#Joanna Ho | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 3 months ago

Text

19th April >> Fr. Martin's Homilies/Reflections on Tonight's Mass Readings for the Easter Vigil (Inc. Luke 24:1-12): ‘They found that the stone had been rolled away’.

Easter Vigil

Gospel (Except GB & USA) Luke 24:1-12 Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?

On the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn, the women went to the tomb with the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but on entering discovered that the body of the Lord Jesus was not there. As they stood there not knowing what to think, two men in brilliant clothes suddenly appeared at their side. Terrified, the women lowered their eyes. But the two men said to them, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen. Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee: that the Son of Man had to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified, and rise again on the third day?’ And they remembered his words. When the women returned from the tomb they told all this to the Eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. The other women with them also told the apostles, but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them. Peter, however, went running to the tomb. He bent down and saw the binding cloths but nothing else; he then went back home, amazed at what had happened.

Gospel (GB) Luke 24:1-12 ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.’ And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the Apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marvelling at what had happened.

Gospel (USA) Luke 24:1–12 Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?

At daybreak on the first day of the week the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles, but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.

Homilies (6)

(i) Easter Vigil

Pope Francis proclaimed 2025 a Jubilee Year of Hope. This Jubilee Year invites us to reflect on the gospel message of hope so that we can become people of hope in our world today. Easter is the great feast of hope. It is because of Easter that we are a hopeful people. There are many reasons for despair and discouragement in our world today. The problems of the world, our country, our church, our own lives, can easily leave us disheartened. Yet the great message of that first Easter Sunday is that God is always working to bring new life out of great loss and death, God turned the awful tragedy of the killing of his own Son to the good of all humanity. In raising his Son from the dead, God was raising us all into a new hope. In raising his Son, God released a power for good into the world, a power of life, which gives us hope. We call this power the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit of the risen Lord that makes us a hopeful people. As Saint Paul says in his letter to the Romans, ‘Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’.

Yet, the gospel reading suggests that those who were around on that first Easter morning did not pick up on this hopeful spirit immediately. When the women went to the tomb and found it empty, their immediate response was to stand there ‘not knowing what to think’. It is a very human response, one that can resonate with all of us. We can get our head around the feast of Christmas; we have all had some experience of the birth of a child. What are we to make of Easter? Like the women we stand there ‘not knowing what to think’. What happened on that Easter morning never happened before. It was outside the realm of ordinary human experience. It was as if God’s world invaded our world in a way that left everyone confused, ‘not knowing what to think’. In reality, he tomb, a place of death, had become a womb, a place of new life, not just for Jesus but for all who believe in him. The sadness and despondency associated with death had given way to the hope and excitement associated with new life, not just new physical life, but a life over which death had no power.

There was a second response on that first Easter Sunday, according to the gospel reading. When the women told the eleven and those with them what they had seen and heard at the tomb of Jesus, the women’s story ‘seemed pure nonsense’ to all of them. There are many today who would consider the Easter story to be pure nonsense, a figment of people’s imagination, some kind of a wish fulfilment. This is what Jesus’ disciples wanted to happen, and so they made it happen. That attitude is prevalent in our culture and it can undermine our faith in the resurrection. Yet, this is such an inadequate response to the extraordinary event of that Easter morning. It is the killing of hope. God’s surprising ways can seem nonsense to us, but that is only because of our limited capacity to grasp all that God desires for us. As Saint Paul says in one of his letters, ‘eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love’.

There was a third response on that first Easter Sunday. According to the gospel reading, Peter ran to the tomb of Jesus to see for himself. Having seen, we are told that ‘he went back home, amazed at what had happened’. Amazement may not yet be full Easter faith but it is on the way to it. Easter should never cease to amaze us. Many of Jesus’ disciples must have asked, ‘Can anything good come out of Calvary?’ To that question God gave a resounding ‘Yes’ on Easter Sunday morning and that ‘yes’ will always amaze us and keep us hopeful. Just as Calvary showed the depth of Jesus’ love for God and for all of us, Easter Sunday showed the depth of God the Father’s love for Jesus and for all of us. God’s love could not be shut up in a tomb. The death and resurrection of Jesus proclaims a divine love that is stronger than death, a love that endures in the face of the greatest provocation, that gives us hope, especially in our own Calvary moments.

At the empty tomb, the women were asked, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here’. Where, then, is the risen Lord to be found today? He is to be found wherever people are bringing hope to others, wherever the Holy Spirit is at work in a life-giving way in people’s lives. We find him where the most vulnerable among us are cared for, where people of faith are building communities that place Jesus at the centre. We find him among those who are working to resist all the forms of violence and death that saturate our culture. In all of these ways, and many others, the spirit of Easter is alive in our parish and our world today, and, for that we give thanks this Easter night.

And/Or

(ii) Easter Vigil

It is easy to become disheartened when we look around at our world today. We sense that much of the world has become less safe. Those who deal in death can appear to be gaining the upper hand. We can get discouraged by the violence, the hatred and despair that seem to be very much in evidence. We can easily feel helpless before it all.

Today’s feast speaks a word of hope into that situation. The same forces of evil and death, of which we are so aware today, put Jesus on the cross. In raising his Son from death, God was making a powerful statement that evil and death need not have the last word. At least on this one occasion the powers of evil and death did not have their way. God’s way prevailed and God had the last word, as he brought his Son through the darkness of death into the light of a new life. God’s last word was a word of love. God’s love for his Son raised him from the dead; God’s love for humanity led God to give his Son back to us, even though he had been crucified by us. In raising his Son from the dead, God sent his Son back into the world that had rejected him. God’s persistent and faithful love ensured that the powers of death and darkness would not prevail.

The persistent and faithful love of God that conquered the dark forces of evil and death on that first Easter morning is as real today as it was then. God continues to face down the forces of death and destruction. Jesus, who was raised from the dead as a sign of the power of God’s love, is as alive today as he was on that first Easter morning. The loving power that brought new life out of death in Jerusalem two thousand years ago remains at work in our world today. When we celebrate Easter, as we do every year, we are not simply remembering a victory that belongs to the past, as some people might remember the victory of King William over King James at the battle of the Boyne. We are celebrating a victory that is ongoing. We are celebrating a king, whose loving and life-giving power at work among us is constantly bringing new life out of death, continually transforming our tombs into places of hope. Tonight’s feast invites us not just to look back to some wonderful victory in the past, but to look all around us for the signs of that victory in our own lives and in our world today. Tonight we announce, not just, ‘Christ has been raised’, but, ‘Christ is risen’.

Because Easter is a present reality and not just a past event, the Lord calls us to become Easter people. Like the women who came to the tomb on that first Easter morning, we are constantly being sent forth as witnesses to the victory of Easter. As Easter people, our whole approach to life should witness to the Easter truth that love is stronger than hatred, and life is stronger than death. As Easter people, we approach every situation, no matter how threatening or painful it might be, with hope in our hearts, because we know in faith that God who worked powerfully in the darkness of Golgotha continues to work in the same life-giving way in all our dark places today. As Easter people we keep on working to ensure that the forces of death and destruction do not have the last word, because we know that this is God’s work today, as much as it was two thousand years ago, and we want to align ourselves with that work. We want to give God the opportunity to do his life-giving work, his Easter work, in and through us. As Easter people, we show the same faithfulness to the broken as God showed to his broken Son. We are alert to the stone rejected by the builders, recognizing that it can become a cornerstone. As Easter people, we try not to allow despondency and negativity to take possession of us. When we sense that happening, we invite the risen Lord to join us on the path of life, as he joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and we ask him to pour his Spirit afresh into our hearts and to fan into a living flame once more the gift of Easter hope.

As Easter people we do not get too troubled when our plans fail to work out as we had expected, because we know that God’s plan for our lives is always more wonderful than our own plans. When the women came to the tomb on that first Easter morning they planned to anoint the body of Jesus. They knew how to anoint a dead body; they had probably done it many times before. What they discovered on that Easter morning rendered their spices and their plans redundant. God took them by surprise. They were now into unknown territory. The gospel reading says, ‘they did not know what to think’. The familiar, the expected, was shattered, and this was both disconcerting and exciting. We too can discover that our plans are really too small to contain the work that God is doing in our lives. As Paul says to the Corinthians: ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’. Easter teaches us to hold our plans lightly, so that we remain open to the surprising new work that the God of life is always doing in our midst.

We give thanks tonight in a special way for God’s life-giving work in the lives of Stuart, Fiachra and Nicola Kate who are now about to be baptized. Through baptism they will enter into the life of the risen Lord and his light, the light of Easter, will shine upon them. They are about to become Easter people. After they have been baptized, we will be given the opportunity to renew our own baptism, to reaffirm our identity as an Easter people.

And/Or

(iii) Easter Vigil

Last weekend the clocks went forward an hour. Since then we have all noticed a great stretch in the evenings. The darkness of winter is giving way to the light of Summer. The lengthening of the days can lift our spirits, especially after a tough winter. We all need light in our lives. Light brings out the colour of everything; in darkness everything looks much the same. Without light, so much of what is beautiful in nature would shrivel up and shrink. Without light, we ourselves would be only half alive. According to our first reading this evening, God’s first creative act was to bring light out of darkness. Tonight’s liturgy is the only liturgy of the church’s year that begins in darkness. Into the darkened church comes the light of the Paschal candle, symbol of the risen Christ. Eventually the light from that candle spreads throughout the church and light triumphs over the darkness. Tonight we celebrate the good news that the light of the risen Lord is stronger than all forms of darkness, the darkness of sin and failure, the darkness of death and decay.

Tonight we are keeping Vigil; we are not in a rush. Our liturgy is elaborate and extended, because we are celebrating the very core of our faith, ‘Christ is risen’. Without that core, nothing else about our faith would make sense. In the words of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, ‘If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain’. Without the resurrection we would never have understood the true meaning of Jesus’ death. It is only because of the resurrection that we can recognize the cross of Christ as, ‘the power and the wisdom of God’, in the words of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. It is the resurrection of Christ which allows us to see that the darkness which enveloped Calvary was, in reality, the revelation of God’s love for the world. The Stations of the Cross have been an important part of our Catholic tradition for many years. Recently, I came across the expression ‘The Stations of Light’. These stations are the various appearances of the risen Lord to his disciples as recorded in the gospels – his appearance to the women, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples gathered behind closed doors, to Thomas, to the disciples by the shore of the lake, to Peter. The whole of the Easter Season between now and Pentecost Sunday is an invitation to reflect on those Stations of Light. All of those appearance stories, and many others, will feature in the gospel readings of our liturgy between now and Pentecost. Without those Stations of Light the tradition of the Stations of the Cross would not have developed, because without the resurrection the cross would have been understood only as the tragic ending of the life of a great and good man.

This evening’s gospel reading for the Easter Vigil is not one of those Stations of Light in the strict sense. At the Easter Vigil we do not hear the story of one of the appearances of the risen Lord, but the prior story of the discovery of the empty tomb by the women. According to this evening’s gospel reading, when the women discovered that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb and that the tomb was empty, ‘they stood there not knowing what to think’. They had come with great devotion to anoint the body of Jesus. To their amazement the closed tomb was open and the body of Jesus was not there. What were they to think? What were they to make of it all? The voice from the empty tomb interpreted for them this extraordinary discovery. ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen’. Jesus was alive not dead; the tomb could not contain the one who was the light of the world, the resurrection and the life. Jesus embodied God’s extraordinary love for humanity; such love cannot be buried; it is too powerful to be contained by a stone, no matter how large. Such love is too full of life to be contained by death. In the words of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, ‘love never ends’. Indeed, all authentic love continues into eternity. The one who is the fullest revelation of God who is Love endures beyond death. Because Jesus endures forever, because God’s love endures forever, we, who are the objects of that enduring love, will endure forever. God’s loving relationship with us need not be broken by death; all God asks is that we open ourselves to his love.

Because Jesus is risen, not only are we destined to live beyond death, but resurrection can happen in our lives here and now. As we struggle daily with suffering, weakness, and death in its various forms, we can experience the power of the risen Lord. With Saint Paul, we can say, ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’. The risen Lord journeys with us as he journeyed with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. As he did for those two disciples, he can transform all our sad and tragic stories into stories of hope and new life. We always walk in the light of the risen Lord’s presence. We are an Easter people, not just tonight, but every night, every day of our lives.

And/Or

(iv) Easter Vigil

There was something quite dramatic about the beginning of our liturgy this evening. We enter a dark church with just the light of the Easter Candle. Gradually the light from the Easter Candle spreads throughout the church and in the light of our candles the Easter Hymn of Praise is sung. That dramatic entrance rite before the Liturgy of the Word begins is fitting on a night when we celebrate a drama of momentous proportions. Tonight we are celebrating God’s drama in raising his Son from the dead on that first Easter morning. We are here this evening because we feel that we have all been caught up into that drama. What God did on that first Easter morning has touched all of our lives. That is why we entered our darkened church ago with a large and decorative candle. We recognize that the light of that first Easter Sunday has continued to shine down through the centuries and is shining upon us tonight. It is the light of a life that is stronger than death and the light of a love that is stronger than hatred and sin. This is the light of God which the deepest darkness cannot quench. Because of what happened on that first Easter morning we can say, in the words of Saint John, ‘the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it’, and we can say with Saint Paul, ‘where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more’.

That is why Easter is such a hopeful feast and why we decorate our churches with beautiful flowers after the barrenness of Lent. It is because of Easter that we are a hopeful people, and we cannot be otherwise. There are many reasons for despair in our world today. The problems of the world, the problems of our country, the problems of our church, even the problems of our own lives, can seem beyond any solution and can very easily leave us disheartened. Yet the great lesson of the first Easter Sunday is that God can bring new life out of death, God can turn the awful tragedy of the killing of his own Son to good, the good of all humanity. In raising his Son from the dead, God released a power for good into the world, a power of life. We call this power the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit which allows us to say with Saint Paul, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’. We can say that not only as individuals but as a community of faith, ‘we can do all things through him who strengthens us’. That is the dynamism of this feast of Easter which we are invited to imbibe. This is the Easter air we are invited to keep on breathing.

Yet, the gospel reading this evening suggests that those who were around on that first Easter morning did not pick up on this hopeful spirit immediately. I am struck by the three different reactions to the events of the first Easter Sunday that are presented in our gospel reading. It is said of the women, those faithful women, that when they went to the tomb on that first Easter morning, they stood there ‘not knowing what to think’. It seems to me a very human reaction, one that, perhaps, resonates with all of us. We can get our head around the feast of Christmas easily enough; we have all had some experience of the birth of a child. But, what are we to make of Easter? Like the women we stand there ‘not knowing what to think’. Could you blame the women? Could you blame us? What happened on that Easter morning never happened before. It was outside the realm of ordinary human experience. It was as if God’s world invaded our world in a way that left everyone confused, ‘not knowing what to think’. This was God’s extraordinary surprise. Death has finally been defeated, not just for Jesus but for all of us who open ourselves in faith to this risen Lord. Who could have seen that coming?

There was a second response to those events mentioned in the gospel reading. When the women told the eleven and those who were with them what they had seen and heard at the tomb of Jesus, the gospel reading says that the women’s story ‘seemed pure nonsense’ to the eleven male disciples and they did not believe the women. There are many today who would consider the Easter story to be pure nonsense, a figment of people’s imagination, some kind of a wish fulfilment. This is what Jesus’ disciples wanted to happen, so they made it happen. That attitude is prevalent in our culture and it can undermine our faith in the resurrection. Yet, this is such an inadequate response to the extraordinary event of that Easter morning. It is saying, ‘because we cannot fully understand this, it must be nonsense’.

There is a third response mentioned in the gospel reading. Peter responded to the women’s story in a different way to the other ten disciples. He ran to the tomb of Jesus to see for himself. Having seen, we are told that ‘he went back home, amazed at what had happened’. Amazement is not yet Easter faith but it is on the way to it. Indeed, it remains an essential part of Easter faith. Easter should never cease to amaze us. Nathanael once said, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Many of Jesus’ disciples must have asked despairingly, ‘Can anything good come out of Golgotha?’ To that question God gave a resounding ‘Yes’ on Easter Sunday morning and that ‘yes’ will always amaze us. Easter is such an amazing feast that the church gives us seven weeks to reflect on it, up until Pentecost Sunday. This is the Season of Easter. During Lent many of you may have done the Stations of the Cross. During this Season of Easter, we travel what has come to be called the Stations of Light, those gospel texts which tell the story of the many appearances of the risen Lord to his disciples. This is the hopeful journey we are being invited to enter up these coming seven weeks.

And/Or

(v) Easter Vigil

Easter is the most important feast of the Christian calendar, because it is the resurrection of Jesus that gives meaning to everything else that we believe. Saint Paul put it very succinctly, ‘if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain’. The question that is addressed to the three women from the empty tomb in the gospel reading captures the essence of this feast, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is living?’ They were being told the extraordinary news that Jesus who had been put to death in a brutal way, who had been buried in a tomb, was no longer dead and buried but living. ‘He is not here; he is risen��. He is not in the tomb where you expected to find him. He is alive with a new quality of life, different to the life he had before he was crucified. There is no death at the end of this new life; it endures forever. As Saint Paul says in tonight’s reading, ‘Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead will never die again. Death has no power over him any more’. Those words were spoken by someone who saw the risen Lord, to whom the risen Lord appeared.

‘Why look among the dead for someone who is living?’ Jesus is living with the life of God. That is the core of our faith. God’s undying love for Jesus swept death aside and brought him through death into a glorious life. I often think of Jesus’ death on the cross as Jesus’ ‘yes’ to God and to all of humanity. Jesus said such a total ‘yes’ to the mission that God gave him on behalf of us all that he was prepared to lose everything rather than be unfaithful to that mission of love. Just as Jesus’ crucifixion was his ‘yes’ to God and to all of humanity, his resurrection from the dead was God the Father’s ‘yes’ to his Son and to all of humanity. In raising his Son from the dead, God was affirming all that Jesus said and did. God was also affirming all of us, including those who had put his Son to death. In raising his Son from the dead, God was giving his Son back to the human race that had crucified him. Jesus’ death revealed his faithfulness to God and to all of us. His resurrection reveals God the Father’s faithfulness to Jesus and to all of us. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son and God continued to give his Son to us even after he had been put to death. He now gives his Son to us as our living Lord, to be our companion on our life’s journey.

That alone would make the resurrection of Jesus and the feast of Easter extraordinary good news, but there is even more to the feast of Easter, because this feast is not just about Jesus it is about all of us. Saint Paul says in tonight’s reading, ‘If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection’. In other words, what God has done for Jesus, God will do for all of us who turn to the risen Lord in faith. Just as the tomb did not claim Jesus, the tomb will not claim us either. The risen, living, Lord is with us in this earthly life, and our ultimate destiny is to be with him in eternity. The Lord, is with us now, in the same way he was with the two sorrowful disciples on the road to Emmaus. He journeyed with them as their companion, opening up the Scriptures for them, making himself present to them in the breaking of bread, the Eucharist. He went on to pour the Spirit of his risen life, the Holy Spirit, into their hearts and the hearts of the other disciples. The risen Lord is with all of us today, in all of these ways, as our daily companion, through his word, through the Eucharist and the other sacraments, through the Holy Spirit. Easter makes all this possible. The Lord’s communion with us in this life is something wonderful. Yet, it is only a foretaste of that full communion which we are destined to enjoy with him beyond this earthly life. This future communion with the Lord is beyond our ability to grasp or speak about, because, as Saint Paul, ‘eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’.

So much flows from the Lord’s resurrection from the dead, which is why this Easter night is the highpoint of the church’s year. Easter is such good news that it can be hard to take it in, to believe in it. We can have sympathy for the disciples in tonight’s gospel reading when they dismissed the women’s story of what they had seen and heard at Jesus’ tomb as ‘pure nonsense’. It is more Peter’s reaction that we need to pick up on. According to the gospel reading, when he saw the empty tomb for himself, he ‘went back, amazed at what happened’. This Easter night, we allow ourselves to be amazed again at the God of surprises that Easter reveals, God our heavenly Father who is always at work surprising new life out of every experience of death. We are now about to celebrate the baptism of Niall. The light of Easter, the light of the risen Lord, will shine upon his young life in a very special way this night.

And/Or

(vi) Easter Vigil

A few minutes ago, we entered a church that was more or less completely dark. The only light came from the light of the Easter candle. Gradually that light spread as we all lit our candles from the Easter Candle. Jesus declared, ‘I am the light of the world’ and he promised that those who follow him would never walk in darkness but would have the light of life. The lighting of the Easter candle and the spreading of light from the candle expresses that declaration and promise of Jesus in a very dramatic way. The feast of Easter is a feast of light. According to tonight’s gospel reading, ‘On the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn, the women went to the tomb with the spices they had prepared’. There is a suggestion that the darkness of Good Friday was already beginning to lift – ‘at the first sign of dawn’. The sun rising at dawn can speak to us of the rising of God’s Son on Easter Sunday morning, the coming of God’s light through the risen Jesus. The Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, our Saturday. What the gospel reading calls ‘the first day of the week’ is our Sunday. If every sunrise can speak to us of Easter, even more so does every Sunday speak to us of Easter. On Sunday we celebrate in a special way the good news that the light of God’s love shines through the risen Jesus, a light darkness cannot overcome. That is why from the earliest days the church gathered to celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday.

We meet the risen Lord in a special way in the setting of the Sunday Eucharist. We meet him in many other places too. The three women in tonight’s gospel reading go to the tomb bringing spices, to anoint the body of Jesus. They wanted to ensure that Jesus would have a dignified burial, even if he had an undignified death. Having been brutally put to death by a group of men, Jesus’ body would be honoured by this group of women. It was in the exercise of this important work of mercy that the women encountered the risen Lord. That is often how we meet the risen Lord too. Whenever we perform a work of mercy for someone, some act of loving kindness, we meet the Lord or, more accurately, the Lord meets us. Many people regularly make the kind of journey that the women made in today’s gospel reading. They set out on a journey with the equivalent of the women’s spices to anoint someone with their loving service. Whenever we do that, the Lord comes to meet us. We are opening yourself up to the same good news that the women heard on that first Easter Sunday. The light of the risen Lord shines upon us.

The spirit of loving service that the women displayed is the spirit of the risen Lord. Where do we find the risen Lord today? The women discovered that they were looking for Jesus in the wrong place. He was not to be found in the tomb, in the place of death. The two heavenly messengers asked the women, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here’. The risen Lord is to be found where there is life, where the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God’s enduring love, is at work in a life-giving way. We find him where the weakest and most vulnerable among us are cared for with tenderness and compassion. We find him where women and men of faith are building communities that place Christ at the centre. We find him where people proclaim the truth of the gospel message by their lives even at great cost to themselves. We find him among those who are working to resist all the forms of violence and death that saturate our culture. We find him where children are helped to come to know the risen Lord as their friend, where they have an experience of his presence through the selfless love of others. Saint Paul spoke of the fruit of the Holy Spirit as ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’. We find the risen Lord wherever that fruit is to be found in a human life, in human relationships. The feast of Easter declares that the Lord, who was crucified because of his loving service of us all, is alive among us, inspiring us to serve one another in love as he served us.

When the women saw the empty tomb first, the gospel says ‘they stood there not knowing what to think’. However, having heard the proclamation from the two heavenly messengers, they had a hopeful story to tell. Yet, when they told this story to the apostles, the gospel says, ‘this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense’. Perhaps it is harder to believe in the good news of Easter than the good news of Christmas. It is only when the risen Lord appeared to the apostles and touched their lives personally, that they realized the women’s story was not nonsense. The risen Lord wants to touch each of our lives. If we allow him to do so, then we too will realize that the Easter story, far from being nonsense, casts a marvellous light which allows us to see everything else, including death itself, with hopeful eyes.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

5 notes · View notes