EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD
31 MARCH 2024
Mary of
Magdala comes to the tomb early in the morning, while it is still dark. The darkness is much more than the absence of
the light of day. In her personal
darkness of grief and despair, she comes to complete the task of anointing the
dead body of Jesus. When she sees that
the tomb is empty, she presumes that someone had stolen his body. Then she runs to Peter and the Beloved
Disciple, who run to the tomb. Peter
enters the tomb and remains in the darkness of his three-time denial of the
Lord in the courtyard of the high priest.
The Beloved Disciple had been with the crucified Lord in the darkness of
Good Friday. He is the verge of
believing that something remarkable has happened. But there is still darkness, even for
him.
Earlier in the Gospel of Saint John,
Nicodemus came to see Jesus “at night.”
He needed the cover of darkness to hide from the other members of the
Sanhedrin his interest in hearing from this self-educated preacher from
Galilee. In the darkest of nights, Judas
leaves the upper room to betray Jesus.
Saint John says, “And it was night.”
Today, we come to Mass knowing what
Mary Magdalene and Peter and the Beloved Disciple did not know. We know that the Lord has been raised from
the dead. But in professing our faith in
the resurrection, we also bring our share of darkness. We live in the darkness of a world where wars
are claiming innocent lives. Social
media and twenty-four-hour news coverage reveal the darkness of a deeply
divided nation and the challenge to distinguish between fake news and news that
is accurate and factual. In our Church,
we suffer the darkness of division. We
struggle with our own individual forms of darkness – illness, the death of
loved ones, the breaking up of relationships, the loss of trust, and much more.
Once we admit the many ways we
dwell in darkness, we can take comfort in the witness of Mary Magdalene, Peter,
the Beloved Disciple, and all the other eyewitnesses. They did not believe in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ because they saw an empty tomb.
They believed when they had personal experiences of the risen Christ,
receiving his forgiveness, seeing his body transformed by the resurrection, and
eating and drinking with him. Those
encounters moved them beyond their darkness.
We trust that what they experienced was true. The news of the resurrection is not fake
news. These witnesses are credible. Their lives were profoundly changed by their
encounter with the risen Christ. Most of
them gave up their lives, because they were absolutely convinced that the Lord
had been raised from the dead, never to die again.
Last night at the Easter Vigil, five
people entered the baptismal font and emerged, one with Christ and his Church,
with all their sins forgiven. In the
words of Saint Paul to the Colossians, they were raised with Christ. They were sealed by the Holy Spirit in Confirmation
and fed with the Body and Blood of Christ for the first time in the
Eucharist. That is why we renew our
baptismal promises today. In Baptism, we
died with Christ and rose with him to new life.
We encounter his risen presence in this Eucharist. We renounce those temptations to slip back
into the darkness of unbelief three times.
We renounce sin, so we can live in the freedom of the children of
God. We renounce the lure of evil, so
that sin may have no mastery over us. We
renounce Satan, the author and prince of sin and fake news.
On Easter Sunday, we turn our backs
on the lies of the Devil and renew our intention to share the life of the risen
Christ, who is above. Just as the light
of a tiny candle dispels the total darkness of night, we can live in the light
of the resurrection to give hope to those we love, to those we encounter, and
to ourselves. The Lord is truly risen from
the dead. He will never die again. He will share his rising with us every time
we share in his suffering and dying.
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