Easter
Sunday
2018
(Acts 10:34, 37-43;
Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9)
God raised (Jesus) on the third day and granted that
He be visible to us.
Those words
of St. Peter are the culmination of an age-long awareness and expectation in
Israel, where the third day was of special significance for Jewish piety.
In the book of Genesis we are told that Abraham, in obedience to the voice of
God, was taking his only son Isaac to offer him in sacrifice to the Lord on the
mount which the Lord would show him. Sorrowing father and innocent,
unknowing son, were journeying on, together with some servants, when:
On the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the
place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the
donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to
you."
(Genesis 22:4-5)
On the
third day Abraham had observed Mount Moriah where he believed his son had to be
sacrificed to the Lord; in the event, however, it turned out to be the mount
where the son was not only restored unharmed to his father, but restored as the
sign of God’s enduring promise of blessing for Abraham and God’s chosen people
(Gen. 22:16-17):
Because you have not withheld your only son – blessing
I will bless you and multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as
the sand on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their
enemies.
Again, in
the prophecy of Hosea (6:1-3) there is consolation for sinful, suffering,
Israel:
Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn,
but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After
two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may
live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the
LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us
like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.
You can
understand, therefore, what Easter comfort and joy the disciples experienced on
recalling such texts after having found the empty tomb and seen the Risen
Lord! The ultimate bearer of God’s promise, Jesus Whom they had known and
loved, had risen on the third day: death could not hold Him! Satan had
been defeated, and his power over mankind forever broken and shattered!!
That is why Peter could so confidently proclaim to Cornelius and his family
whom, under the command of the Holy Spirit, he was about to baptise (Acts
10:39-42):
We are witnesses of all things which He did both in
the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, Whom they killed by hanging on a
tree. Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to
all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and
drank with Him after He arose from the dead. And He commanded us to
preach to the people, and to testify that it is He Who was ordained by God to
be Judge of the living and the dead.
Let us now
turn to our reading from St. Paul and allow him to guide our thoughts:
If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is
above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is
above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is
hidden with Christ in God.
Paul thus
extends this wondrous event of Jesus’ rising from the dead to include us:
You have died (with Christ), and your life is hidden
with Christ in God.
How can he
say that we died with Christ? Because Christ died as Lord and Saviour of
all mankind; though sinless, He died a sinner’s death for our sake and on our
behalf. Moreover, when He had died to sin, what chance was there that
anyone else could ever overcome the power and the horror of death which is the
sting in the tail of sin? When He died on Good Friday all our hopes
seemed to die with Him; and on Holy Saturday His disciples experienced only the
hopelessness, helplessness, and indeed the emptiness of our native, sinful,
condition.
But now,
Peter and Paul, together with all the apostles, bear witness that God has
raised Jesus from the dead; and, since He is risen, Paul says, you -- you
who believe in Him and in the God Who raised Him -- you too are risen
with Him since you have the opportunity of sharing in His new, risen, Life: because
of your faith in Him you are no longer subject to the frustrations
and ultimate horror of earthly death, no longer bound by sin in your native
pride and self-solicitude:
“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is
your victory?" The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is
the Law. But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ. (1
Corinthians 15:55-58)
But Paul
also said that we too are seated with Christ at the right hand of God.
Now, we firmly believe that Jesus, the Holy One of God, is seated at the right
hand of the Father, and we also believe that He continually intercedes for us;
but how are we seated with Him at the right hand of the Father?
The answer
is that we are not, of course, physically seated with Him now in heaven;
nevertheless, heaven is where the vital powers of our spiritual life originate
and whither they are leading us. Jesus is physically, in His glorious
humanity -- our humanity received without sin from Mary and now glorified as
Jesus’ Personal humanity in heaven -- at the right hand of the Father.
Moreover, He is also physically with us -- in a sacramental manner -- in the
Eucharist, whereby He draws us up, into Himself through the Spirit. Our
heavenly food -- the driving force of supernatural life within us -- is the
living Body of the One seated at the right hand of the Father in glory; and the
more we live by that food, the more we live by His Gifted Spirit, the more He
draws us closer and more intimately into Himself. For the sake of all mankind
He has taken our humanity into glory: none are barred from sharing His glory by
reason of their humanity.
However, we
have yet surer basis for hope than the mere fact that our human nature is no
longer barred from heaven: for each of us has been called, drawn to Jesus --
personally and individually -- by the Father Himself, as Jesus most explicitly
said:
No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me
draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)
And so,
having obediently answered the Father’s call, we have allowed ourselves to be
drawn by the Father to Jesus, and we have come to believe in Jesus as the Son
of God made man; and, having been baptised into Him as our Lord and Saviour, we
have now been endowed with, and justified by, His Gift of the Holy Spirit, as
St. Paul tells us:
Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called;
whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also
glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who
can be against us? (Rom. 8:30-31)
Today Jesus
is risen and we are potentially, no more than that, we who have faith in Him
are already initially glorified in Him: for we who receive the Body and
Blood of the Risen Lord in true faith are now assured that we are being
actually guided by the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God, towards heaven
– as both our destiny and our home -- because our food of life, the Eucharist
is, sacramentally, the very same Body which is Jesus’ in heaven; and thus God’s
Gift of the Holy Spirit, bestowed on us through the Eucharist, is now at work
forming us ever more in Jesus’ likeness, so that we -- as living members, in
Spirit and Truth, of His Mystical Body on earth -- might ultimately be able to
share in the eternal glory which is His, in the Spirit, before His Father in
heaven.
For your life is hidden with Christ in God. When
Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory.
The Father
has received His Beloved Son back and, living in the Father’s heavenly
presence, His Son is the bearer of an eternal promise, that where He is, we --
who through faith and baptism are members of His mystical Body -- may be:
Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may
be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me;
for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)
Such is,
indeed, the Lord Jesus’ prayer today in our regard; and what hope of glory and
fulfilment it holds out for us in the future, what joy and peace it can bring
us now, if we pray in unison with Jesus, and live in a way that makes
such a prayer credibly ours! Consequently, we who entertain such hopes
surely cannot allow ourselves to live a life of worldly obsession, constantly
searching and striving for what the world promises, whilst largely forgetting
our heavenly vocation and future. Even Jesus’ prayer that we ‘may be with
Him where He is’ can only bear effect in the lives of those who are open to,
and in tune with, such a prayer; that is, in the lives of those who seek
communication and communion with Him more seriously and lovingly than they
search for earthly success, earthly rewards, human sympathy and human
companionship. And so, let us never forget St. Paul’s admonition in
today’s readings:
If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above,
not of what is on earth.
Let us,
dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, follow such advice in the spirit of
today’s wonderful celebration, taking very much to heart the words of the
prophet Nehemiah:
Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send
portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our
LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10)
