Responses to the Resurrection, Easter Monday, April 21, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Easter Monday
April 21, 2014
Acts 2:14.22-33, Ps 16, Mt 28:8-15

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today on this beautiful Easter Monday, we encounter a huge contrast in the readings about how to respond to Jesus’ resurrection. We can look first at how the chief priests and the elders of the people responded. They responded with denial. It wasn’t enough for them to use betrayal to arrest him, illegality to try him, slander to accuse him before Pilate and malice to whip up the crowd to choose a murderer Barabbas over him. Now when the guards they had requested be placed at the tomb return to them to tell them what happened during the night, that angels appeared, that there was a burst of light, that the stone was rolled back, that Jesus wasn’t there but his garments were left, they reacted once again with evil. They bribed the guards to lie, to say that while they were asleep Jesus’ disciples came and stole his body and somehow carried him naked while the Sabbath was still occurring to some other part of the city. Of course if they were asleep, they would have had no idea what happened to Jesus’ body, but once people are given to living a lie because it’s more convenient, they’ll accept anything. There are still many who want to deny the reality of the resurrection but as St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote, if the Resurrection didn’t happen, then the fact that a bunch of barely literate fishermen and nobodies from Galilee could convince so many down-to-earth people throughout the ancient world falsely that it did and all be willing to lay down their lives for that invented reality would be a greater miracle than the miracle of the Resurrection itself!
• There are some who deny the resurrection saying that Jesus had just risen from the dead in disciples’ hearts, as a thing of faith. St. Paul responded very sharply to these ideas that were prevalent in ancient Corinth. If Christ didn’t rise from the dead then our faith is worthless. It’s all based on a lie. There are others who, while not denying the fact of the resurrection, want to deny its consequences. They don’t want to live with the Risen Jesus. They choose to remain down in the dumps. They choose not to seek the things that are above with the Risen and living Jesus, instead choosing the things of sin and death. We need to be alert to these signs even in ourselves, that there are parts of us that want to deny the power of Jesus’ resurrection because we prefer not to be transformed in the dramatic way that the resurrection transformed Jesus’ dead body!
• The type of response that God wants us to have to Jesus’ resurrection we see in the women today, in St. Peter, and in St. Anselm, whom the Church remembers today in a special way. Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Clopas ran away from the empty tomb both “fearful and overjoyed,” fearful because they had never confronted a reality like that and overjoyed because they sensed that it meant that Jesus had in fact risen. They were running away from the tomb and toward the apostles because they were obviously excited and couldn’t wait to share the news. Jesus surprises them on the journey and greets them. Their first reaction was humbly to adore him, falling down at his feet. St. Matthew says they embraced his feet; St. John will tell us tomorrow that Jesus will tell Mary not to embrace his feet, a conflict that seems to be able to be resolved more easily if Jesus allowed them to embrace him for a short time before reminding them that they had a mission: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there I will see them.” And off they went!
• We see one of those brothers 50 days later telling others about Jesus’ resurrection. St. Peter on Pentecost bluntly told the crowds, that Jesus of Nazareth “delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it. … God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses.” That’s what’s supposed to happen. Just as Jesus from the Paschal Candle lit our tapers and we lit others’ tapers during the Easter Vigil, so Jesus announces to us the resurrection and then we’re called to tell others, and they in turn are called to share that good news in a chain of love stretching all the way back to this morning’s Gospel scene.
• One who was involved in this holy chain is St. Anselm, a Doctor of the Church who died 905 years ago today. As a Benedictine monk, Abbot of Bec,  Archbishop of Canterbury and a prodigious writer, he worked to spread faith and love of Jesus, to help people center their lives on the reality of Jesus’ incarnation and his passion, death, resurrection and ascension. “Doctor” means “learned,” but it’s far more than a degree and title: those who have “learned” are supposed to pass on the gift of their learning to others, something he never ceased doing. But it’s not a thing fundamentally of educational level. Though Anselm is one of the great minds in the history of the Church, Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas and Peter were not learned in this world’s eyes, but they, too, having been taught by Christ went forward as his witnesses.
• In response to those who deny the resurrection, Christ is calling all of us to affirm it, to be witnesses to the resurrection, not just as an historical fact that passes every historical tests of common sense, but as a lived reality, because people see in us those who live a truly redeemed life. And the way we enter more deeply into that risen life is here in Holy Communion, where we receive the Risen body and blood of Jesus. As we prepare not only to drop down on our knees and pay him homage, not only to grasp his feet but receive him within so that his body and blood will go from our brains to our toes, we ask him to strengthen us with the joy of this encounter that we, like the two Marys, Peter and Anselm, will run to tell others this good news. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Alleluia!

The readings for today’s Mass were: