Easter Sunday 2023

 

Easter Sunday (2023)

(Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Saint John’s Gospel 20:1-9)

 

You have just heard that both John and Peter ran to the tomb and how John first glanced inside and saw that Jesus’ body was not there:

He bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.

Next Peter came up and, characteristically, went straight into the empty tomb where:

He saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered Jesus' head, not with the burial cloths but folded up in a separate place.

The author of John’s Gospel tells us that John was the first to look into the tomb and see the strips of burial linen lying there, and that is all.  He does not say that John believed at that moment.  It was only on entering the tomb after the slower-running Peter and then seeing the face-cloth that had been around Jesus' head folded up by itself and separate from the other linen, that we are told that he believed.

On the other hand, Peter -- an older and much more humanly-experienced and emotionally-developed man than the young John -- on catching up, with John, had straightway entered the tomb and saw. What he saw caused him thoughts so deeply personal that he did not make any comment to his younger companion, fellow-disciple though he was.  No, Peter seems to have just slowly left the tomb and walked away quietly, lost in deep, absorbing, thought -- like Mary’s own behaviour – treasuring in his heart what his eyes had just seen. The face-cloth, which had been placed around Jesus’ head to preserve His human dignity by preventing His jaw from sagging in death, was not with the other linen cloths.  Why had Jesus  lovingly rolled up, what He had earlier --  so decisively and carefully -- removed from around His head? And why had He then placed it so clearly apart from the other burial cloths?

At His trial, Jesus had told Pilate:

For this was I born, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice. (John 19:27)

And now that He was risen from the dead it would seem that He wanted to make it perfectly clear that He had removed the face cloth and thereby set His mouth free, in order to symbolise the enduring proclamation of His truth.  That seems to have been His first symbolic-statement on rising from the dead: never again would His truth be silenced!  It was a statement He expected these two special disciples – Peter the disciple who loved Jesus most, and John who was most loved by Jesus – to be able to puzzle out, and understand that His voice, His teaching, was to be heard throughout all ages to come, thanks to their – and to their fellow Apostles’ -- continuing and enduring proclamation of HIS truth, under the guidance and protection of HIS Spirit, to all mankind, in and through HIS Church!  

The Risen Lord was glorious, not of this world; but HIS VOICE, HIS GOSPEL, had to be proclaimed to this world and it was for that very reason He had called His chosen Apostles!

Let us now consider the Resurrection no longer from the point of view of Jesus the Son of Man but from that of Jesus the Son of God, and glimpse something of the supreme Christian mystery: the most Holy Trinity.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit: three divine Persons, one God.  How are we to think of our Risen Lord in that respect?   God the Father, to be Father, must have a Son.  God the Father eternally begets His beloved Son Who is like Him in all things save that the Father begets and the Son is the only-Begotten.  The Father from all eternity loves and most intimately knows the Son He begets, and the Holy Spirit is that power of begetting, that Bond of infinite knowledge and love, uniting Father and Son.  That is why the Holy Spirit is called Gift;  for, in and through Him, the Father and the Son give Themselves to each other in total love.  Therefore, you will understand that when God determined that the Son should become man, the Son, sent by the Father, was conceived of the Holy Spirit; and that is why, when the Son -- after His Passion and Death -- was raised to new and eternal life, we read in the Scriptures that both the Father and the Spirit raised Him.

Paul preaching the Gospel to the Jews at Perga said:

We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: 'You are my Son; today I have become your Father.'  (Acts 13:32-33)

Yet when writing his letter to the Romans (8:10-11) the same Paul said:

But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.   And if the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He Who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, Who lives in you.

And in the letter to the Hebrews (9:14) we see the Holy Spirit again uniting the Son to His Father in Jesus’ very act of dying:

Christ, through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, to cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Jesus rose from the dead because He was glorified by the eternal Spirit of glory, love and power, Who is One with the Father and the Son, the eternal Bond in the one living God.

The human flesh of Jesus had been brought to perfect Sonship through His Passion and Death, as the letter to the Hebrews (5:8-9) tells us:

Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.

Jesus, learned that obedience as Man for our sake, for our example and consolation; and His human flesh --  now glorified by the Spirit -- is the channel through which we can, in full confidence and hope, receive the divine Spirit into our poor, sinful, lives.  In the power of the Spirit, the humanity of Jesus Itself becomes a bond, uniting us sinners -- as adopted children in Jesus -- with the All-Holy God.  Jesus comes among us today offering us His Eucharistic Body and Blood in order that, by receiving His glorious Flesh and Blood, we -- who are of His flesh and blood -- might receive His most Holy Spirit, so that God’s Spirit of holiness -- abiding in Mother Church and now given to us -- might gradually form us in the likeness of our beloved Lord and Saviour as children of God.

Dear People of God, may Easter praise and gratitude fill and rejoice our minds and hearts!   Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit in holy mother Church for ever and ever!!  And may these Easter joys find abiding refreshment through the faith -- the Catholic and Christian faith -- which has been bestowed on us, which we have embraced, and to which we now re-commit ourselves with most loving and grateful hearts.  Amen.

(2023)