One of the reasons many people find Christ’s resurrection incomprehensible is that, living in a highly reductive culture, it is thought to be something merely to be believed rather than something to be lived. Christ rising from the dead should never be reduced to merely another fact in the world. Resurrection is a mode of being more than it is a belief.
In baptism, you died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life. As our reading from Colossians clearly states: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”1 By looking at your life, could others tell this?
Especially for those, like me, who were baptized as adults, is your new life different from your old life? Are you still conformed to this age, or has the Holy Spirit transformed your mind and your heart?
In few moments, you will renew your baptismal covenant with God. Preparation for this renewal is what Lent is for. This is the moment you were to be preparing for these past six weeks. Are you prepared? Are you ready to re-commit to living resurrection?
Easter is not about remembering an event that happened a long time ago in a land far away. It is not a historical commemoration. It is a commitment, a recommitment, a renewal. Who knows, maybe even a transformation?
As those resurrected, we seek what is above even as we live day-to-day. Far from calling us to evade and avoid the world, life in Christ calls us to a deep engagement with the world. It calls on each of us to testify that Jesus Christ “is the one appointed by God.”2
In the passage from Saint John’s Gospel, nobody sees the risen Lord. All that is revealed to them is an empty tomb in which they find rolled up burial cloths in one place and the cloth that covered Jesus’ head across the chamber.
Hence, Mary Magdalene, Peter and John (who is the disciple whom Jesus loved) are puzzled. “For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”3 Nearly 2,000 years later, it is still difficult to understand what it means that Christ rose from the dead.
If you remember the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we also heard from Saint John’s Gospel. We heard about Jesus’ raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus told His disciples that they were heading back to Judea upon learning that His friend had died, the reaction was, “Are you kidding me? We left there because they were going to kill you.” It was Thomas, sadly tagged as “doubting Thomas,” who, as Jesus pointed them southward, said, “Let us go die with him.”4
It may be easier to comprehend what it means to die with Christ than it is to grasp what it means to live in Him. It stands as a near certainty that Lazarus’ life was never the same after the Lord raised him from the dead. In like manner, our life, after Christ raised us from the waters of baptism should be different.
As to their discovery of the empty tomb prior to having any direct encounter with the Risen Lord, there were various possibilities as to why the tomb was empty. Mary Magadelene points to the most obvious one: someone has taken Jesus’ body and put elsewhere. From then until now, the question, Where is Christ? becomes perennial.
If Christ had not died, had not been raised, did not ascend, and did not send the Holy Spirit, then there would be no possibility of encountering Him today. The Eucharist is the most profound encounter with the Risen Christ. This is why if you really grasped what happens in the Eucharistic sacrifice, no one could keep you away from Mass.
Christ is not content merely to be close to you. He wants to be in you to live through you. It is by means of the sacraments, the Masterworks of the Holy Spirit, that He can do this- if you let Him, if you want Him to. Do you want Him to? That is the question on verge of renewing your baptismal commitment.
Where is Christ today? It is both His desire and His intent to be made present by His Body, the Church, comprised of those who eat His flesh and drink His blood. Mass comes from the Latin missa. Missa indicates, not being dismissed, but being sent. It is also related to missio, or mission. At the end of each Mass, we are sent forth on a mission.
This sending is a big part of what the makes the Church apostolic. An apostle, in Greek, is one who is sent. Our mission? Having encountered and received the Risen Lord in the Eucharist, sent forth to make Him present wherever you go.
If the Eucharist is the primary place to encounter the Risen Lord, then the only irrefutable proof that He is risen and, therefore, that the bread and wine are His body and blood, are the lives of those who partake.
Easter is about resurrection, transformation, conversion, about life coming for death. It’s springtime and we see this now happening everywhere you look. Today, Resurrection Sunday, let us go forth to proclaim that Christ is risen! He is truly risen from the dead. Therefore, everyone who believes in Him, “will receive forgiveness of sins through His name.”5
1 Colossians 1:3.↩
2 Acts 10:42.↩
3 John 20:9.↩
4 John 11:16.↩
5 Acts 10:43.↩
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