My Sisters and Brothers:
Today we celebrate Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord! On this day we usually gather in our parish
churches and we celebrate this day of our salvation with great excitement and
joy! Today we typically dress in our
most “Sunday-best” Easter attire and we meet others with warm embraces and
greetings of happiness. On Easter Sunday
our churches are always lavishly decorated with vibrant flowers and colorful
banners. As we worship together on this
day, we sing triumphant hymns of praise!
We burn incense and use their plumes of mysterious smoke in order to
symbolically lift our community’s prayers to heaven! Normally, and with enthusiasm and jubilant
passion, we sing together the EASTER ALLELUIA!
In our homes, families and friends come together for celebrations, and
we gather around our Easter tables for traditional and festive meals. While we share lots of food, we also enjoy Easter
sweets, and tons of chocolate!
This Easter and unfortunately, we instead find ourselves in the middle of this
strange coronavirus crisis. Most of what
we know to be “normal” in our lives has been put on hold. Our celebration on this Easter Sunday, this
most solemn day of our liturgical year, has taken on completely different
forms. Yet perhaps, at least from a
spiritual growth perspective at this moment in our lives, we may be able to
contemplate more deeply the experience of the disciples on Easter morning.
According to the Gospel of John proclaimed in today’s Mass, “Mary of
Magdala went to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and she
saw the stone removed from the tomb.”
Then, as recorded in the Gospel
of Matthew, an angel proclaimed to her: “Do not be afraid! I know that you
are seeking Jesus the crucified; he is not here, for he has been raised just as
he said; come and see the place where he lay” (Matthew 28:6). All the Gospels tell us that Mary, and the
other women who were with her, then ran to report this news to Simon Peter, to
“the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” and to the other disciples. With these reports of the empty tomb, the
disciples began to realize Jesus had likely risen from the dead! But John’s Gospel also tells us: “they did
not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead” (John
20:9).
It may be difficult for us to completely realize the depths of emotions
experienced by Mary Magdala and the others when they discovered the empty
tomb. On the one hand, they had heard
the preaching of Jesus about the Resurrection from the dead and many times they
had considered Scriptures that promised what he taught. They wanted to believe! On the other hand, the tomb was empty, and it
was possible the body had been stolen and their hopes would come to a complete
end. At that precise moment, there might
have been a genuine collision between the promises and dreams of their faith,
and the very stark reality of human disillusionment easily brought on by fears,
doubts, and faithlessness. This might be
the type of “collision” many of us are feeling on this Easter Sunday as
we are forced to “stay home,” at a time when our normal
celebratory practices are put on hold, and when we find ourselves living with
fears about what will happen next, and what tomorrow will bring. But my friends, at this moment let’s not
forget we are EASTER PEOPLE! In fact, those
disciples who discovered the empty tomb early on Easter morning used the
experience as their reason to have faith.
What mattered for them at that moment was not precise teachings they had
previously heard about the resurrection from the dead. Instead, what was vital to their faith was in
fact the very absence of Jesus’s body in the tomb. Even though the tomb was empty, and they
might have been caught between faith and fear, they chose a higher power that
promised resurrection and new life. They
firmly believed Jesus had risen “just as he had said he would.”
On this Easter Sunday 2020, even thought our world seems to have been
turned upside-down, let’s have the same confidence and hope as those disciples
did very early on that first Easter. The
tomb is empty, but we believe Jesus has risen as he said would. With such faith, the somberness of our Lenten
coronavirus journey promises to be vanquished, and again New Life is promised
to all of us. My friends, let’s
encourage each other with the message of our Easter faith, perhaps now and
today more than ever!
Praise God! Friar Timothy
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