Easter Sunday
at St. Mary’s
in Salem - 4 April 2021
Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Col 3:1-4
Jn 20:1-9
Praised be Jesus Christ! Alleluia!
“For you have died, and your life is
hidden with Christ in God.”
It is with these words of St. Paul that at Easter Mother
Church has chosen to explain just who we are in Christ the Lord now Risen and gloriously
reigning over all creation. They are words which should be pondered and most
of us could use more time to reflect upon them. We would hope for light, for
more understanding of just Who Jesus is and who we are in Him. Really, we need
to shout out that message: I no longer live but Christ lives in me. This is the
sense of our baptism into His Death and Resurrection.
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God.”
Let us go for a moment to the Acts of the Apostles and the
passage chosen for our first reading today for Easter Sunday! There St. Peter
is recounting to his listeners the notable events of that first Easter, of
Christ’s Resurrection Day. There are lots of things in that message of Peter’s
that are well worth pondering. I think they could give us hope, as well as a
clearer understanding of what our Catholic faith is all about.
There Peter describes the ministry of Jesus which he and the
other disciples witnessed both in Judah and in the holy city of Jerusalem.
Peter describes Jesus as anointed by God with the Holy Spirit. God was with Him
and He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. In
the Acts of the Apostles, Peter then proclaims himself and the other disciples as
witnesses to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He tells us that
those then whom God chose as witnesses saw the Lord Risen. They ate and drank
with Him, and Jesus sent them forth to preach and testify that in Jesus all the
prophecies of the Old Testament had found their fulfillment. Through professing
faith in the message that the apostles preached, forgiveness of sins was
available to all who believed in the Risen Christ.
The Resurrection account from the Gospel of St. John gives us
a snapshot of just who these first witnesses to the Resurrection of Christ were:
Mary of Magdala, Peter, the beloved disciple John (at this point in his gospel,
John is referring to himself, not using his own name, but calling himself “the
other disciple”). These first witnesses to the empty Tomb are obviously quite
young. You can tell that because all three of them are running; the foot race
of Peter and John to the tomb is more than enough evidence of that. Although His
disciples profoundly venerated Jesus in life and were sorely tried by His death,
the empty Tomb left them confounded. Mary of Magdala’s words, “They have
taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him”, were evidence
that none of them had expected to find the burial cloths cast aside and His Body
gone. At that point, Jesus’ own prophecies of His coming Resurrection had still
not sunken in.
In wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter today, I guess I
cannot expect better of you than of those young men and women, the first
witnesses to the Resurrection. They had spent their lives, a good three years
of their lives anyway, in company night and day with Jesus. They had listened
to His teaching; they had witnessed His miracles both of healing and of casting
out the power of the devil. The first disciples surely had the faith, I guess,
but it was conditioned. In many ways, their personal baggage or prejudices
limited their faith; no doubt their personal sins did as well. Theirs was far
from a wholehearted surrender to Jesus the Christ.
My profound wish then is that we might all grow in faith in
the Risen One. May our days of Easter, after the penance of Lent, be a joyful
time to ponder Christ the Lord in all His Majesty and Glory. Jesus once crucified
and now risen saves us; He frees us for mission just like He did those first
disciples. May we learn the lesson and share the joy! It is never too late to
change our ways and become more and better than those who frantically run about
not being able to make sense of these great events which have brought our
salvation.
Praised be Jesus Christ! Alleluia!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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