Risen and Hidden with Christ in God, Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Easter Sunday
April 12, 2020
Acts 10:34.37-43, Ps 118, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

To listen to an audio recording of today’s Mass, please click below:

The following text guided today’s homily: 

This Easter has been a long time coming! Few would have foreseen, as we packed into pews on Ash Wednesday, the Lent we had in store: that our fast would become an involuntary one from the Living Bread, that our almsgiving would feature social distancing from those in need, and that our prayer would occur mostly in the domestic church and in cyberspace. We have all had an extended Lenten meditation on death, on how we are dust and unto dust will return, not knowing the day or the hour when the earthly end will come. We have all been led into the desert, separated from the distractions of sports, late night shows, parties, outside commitments, even face-to-face contact with friends, neighbors and extended family. And many of us have had an experience like St. Mary Magadalene expected she’d find on Easter morning, with our Churches, tabernacles, and confessionals locked as if large stones were rolled before them, wondering who will open them for us. It’s a Lent that we will never forget.

But if Lent is meant to prepare us for Easter — not just what Easter symbolizes, but the death-and-life reality it effects — then perhaps this Lent might prove to be, for all its vicissitudes and sufferings, one of the most spiritually fruitful of our lives.

What we celebrate on Easter is far more than a liturgical rite. It’s more than the commemoration of something that happened one early Sunday morning. It is the most consequential event in the history of the world. It is the triumph of resurrection over crucifixion, life over death, light over darkness, love over hatred, faith over fear.

It is a huge disappointment that we are not able to celebrate this victory together in packed Churches with our family, friends, and fellow Catholics entering sacramentally into the passion, death and resurrection we commemorate and proclaim. But even if the whole Church is not able to celebrate Easter together liturgically, even if all those who are hungry and thirsty are not able to receive Jesus’ risen body and blood in holy Communion, even if we are not able to welcome into the Church as scheduled the new Catholics who have been preparing through baptism to enter into Jesus’ death and resurrection, the reality of what we memorialize on Easter remains.

And the transformation that Christ’s resurrection is supposed to bring about in us ought to be truly profound, like what happened in the first disciples of Jesus that early Sunday morning. To call Mary Magdalene, Peter John and the rest of his disciples dejected, lost and profoundly saddened only begins to describe what they were going through. Their whole universe had been turned upside down. Not only had they witnessed Jesus, their friend, brutally tortured and massacred, stripped and nailed to a cross as a common criminal, but they also had believed that he was the long-awaited Messiah, that he was God. Therefore, not only were they mourning the death of a loved one — which is already hard enough, as any of us who have lost a loved one recognize — but they were also trying to come to grips with whether God indeed had died and whether their friend, in whom they trusted, was, despite all his gifts, ultimately an imposter. Even though he had three times announced what would occur, and they should have been counting down the seconds to the “third day” on which he said he would be raised, they remained disheartened and disconsolate.

When Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary, the mother of James, went to the tomb on Sunday morning, they were going reverently to anoint Jesus’ corpse. Little did they realize what a great metamorphosis had already occurred and what a great personal transformation awaited them. The stone had already been rolled away. The tomb was empty. A dazzling angel told them that Jesus had been raised. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the Garden and filled her with exhilarating goose bumps when he called her name! He appeared to the ten in the Upper Room, filled them with his joy and peace, and gave them his own mission. He appeared to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus and made their hearts burn as he described how the Son of Man’s cruxifixion was not a contradiction but a confirmation of the messianic prophecies, and then revealed himself to them in the “breaking of the bread.” Their whole universe, which had been turned upside down two days before, was now turnedright-side up again. And what incredible joy must have raced through all the cells of their body, the type of joy to which words cannot even do justice! Everything for them changed … forever. The resurrection was the answer to their questions, the resolution to their doubts, the definitive peace to their angst, the joy to their sadness, God’s ultimate response to the mystery of suffering and death.  Life in general — and their life in particular — not only was no longer a tragedy; their life now had immeasurable meaning. They were the disciples and intimate friends of the one who had conquered even sin and death — and they were now empowered and emboldened by him to take that greatest news ever told to the ends of the earth. No amount of disdain, threats, persecutions, torture or even death could dissuade them, because the resurrection taught them, unmistakably and unforgettably, that the Lord of Life wins and makes good on his promises.

Jesus wants to bring about a similar revolution in us today. He wants to give us the same joy he gave his first disciples. He who is the “Resurrection and the Life” wants us to experience in the present the full meaning of that resurrection and that life, but for that to happen, we have to recognize and structure our lives in correspondence to the fact that Jesus truly is alive. Almost every Christian knows that Jesus is alive theoretically, but many Christians do not behave as if Jesus is alive practically. We can treat Jesus like a distant relative, someone whom we respect and care for, but whom for the most part in our day-to-day lives we ignore. Or we can treat him like our best high school teacher, who has obviously had an impact in making us the people we are today, but who is no longer practically involved in guiding our decision making. Or we can treat Jesus like a good doctor, to whom we go when we have problems, but, outside of those times, with whom we really have no relationship at all. The point is this: while few Christians treat the Risen Jesus as if he is dead, many treat him as if he is barely alive. Today, on this Easter, Jesus wants to change that. He came, as he himself said, “so that [we] might have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10), but for us to come fully alive, we need first to allow Jesus to become fully alive in us. We need to rise with him, and live a resurrected life with him! St. Paul talks about this in his Letter to the Romans, which the Church hears at the Easter Vigil: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, too, [must] live in newness of life. … Consequently you too must think of yourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:4,11). We need to stop treating Jesus as a concept, or as someone we turn to at our convenience — or only at times of great inconvenience — but rather base our whole lives on him. For the first disciples, the joy of that first Easter didn’t end the day after Easter, because they knew that Jesus, risen from the dead, would be with them “until the end of time” (Mt 28:20). And they structured their whole lives on a deep personal relationship with the Risen Jesus, grounding all of the aspects of their lives on the basis of this living communion of love. This is even more important for us — as disciples of Jesus, called to proclaim him to the world — at this time of the Covid-19 pandemic.

How is our life supposed to change? Today we can ponder five different ways.

The fact of Jesus’ triumph should first make us courageous. We see the dramatic metamorphosis the resurrection had on the apostles, changing them from those who would leave the Cenacle on Holy Thursday to betray and abandon Jesus to those who would leave the same room 53 days later intrepidly to bear witness to him. When the same Sanhedrin who had gotten Jesus crucified had Peter and John scourged and had instructed them never to speak again about Jesus, they rejoiced at suffering on account of Jesus’ name and said they could not but speak of what they have seen and heard. They were undaunted because they realized that even should they be crucified like Jesus, they, like Jesus, would be raised. They were no longer afraid of death or suffering. The resurrection of Jesus should fill us with similar courage not just in the face of the coronavirus but in general.

The second great consequence of Jesus’ resurrection is a vibrant faith in eternal life. Each of us can say with Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives!” (Job 19:25). Each of us can echo St. Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? … God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Cor 15:55-57). At a time when many have been stung by the sudden death of those we know and love, when it seems the coronavirus has triumphed, we know that an imperishable crown awaits for those who believe, live and die in Christ (1 Cor 9:25). That’s why Christians “do not grieve like the rest who have no hope” (1 Thes 4:13). We grieve differently, because God not only so loved the world that he gave his only Son that we might not perish, but raised his Son as the first fruits of those who have died (Jn 3:16; 1 Cor 15:20). The resurrection gives us that indomitable hope.

The third impact is a vivid awareness that, even if we are socially isolated, even if we might be solitarily hooked up to a ventilator, we are not alone. The same risen Jesus who walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room can traverse the doors of our house or the most highly guarded hospital quarantines. He who appeared to the disciples heading to Emmaus wants to accompany us, join our conversation, and make our hearts burn by relating present events to what God has revealed (Lk 24). He who called Mary Magdalene by name and pierced her sorrow seeks to call each of us and transform our fear and sorrow. The essence of the Gospel, as Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, is, “Jesus Christ loves you, he gave his life to save you, and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you” (164). Jesus has not left us orphans or abandoned, but is present, as the Good Shepherd, to lead us through the dark valley to verdant pastures (Ps 23). He is very much alive and is with us, loving and wanting to strengthen us.

The fourth consequence of Jesus’ resurrection is that our minds and hearts must be uplifted. “If you were raised with Christ,” St. Paul proclaims to us this morning in the second reading, “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” (Col 3:1-3). The resurrection lifts us from obsessing about worldly things and helps us to view everything increasingly from God’s perspective. We recognize that certain fixations that occupy our time and attention — many of the distractions that have been stripped from our life over the past month — don’t really matter and place our treasure, and our heart, in the things that truly last (Mt 6:21). We prioritize prayer and worship, charity, and growing in faith through reading Sacred Scripture and taking advantage of the great spiritual resources now available. As social distancing has made all of us, to some degree, “hidden with Christ in God,” we are all called nevertheless to “live in newness of life” (Rom 6:4) with our hearts and minds set above.

The final consequence I’ll mention is that we should be filled with joy, even in the midst of all of the various hardships that we and others must endure. Joy is meant to be our fundamental response to the reality of Easter. Last night, in the Exultetof the Easter Vigil, we prayed, “Let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.” In the hymns we sing, we should burst with that building-shaking gladness. In The Strife is Overwe sing, “O let us swell the joyful strain.” In Christ the Lord is Risen Today, we tell each other, “Raise your joys and triumphs high.” In the great Marian antiphon sung each of the 50 days of the Easter season, the Regina Caeli, we chant, “Be Joyful, Mary, Heavenly Queen!” The entire season is an Ode to Joygiven to God at the gift he gives us today. The Eucharistic Preface of the Easter Mass most effectively summarizes this Easter attitude: “Overcome with paschal joy, every land, every people exults in your praise” as with all the angels and heavenly powers we praise and thank God “yet more gloriously” on this day “above all.” Jesus came into the world, as he said to us on Holy Thursday, so that “my joy may be in you and your joy be complete!” Today is the day in which he wants to restore us to that fullness and help us keep it throughout the Easter season and beyond.

Pope Francis reminded us in Evangelii Gaudium(EG 276), “Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past but contains a vital power that has permeated this world.” That life-giving power is meant to permeate our day-to-day, giving us courage, reinforcing our faith in eternal life, strengthening our awareness of God, filling us with joy, and renewing our entire life. It’s meant to make us ultimately what St. John Paul II called “living signs of the resurrection,” burning tapers bringing the light of Christ’s resurrection to the darkness that envelops so many.  This Lent has prepared us to recognize our need for that vital power even more. Today the Risen Jesus comes to give us that life-giving power as we prepare to receive his risen Body and Blood. And our gratitude for turning life rightside up should be greater this year than ever! Christ has risen! Christ has truly risen! And this changes everything! Alleluia!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel JN 20:1-9

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.