Easter 2012

Christ is risen! We should get a smile on our face when we hear this Gospel of the two disciples running to the tomb and the one outrunning the other. What confusion they had that day. They had seen the burial of their Master and thought Him dead forever. Now they begin to get news, bit by bit, that His body is gone. They don't yet understand, but they begin to have hope that something really incredible has happened. They begin to reflect on what He had told them.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us that Jesus was not visible to everyone, but to those who believed. His chosen followers began to be able to understand what had happened by looking at the Prophets and the writing of the Jewish Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

On this day of Resurrection we are invited to see Jesus as our risen Lord and to come to understand Him more and more by understanding the Prophets and the writings of the Jewish Scriptures. The more we understand the Old Testament, the more we can understand Jesus and the New Testament.

He is Risen! He is truly Risen! We can understand this when we begin to understand more completely how the Prophet Isaiah was able to see that one person could bear the sins of us all. We can understand more and we read the Psalms and see in them a clear movement in the direction of belief that there is life after this life.

The Letter to the Colossians is clear that we must have a new way of thinking in order to understand Christ. It is not easy to accept so much on faith, yet it is possible if we only put ourselves at the disposal of God.

For the early Christians, the empty tomb became the symbol of life and of belief--that tomb in which the body of Jesus no longer rested in death. Death has now lost all of its meaning. Instead of the end, death becomes the door to new life. We can come to look forward to death. We can speak to those who have gone before us in death.

Today, my sisters and brothers, we celebrate the triumph of life over death, the triumph of light over darkness and the joy of Christ's rising from the dead for us. Let us rejoice and be glad in Him. Alleluia!