Homily for 1st Sunday of Easter 2022
Introduction
Happy Easter to you all! That’s how we Western Christians exchange
paschal greetings. Our Eastern brethren,
do it differently. They say "Christ
is risen," to which the response is "he is risen indeed." I like that greeting. It doesn’t mince words;
it goes straight to the heart of what we celebrate. That Christ is risen, risen indeed. I would like to reflect on three points drawn
from our gospel, that help us understand what it means that Christ is risen,
especially for us.
Scripture and Tradition
Did you notice that both today's gospel
from Saint John and last night's gospel from Saint Luke opened the resurrection
story with: "On the first day of the
week"? Jesus indeed rose on the
first day of the week.
But what is the first day of week?
·
The calendars of most countries,
perhaps even your work calendar count Monday as the first day of the week,
perhaps because they are focused on work and we usually grudgingly go back to
work on Monday.
·
In the Islamic world, however,
Saturday is the first day of the week.
·
But in the Jewish and Christian
tradition, even though the Jews celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, Sunday is
the first day of the week.
And so that Jesus rose "on the first
day of the week" can tell us something about the meaning of the
resurrection. This phrase points back to
first day of creation in Genesis. For it
was on the first day "when God
created the heavens and the earth," when "God said: Let there be light, and there was light," when "God saw that the light was good,"
calling the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And all this happened on the
first day of the week (1:1-5).
The resurrection of Jesus, taking place on the
first day of the week, similarly ushers in a new creation, the climax of a
whole series of events as we heard in the many readings of last night, that
bring about a new world, the Kingdom of God.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb when it was still dark, just as it was
dark when God began to create the world.
And Mary Magdalene left with the light of the resurrection news, just as
God created the sun and the stars to provide light. At the resurrection, God is at work again, starting
afresh, creating anew. And as we know,
the world has not been the same since the first Easter.
But why is the resurrection of Jesus a new
creation? That brings us to the second point
of our reflection, the empty tomb found by the women, the empty burial cloths
found by Peter and John. These signs
point to a deeper meaning of the resurrection than is commonly understood.
If you were to ask people, including us
Catholics, "what does it mean that Jesus rose from the dead?" you
would perhaps receive several different explanations – and most of them would
be wrong, very wrong.
Some think of the resurrection as meaning
that Jesus came back to life, in the same way that Jesus raised to life the son
of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the daughter of the synagogue official Jairus
(Mark 5: 35-43) and Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha (Jn. 11:1-44). But
this is not the resurrection; this is simply resuscitation, which is someone coming
back to their previous life, not a new life. Moreover, a person that is resuscitated will
die again. In fact, the religious
leaders tried to kill Lazarus, and indeed all three people that Jesus
resuscitated died again. In the case of
Jesus, after he rose from the dead, he would not die again; he lives on forever. Jesus is risen, he is risen indeed.
A second misunderstanding is to see the
resurrection as a “reincarnation.” The
idea of reincarnation, that is, coming back but in another human or animal body,
has recently made some inroads into the Western world through some New Age
practices. In some of the Asian
religions the goal of life is for soul to return to this earthly life. Thus, those who live an upright moral life
can expect to return perhaps as Meryl Streep or Angelina Jolie, Denzel
Washington or Antonio Banderas. But those
who lead a wicked life, after death will sadly return as pigs, or sheep or even
worse, nutria.
Even in Bible, there are hints of a belief
in reincarnation, as when for example Jesus asked his disciples who people said
he was and they replied: “Some say John
the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets”
(Mt. 16:14). But both before and after
his resurrection, Jesus did not come back as another person. He came back as himself, but a glorified self
who could leave the tomb without removing the big stone, enter rooms even with
doors closed. For Jesus is risen, he is
risen indeed.
A third promising but still imperfect
explanation is the one that understands the resurrection as meaning that Jesus'
soul entered into eternal life and his soul would live forever. This is what the Greeks believed, in the
immortality of the soul, that at death the souls of the just would not die, but
would leave behind the bodies and go on to live eternally. Even in the Old Testament, when the books of
Daniel and Wisdom that speak about life after death, they only speak of the immortality
of the soul, saying nothing about what happens to the body.
But even this explanation is not enough, because
when Jesus appears, he does so not just with his soul, but also with his body,
as he will show the doubting Thomas, by having him touch his hands and side. For Jesus is risen, he is risen indeed.
That is why we must return to the gospel
story itself to find the true meaning of the resurrection. And the answer is right there in the empty
tomb, the empty burial cloths. For if
Jesus had merely resuscitated, his body would be there, just like they had to
open the tomb to retrieve the resuscitated body of Lazarus. But Mary Magdalene, the women and the
apostles, who were witnesses to the resurrection, don't claim that Jesus is merely
resuscitated, or reincarnated, or come back to life only in some spiritual way. They also don't tell the resurrection story
in the way we tell fairy stories saying "once upon a time" or "a
long time ago in a galaxy far far away."
No. They simply assert that Jesus
of Nazareth, their friend and master, is alive again in a new way. For they understand the resurrection to mean
a new form of life, in some sense a new creation, that has both the body and
the soul, no longer in the way we live in this world, but a in manner of life
that is at once bodily, as it is heavenly.
A few years ago a box of ancient bones dated
from the time of Jesus was discovered in the Near East. Some people claimed that these were the bones
of Jesus. A dear Catholic friend of
mine, who I am sorry to say, has more piety than good sense, was very excited
about this find. Aghast, I had to
quickly explain to her that while we Catholics really love our relics of saints,
Padre Pio, even the Shroud, the one relic that we neither have nor desire to
have is that of the body of Jesus. For
the Jesus is risen in body and soul. His
body and soul were reunified in a new glorified state, one from which he will
never die again. For Jesus is risen, he is risen indeed.
Christian Life and Conclusion
And so, to the third point of our
reflection. Mary Magdalene, Peter and
John, "saw and believed"; they became witnesses of the fact that
Jesus was risen in body and soul, sharing with others what they saw and
believed. That is what St. Peter in our
first reading was boldly proclaiming to anybody who cared to listen, that Jesus
is risen and is risen indeed.
May the good news of
the resurrection, understood correctly, give us hope for our own resurrection
of body and soul. On the Last Day, we
too hope to do what Jesus did on the first day of the week, rise in body and
soul. We shall return, not to this life,
not even as some glamorous celebrity, but as a better and glorified form of
ourselves, a version 2.0 of what God has made us to be.
But to ensure our resurrection into life,
not into death, we must live like people of the resurrection, as St. Paul admonished
the Colossians and us: "Brothers and
sisters, If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God . . .. not of what is on earth."
Jesus has opened the path to resurrection; he has shown the way to the
resurrection.
And all this is possible, because Christ is risen, he is risen indeed (repeat)!
No comments:
Post a Comment