In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Then Simon Peter came… and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
Today the Church sets before us the Father’s seal of approval on the work of his Son. Time and again in the Gospels, Jesus goes around doing things and saying things that his disciples do not understand. And the chief object of their misunderstanding, and OUR misunderstanding, is what Jesus did on the cross. And it should not be surprising that the cross should be so misunderstood. St. Paul said: “we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1.23). And the Gospel of John records, with reference to the things relating to the Lord’s suffering and death: “His disciples did not understand this at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him” (Jn. 12.16).
This is indeed the experience of most of us. Very often we fail, or we refuse to understand that “it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17.3). This is the pattern of our lives and the hardness of our hearts. We go through life, and when things are fine, when we have our health, when we have our family and our friends, when we are provided for physically and financially, we tend not to be much interested in recollection. We have a kind of meta-satisfaction with our satisfaction. We are content with the contentment we get from our circumstances. And when suffering comes, as it inevitably does, as it MUST, when we hear from our doctors some dreadful diagnosis, or when the phone rings in the middle of the night with some horrible news, when we have to watch a loved one slowly drift beyond our reach into death – then our tendency is to wall our hearts off from the recollection that Jesus said only comes by the Holy Spirit: “it was necessary for the Christ to suffer…. AND TO RISE FROM THE DEAD.”
And we do not like to remember that “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house [a devil], how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matt. 10.24). We do not like to remember what the Lord said as he was being led away to be crucified: “…do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children…. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.28ff). We do not like to remember that the Lord said that “whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14.27).
It is a natural human tendency, a kind of defense mechanism, that we harden our hearts in the face of suffering and death. A kind of Darwinian instinct for the purpose of self-preservation, and sometimes the pain is simply too much to bear. But there was one who did not harden his heart. There was one who refused NOT to love God, who was willing to be afflicted and abased, to be misunderstood, mocked, derided, cursed, defiled; there was one who loved God, who believed in him to the bitter end; one who would not let go of his intimate communion with the Father, no matter what the world threw at him, no matter how much he was denounced as a lunatic, or a blasphemer.
And today we see the Father’s seal of approval on the determined love of Jesus Christ: the empty tomb. For God will not abandon his beloved to Hades, nor let his Holy One see corruption. The communion-in-love of God and man – the communion which Jesus Christ shows us, which he himself IS, and which he makes possible for us, is a communion in love that cannot remain in the tomb, because that communion is the will of God, and he will see his will carried into effect. He loves us, he desires us, he wants to be with us, to meet all our needs and to fulfill all of our desires – that is his will. And the openness of hearts to the carrying-out of that will means openness to affliction in the world, but it also means our inhabitation of God’s omnipotence, that we become a part of his victory over every unclean thing, every evil. It means an empty tomb, and not just Christ’s, but – through the power of God in Christ – it means the emptiness of our own tombs too.
The Holy Father recently said, “... St. Paul makes clear how decisive is the importance that he attributes to the resurrection of Jesus. In this event, in fact, is the solution to the problem that the drama of the cross implies. On its own, the cross could not explain Christian faith; on the contrary, it would be a tragedy, a sign of the absurdity of being.” The empty tomb is the lens through which we can understand the cross. “His disciples did not understand [these things] at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him.”
Then the disciples went in to the empty tomb, and they saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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