April 20 — Jn 20:1-9
Happy Easter. For the last two millennia on Easter Sunday, the church has rightfully celebrated the most unusual event to ever happen on earth.
Jesus Christ was crucified, died and rose from the dead on the third day. Yet, even that sentence falls terribly short of catching the magnitude of it all. Words fail to capture the mystery.
This difficulty is compounded by the fact that 2,000 years of Christianity buffers us from comprehending exactly how astounding the Resurrection was to the early church, especially to those within John’s Gospel, which we hear today. We expect Jesus to rise because we look backward to those moments. The disciples didn’t have that luxury.
Consider: As a priest, I’ve celebrated hundreds (if not thousands) of funerals at this point, fully believing in the Resurrection. Not one person has come back. I would still be alarmed if they did. Imagine if that happened, even for a second. For me, after the paramedics restarted my heart, I would still need time to wrap my head around it. It would flabbergast the world.
This helps us to understand Mary Magdalene’s response, as well as Peter and John’s slow growth in believing that the tomb is empty. It also explains the closing line in the Gospel: “For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
True enough, the Lord told them that he would rise. Yet, it’s one thing to hear the words, another to believe them in an abstract sense, and an entirely different thing to talk to the very person whom you witnessed being brutally murdered and buried just three days earlier.
The Resurrection remains bold, unpredictable, energetic, explosive even, no matter how one cuts it.
This renewed sense of perspective raises questions for our Gospel reading, however. For instance, we can ask: Why didn’t Jesus just wait in the tomb and patiently explain things when Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John arrive? Wouldn’t that have been simpler?
A few reasons come to mind. First, the entire narrative of the Gospel today hints at the fact that our faith (cross, Resurrection and all) will necessarily unfold in our lives through gradual points of increase in understanding. Our hearts and minds need time to take it all in. One suspects that if Jesus had merely greeted them without giving them space to unpack, they might have simply died of shock. Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the risen Lord mere lines later in that Gospel, but only after she has remained and pondered the mystery, a nod to the need for contemplation in Christian life.
Second, what better way to show you’ve utterly conquered death than to walk clean away from the tomb like it was nothing? Christ thinks about it no more than a butterfly thinks about its old cocoon. Jesus doesn’t limp out of the tomb and need to be nursed back to health, nor does he need to wait to be fetched or found. Neither does he emerge bound by hatred and revenge, seeking to exact vengeance on those who struck him down. None of that weighs him down. He leads a new Exodus from death, and we can encounter him only if we follow him on the way. Put another way: It’s a sign that God isn’t boxed in by the limits of our reason and imagination, or even sin and death. He remains profoundly free, alive and other.
This Easter, whether it is your first as a Christian or your hundredth, let the novelty of the Resurrection enter your heart anew. Place yourself today with Mary, Peter and John in the electricity of those Easter moments. Then, allow Christ to slowly lead you from the tomb of sin to newness beyond our imagination, to work the same grace of the Resurrection in your hearts as he works his splendor out in you. Christ is risen, and for freedom he has set us free. Alleluia.
Fr. Miserendino is chaplain at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
Christ is risen
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April 20 — Jn 20:1-9
Happy Easter. For the last two millennia on Easter Sunday, the church has rightfully celebrated the most unusual event to ever happen on earth.
Jesus Christ was crucified, died and rose from the dead on the third day. Yet, even that sentence falls terribly short of catching the magnitude of it all. Words fail to capture the mystery.
This difficulty is compounded by the fact that 2,000 years of Christianity buffers us from comprehending exactly how astounding the Resurrection was to the early church, especially to those within John’s Gospel, which we hear today. We expect Jesus to rise because we look backward to those moments. The disciples didn’t have that luxury.
Consider: As a priest, I’ve celebrated hundreds (if not thousands) of funerals at this point, fully believing in the Resurrection. Not one person has come back. I would still be alarmed if they did. Imagine if that happened, even for a second. For me, after the paramedics restarted my heart, I would still need time to wrap my head around it. It would flabbergast the world.
This helps us to understand Mary Magdalene’s response, as well as Peter and John’s slow growth in believing that the tomb is empty. It also explains the closing line in the Gospel: “For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
True enough, the Lord told them that he would rise. Yet, it’s one thing to hear the words, another to believe them in an abstract sense, and an entirely different thing to talk to the very person whom you witnessed being brutally murdered and buried just three days earlier.
The Resurrection remains bold, unpredictable, energetic, explosive even, no matter how one cuts it.
This renewed sense of perspective raises questions for our Gospel reading, however. For instance, we can ask: Why didn’t Jesus just wait in the tomb and patiently explain things when Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John arrive? Wouldn’t that have been simpler?
A few reasons come to mind. First, the entire narrative of the Gospel today hints at the fact that our faith (cross, Resurrection and all) will necessarily unfold in our lives through gradual points of increase in understanding. Our hearts and minds need time to take it all in. One suspects that if Jesus had merely greeted them without giving them space to unpack, they might have simply died of shock. Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the risen Lord mere lines later in that Gospel, but only after she has remained and pondered the mystery, a nod to the need for contemplation in Christian life.
Second, what better way to show you’ve utterly conquered death than to walk clean away from the tomb like it was nothing? Christ thinks about it no more than a butterfly thinks about its old cocoon. Jesus doesn’t limp out of the tomb and need to be nursed back to health, nor does he need to wait to be fetched or found. Neither does he emerge bound by hatred and revenge, seeking to exact vengeance on those who struck him down. None of that weighs him down. He leads a new Exodus from death, and we can encounter him only if we follow him on the way. Put another way: It’s a sign that God isn’t boxed in by the limits of our reason and imagination, or even sin and death. He remains profoundly free, alive and other.
This Easter, whether it is your first as a Christian or your hundredth, let the novelty of the Resurrection enter your heart anew. Place yourself today with Mary, Peter and John in the electricity of those Easter moments. Then, allow Christ to slowly lead you from the tomb of sin to newness beyond our imagination, to work the same grace of the Resurrection in your hearts as he works his splendor out in you. Christ is risen, and for freedom he has set us free. Alleluia.
Fr. Miserendino is chaplain at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
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