My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, on this
glorious day let us look at one verse in our Gospel passage which speaks
volumes about our Risen Lord.
You heard how John and Peter ran to the tomb
and how John glanced inside and saw that there was no corpse there:
Stooping
to look in, he saw the linen cloths there but he did not go in.
Next
Peter came up and, characteristically, went straight into the empty tomb and,
we are told:
He
saw the linen cloths there, and the face cloth which had been on Jesus' head,
not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.
Now
Peter, an older, and much more experienced and emotionally-developed man than
John, was the disciple who loved Jesus most, which explains his
immediate entrance into the tomb. What
he saw caused him thoughts so intensely personal that he did not open
his mouth to chat with, indeed not even to comment to, his younger companion,
fellow-disciple though he was; no, Peter just slowly left the tomb and walked
away quietly, lost in deep, absorbing, thought: not about where
Jesus might be at that moment, not about how, in what manner, had
He risen to life again and left the tomb, those facts were ‘un-knowables. But, what was much more immediately intriguing
for Peter (earthly head of the new-born Church) was why had his Lord so deliberately
folded the face-cloth which had been placed around His head to preserve His
dignity – even though that of a corpse -- by preventing His jaw from sagging in
death? Why had Jesus so
lovingly rolled up what He had just so decisively removed from His head? This
commanded Peter’s attention, because it determined Peter’s future role in
Jesus’ Church.
Jesus had, by that simple, as it were 'personal toilet' act, deliberately intended to show that His mouth was free in
order that His disciples could be absolutely certain about the fact that He was
now able to continue, and bring to fulfilment, His mission of proclaiming the
truth for which His Father had sent Him as Man on earth to save mankind.
Jesus
had, at His trial, told Pilate (John 18:37):
For
this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have
come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My
voice.
Never
again would He be silenced; and His so lovingly detaching and deliberately folding
the face-cloth from His head and mouth was His first symbolic-statement
on rising from the dead, that His faithful disciples, throughout the ages,
would continue to proclaim HIS truth, under the guidance and protection
of HIS Spirit, to all mankind, in and through His Church!
Be sure of this, dear People of God, there can be bad popes, infamous clerical figure-heads – bishops, priests, religious, scholars, able to write best-selling books or address crowds of followers – yet, despite all such possible dangers to Jesus’ Church, JESUS’ RISING, and His deliberately final gesture -- taking-off and carefully folding the head cloth -- signified ‘to all who are of the truth’ that His mouth is now perennially free to proclaim both His saving truth for all sinners, and His beatific truth about His heavenly Father, in Mother Church; a glorious work that He does by His most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love, sacramentally one with all who love, and live for, Him Who was sent, by His Father for their salvation.
