; confusion; emptiness; no body, much less that of the risen Lord. John says of the beloved disciple and Simon Peter: “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter return “to their homes.” But, to her great credit, Mary Magdalene remains on scene. She remains to grapple with the darkness; the confusion; the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is often called “the apostle to the apostles,” because she is the one who returns to the (male) apostles to announce to them that Jesus is indeed truly risen. Yet, in John’s Gospel, she does not return to the eleven remaining apostles until the very end of this episode; this encounter with the empty tomb. She remains there for some time to grapple with; to ponder in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. It is there, where Mary Magdalene is before the empty tomb; where Mary Magdalene at first mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener (a subtle reference to God the creator-gardener of Genesis’ Eden; Jesus has been “with God”—he is God—from before “the beginning” of creation), where the Church is born.

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready for the great revelation: The gardener is the risen Lord; her and our Rabbouni; her and our Teacher. But now Mary must not remain there; she must not grasp onto Jesus as she has until now tried to grasp onto the mystery of the empty tomb. Otherwise there would be no Church. Our Easter story would have ended there, in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. “Do not hold onto me,” Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready to return to Jesus’ disciples and announce to them, “I have seen the Lord.” And only then (thankfully because, again, had it been otherwise, there would be no Church) are Jesus’ disciples ready to believe Mary’s witness: She has seen the risen Lord!

That they believe her is remarkable, because there was no body in that tomb when Mary Magdalene, and then the beloved disciple and Simon Peter, first saw it on the morning of the third day after Jesus’ death. So the Church still has a problem. It is a problem with which Peter grapples as he preaches to the household of Cornelius, sometime after Jesus’ resurrection and to a pagan, Gentile household at that.

All Peter is able to say in Acts about the first witnesses to the risen Christ concerns later events. Nobody saw Jesus rise from the dead. But, Peter insists, “God raised him on the third day.” And God “allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses”: To Mary Magdalene; to Jesus’ apostles; then maybe to a slightly larger group of Jesus’ disciples… To a rational, critical mind, and especially to Gentiles a step further removed from Jesus than his inner circles of disciples, Peter’s testimony to the appearances of the risen Christ to a limited group of witnesses must have seemed absurd. If Jesus is truly risen, why did he only appear to this select group of witnesses? Why did he send Mary Magdalene to tell his disciples that he had risen? How did such conviction that Jesus was truly risen and had commissioned them beyond an inner circle to communicate this news to all the world emerge from darkness; confusion; one woman peering into an empty tomb?

The conviction in the resurrection of the Lord and his mission to us must have emerged and spread from the Holy Spirit’s continued action through these first disciples. It is the only possible explanation. This conviction in God’s mission must have spread through the Church, all the way through history to us, so that we Christians (not perfectly, because we are sinners, but somehow still intelligibly and convincingly to the world) have continued to act as Christ did.

Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him,” Peter proclaims on this Easter morning. Pertransiit benefaciendo: Peter was describing Jesus, his life and ministry; his death and resurrection, to a Gentile household of a Roman centurion, Cornelius. But Peter could just as well be describing us. Peter could just as well be describing the commissioning of every Christian from the moment of our baptism.

Sisters and brothers, from the moment we are baptized, the Holy Spirit of our risen Lord impels us to go about “doing good.” Our Easter story begins, as we have heard, in the darkness and confusion before an empty tomb. But it cannot remain there beyond a short time: “Do not hold onto me, but go to my brothers [and sisters] and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me,” but go forth “doing good,” Jesus invites us. The risen Jesus lives in us. His Spirit is poured out on our world every time we do good; every time act with kindness and mercy; every time we care for the sick; the poor; the disadvantaged; every time we simply listen for the presence of the risen Lord and his Spirit in one another; every time we heal divisions and reject any form of violence. When we go about doing good, the Church is reborn, time and again, in our longing world.

So may our Easter proclamation be active in our going “about doing good.” Christ is risen; he is truly risen! Alleluia!

Homily for Sunday, 4 April 2021– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

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

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia, alleluia!

If I can name one person, besides our risen Lord Jesus, my family, friends, or brother Basilians, who especially drew me toward religious life and priesthood, simply by the example of holiness she lived, it was perhaps my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister), Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle. Aunt Jeanne was a sister of the Congregation of Holy Cross, in religious vows for 71 years. Just before and during my time in seminary as a Basilian, and for my first years of ordained ministry as a deacon and then a priest, I lived near enough to Aunt Jeanne while I was in Toronto and Rochester and she in Cornwall and then Montreal that I could drive to see her fairly often. And, for as long as I can remember, Aunt Jeanne would call our home at Christmas, and we e-mailed back and forth constantly.

Especially if it had been longer than usual since Aunt Jeanne and I had heard from or written each other, she would apologize for having taken so long to show “signs of life from your old, great aunt”! Aunt Jeanne, suffice it to say, lived with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. She suffered with cancer for the last fourteen years of her life, but the disease never took away her joy and mildly sassy edge; it never took away those “signs of life” from our Aunt Jeanne. Her funeral, at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, the Holy Cross infirmary in Montreal, four years ago this past November, was about as joyful as a funeral could be. In fact, I do not remember a wake service, ever, with as many peals of laughter and tears of joy as from the (mostly) elderly sisters at Pavillon Saint-Joseph at Aunt Jeanne’s wake service, as memories of Aunt Jeanne’s 71 years of religious life, living and ministering in countless countries in the world (some very poor or marred by violence) were recounted.

A funeral, we may think, is a strange place to encounter “signs of life.” Yet I had a feeling I would encounter just this when the Superior of Pavillon Saint-Joseph contacted me to let me know Aunt Jeanne had died, so I could plan to attend her funeral. Today, our Gospel recounts another event, one central to our Christian faith, when the people involved, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and Jesus’ beloved disciple, go to the scene—the tomb of Jesus—not expecting, we can be sure, to find “signs of life” there.

We have the gift of hindsight. We know this is just what Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple find: The ultimate sign of life; the empty tomb; our Lord Jesus, risen. But Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple did not know that they would find any signs of life at Jesus’ tomb. After all, it was a tomb; a resting place of the dead, not a place to encounter signs of life. So unexpected was it for each of them to encounter our risen Lord that this encounter, in a different way for each of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple, was truly jarring.

Each of them—Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple—encounter signs of life where they expected to find death. Yet, in a way none of them realized in the moment, each of them brought their own “signs of life” when they went, that first Easter morning, to Jesus’ tomb. They brought with them signs of life in the depths of their hearts; signs of life that, as John’s Gospel recounts this event, anticipated the resurrection of Jesus.

How is this so? John’s Gospel is not clear why Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb at first, only that she goes to the tomb “while it [is] still dark” and finds the stone removed from the tomb’s entrance. But there is a tradition in our Church, from Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel accounts of Mary Magdalene’s Easter morning arrival at the tomb, of Mary as the first to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Even the name Mary derives from myrrh, which was used then as a burial spice.

My sisters and brothers, the Easter morning visit to Jesus’ tomb by Mary, the “myrrh bearer” of Magdala, is a supreme act of love; a first sign on the part of Mary Magdalene of the risen Lord’s own life deep within her, before she even realizes it is there. And this love of the “myrrh bearer” and the Lord’s life source within Mary Magdalene overwhelm and overflow from her. She cannot remain at the empty tomb, but returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, with some alarm: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” The three disciples of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved,” return together to the tomb. But only Mary remains there, weeping, until she is able to encounter her beloved; our beloved, the Risen One, Jesus. Maybe just as unnervingly for Mary Magdalene as it was to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emptied of the Lord’s body at first, we hear Jesus command Mary sharply, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me”: It is as if Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold onto the source of love; the sign of life that is already within you and that you communicated so freely and beautifully already by going to the tomb to anoint my body with myrrh, and then by returning to tell my disciples that I had risen. “Do not hold onto” Love; I must be free to ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” Jesus says. This is the only way that the source of love, the sign of the life of the risen Lord that is already within Mary Magdalene, may be received by God the Father and then showered on the whole world in the person of God the Holy Spirit.

My sisters and brothers, what we begin to celebrate today—our Easter time that runs from today’s celebration of our Lord’s resurrection, through the celebrations of Jesus’ ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—Mary Magdalene and then Simon Peter and the beloved disciple experience in an instant. They are able to experience this entire Paschal mystery in an instant and then to found our Church on it because, in a sense, it is only possible to encounter love of this magnitude if we who set out to encounter love, to encounter the Lord’s “signs of life” in our world, already have that love within us and are willing to give it to the world freely, not to “hold onto” it simply for ourselves.

“Do not hold onto me”: At this point the risen Jesus gives Mary Magdalene the strength to release God’s love already within her, the love that enabled her to go to the tomb that first Easter morning in the first place, upon the world with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. And amid these events at the empty tomb, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple are given this same strength, which they show in different ways: The beloved disciple arrives ahead of Simon Peter and enters the tomb. This “sign of life,” the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” enters a place of death and finds it, physically, empty of any body; empty not only of life or death, but simply empty. Biblical experts have commented on how this encounter of the beloved disciple with the emptiness and utter absence of the tomb may be John’s way of directing our memory back to the earliest tradition of Israel of the Ark of the Covenant of the Old Testament. The ancient people of Israel traveled with an empty box under a tent; emptiness in which God was believed to dwell.

So the beloved disciple encounters ultimate presence in utter absence. The beloved enters the absence of the tomb, as the Carmelite reformer St. John of the Cross would write centuries later in a poem in which he is the seeker, “seeking love.” And the beloved disciple finds the ultimate presence of the Love he seeks in the absence. “He saw and believed,” John’s Gospel says. Simon Peter does not enter the Presence of the empty tomb that has become the new Ark of the Covenant; the new Holy of Holies. Instead, he contemplates from outside. Simon Peter is set on a mission to understand these “signs of life” by which God chose to save the world; “to understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

We, too, celebrate today because we love and have come to encounter Love Risen. We seek to understand this encounter in light of the Scripture, “that he must rise from the dead.” We believe once we realize we have encountered ultimate, saving love in utter emptiness. And our faith drives us to release the “signs of life” we have deep within us already, the love of the risen Christ, upon our world with attractive, holy, and fearless joy.