Homily for Easter Sunday
John 20: 1-9
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
“Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early
in the morning” (John 20: 1).
(Window at OL of the Assumption Church)
Sts. Matthew, Mark, and John inform us that Mary had been at Jesus’ crucifixion. She and the other witnesses knew that he was quite dead. St. John adds the detail that one of the soldiers made sure of that by thrusting a lance thru Jesus’ rib cage and into his lungs so that “blood and water flowed out” (19:34), i.e., blood and serous fluid from his chest.
So Mary, and according to the other
gospels, some of the other women disciples, came to Jesus tomb expecting only
to find his body and complete the customary ritual anointings. She hardly expected to find the tomb empty. Resurrection isn’t part of our experience;
it’s not what anyone would have expected on the 3d day. That’s partly why St. Paul tells the
Colossians to “think of what is above, not what is on earth” (3:2).
It’s still
unexpected by a lot of people. Ted
Williams believed firmly in the power of science and the science of hitting a
baseball, which he did spectacularly well—well enuf to hold the 5th-highest
career batting average (9th if you include the old Negro Leagues). If he hadn’t lost 5 seasons in his prime while
serving as a Marine combat pilot during WWII and the Korean War, he might have
broken Babe Ruth’s home run record.
 |
| Ted Williams being sworn into military service, May 1942 |
It seems
that Mary of Magdala and the other disciples also had flimsy hope on the
morning after the Sabbath, 2 days after the crucifixion—in biblical reckoning,
the 3d day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday).
Discovering the tomb open and empty, Mary’s 1st supposition is that
Jesus’ body had been taken away. Her
supposition is extended in the next passage of John’s Gospel, which we’ll read
at Mass on Tuesday, and you can read anytime you pick up your New Testament. Next Sunday’s gospel, continuing John’s Gospel
from there, will tell us how skeptical, then amazed, the apostles were,
especially “Doubting Thomas.”
In the
passage we read this morning, even St. Peter doesn’t get it. He sees the burial cloths and the head
covering lying on the shelf in the tomb (20:6-7), which seem to have been left
rather neatly on the shelf. But Peter
doesn’t understand what’s happened any more than Mary does.
The Beloved
Disciple, however, does “see and believe” (20:8). Tradition identifies him as the apostle and
evangelist John, the eyewitness of the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and
several of Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection. Whoever this disciple was, he had an
exceptionally close relationship with Jesus.
Now he understands the scriptural prophecies as well as what Jesus had
told them all. The tomb is empty because
Jesus is alive—not resuscitated as if EMS had been there, but transposed to a
higher form of life. The apostles will
come to understand that when he appears to them bearing on his body his deadly
wounds.
What the
Beloved Disciple “saw and believed,” if not fully at that moment, then gradually,
was that Jesus’ resurrection validated his teaching—his teaching about God’s
love for us and the forgiveness of our sins.
Peter & the Beloved Disciple
at the empty tomb (Romanelli)
Pope
Francis assures us that “the Risen One gives us the certainty that good always
triumphs over evil, that life always conquers death, and it’s not our end to
descend lower and lower, from sorrow to sorrow, but rather to rise up high. The Risen One is the confirmation that Jesus
is right in everything.” (from an Easter audience a few years back)[1]
From St.
Augustine early the 5th century, we hear: “It is a great thing that we are
promised by the Lord; but far greater is what has already been done for us, and
which we now commemorate. . . . [Christ]
had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh. This was the way in which, though immortal,
he was able to die; the way in which he chose to give life to mortal men: he would first share with us, and then enable
us to share with him. . . . He effected
a wonderful exchange with us, through mutual sharing: we gave him the power to die, and he will
give us the power to live.”[2]
Jesus’
passing thru death—his passover, the paschal mystery—is our redemption and our
passageway into his mystery. Jesus lives
and offers us life. No cryonics needed,
only faith in him and a relationship with him.
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