Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore
Easter message:
Most of the time, our lives follow a certain routine. We more or less know what to expect each day.
The details may change but the pattern generally remains much the same.
Every so often, however, something comes along that is completely unexpected.
Our day takes a surprising turn. Sometimes the nature of the surprise can be unpleasant.
At other times the surprise can be delightful. In the words of the title of a book written by C.S. Lewis, we can find ourselves ‘surprised by joy’.
The title of that book is a good description of the experience of Jesus’ disciples on the first Easter morning.
The gospel narratives suggest that the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb came as a complete surprise to the women who were the first to the empty tomb.
The empty tomb of Jesus just was not part of the expected script.
The empty tomb spoke volumes although its full meaning was not immediately understood by the women.
The real meaning of the empty tomb was that, in the words of today’s gospel reading, the crucified one ‘has risen, he is not here’.
The emptiness of the tomb proclaimed that Jesus had passed over into a fullness of new life.
The realm of death had been emptied of its power. The empty tomb announced that love, not hatred and prejudice, had won the day, the love of Jesus for God his Father and for all of us.
The women who came to the tomb discovered that Jesus was not dead; he had not left them but was living among them in a way that transcended all their hopes and expectations.
Whereas the passion and death of Jesus is very much about the work of men, in the gospel stories of the finding of the empty tomb it is the women who are to the fore.
It is the women who are entrusted with the good news that Jesus has risen.
As in so many other contexts, it is the women who emerge as the protectors and guardians of unexpected new life.
The resurrection of Jesus defies explanation. It does not lend itself easily to rational analysis.
The gospel stories tell us that when the women went to the other disciples to proclaim the good news that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had been raised from the dead, the other disciples did not believe the women’s story.
They had to go to the tomb for themselves. They could not bring themselves to believe such staggering news.
We often say of something that ‘it is too good to be true’. That seems to have been the view of the disciples on that first Easter morning.
Sometimes we can be ready to believe anything but good news.
Tonight we are all being asked to renew our faith in the good news that the one who was crucified in weakness has risen in power. His bones are not to be found in any tomb in Jerusalem.
Where then is he to be found? He is to be found among us all; he lives in a special way within the believing community, which is his body.
What Paul said to the church in Corinth, he would say to all of us gathered in this church tonight, ‘Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it’.
Within the believing community, the risen Lord is present to us in a privileged way in and through the Eucharist.
In that same first letter to the Corinthians, Paul asks, ‘the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we eat, is it not a communion in the body of Christ?’
Like the first disciples in the days after Jesus’ resurrection, we continue to recognize the Lord in the breaking of bread.
The forthcoming Eucharistic Congress is a celebration of this special presence of the risen Lord within the church, and through the church to the whole world.
Without the resurrection there would have been no church and no Eucharist; there would have been no written gospels.
As Paul says in that same first letter to the Corinthians, ‘if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in faith’.
We don’t just celebrate Easter on Easter Sunday.
We celebrate Easter every day, because every day the Lord is risen.
Every day the risen Lord works among us and within us, working to raise us up from falsehood to truth, from despondency to hope, from hatred to love, from death to new life.
In whatever darkness we may find ourselves, we always dwell in the light of Easter.
When the women came to the empty tomb, the message they received was, the risen Lord ‘is going before you to Galilee’.
The same risen Lord goes before his disciples in every age, raising us from our own tombs, whether the tombs we have built for ourselves or the tombs others have built for us.
Because the risen Lord always goes before us, because, in the language of Saint Patrick’s breastplate, he is with us, within us, behind us, before me, beside us, Easter is an everyday feast and we are always an Easter people.
Even as we struggle with our own Good Fridays, the light and power of the risen Lord continues to envelope us, which is why we can all make our own those words of Paul, ‘I can do all things in him who gives me strength’.
Blessed Silent Saturday
Glorious Easter