EASTER - C
John 20:1-9
THE LORD IS RISEN! ALLELUIA!
During His Passion, Jesus offered the absolute and ultimate sacrifice. He was the High Priest who offered Himself as the Victim on the cross. The Resurrection is the seal of God the Father as He accepted, sanctified and transformed the sacrifice of His Beloved Son. The sacrifice gave birth to New Life by raising His Son from the dead. Easter is the reward of the Father for the unwavering obedience of His Son; in the future, it will also be the gift of God to all His children so that henceforth we are called an Alleluia People living the Resurrection life!
Through sensus fidelium (sense of faith), we believe that the Lord first appeared to His Blessed Mother after the resurrection although the Scriptures is silent on this. Because the Resurrection is an historical fact, the evangelists needed people to testify to the event who were not blood-related to Jesus.
The certainty of the resurrection is not totally based on the empty tomb which was only a sign, but rather to the apparitions of the Risen Christ. These resurrection appearances enkindled in the apostles and the believers the belief in the Risen Christ. One of the earliest traditions is the appearance to Mary Magdalene who visited the tomb early in the morning of Sunday not to greet a Risen Christ but to anoint the corpse of Jesus. When she saw the stone had been moved away from the tomb she went to Peter and John to report the incident; they went in to investigate the empty tomb. Because of his youth, John outrun Peter and reached the tomb first but it was Peter who first went inside the tomb for the first time being the head of the apostles and found the linens inside the tomb. Between the two, it was John who first believed in the Resurrection.
A religion has to answer the basic ontological question: “Where do you take my life after death?”The resurrection is the central mystery of the Christian faith. It gives us a reason to hope. Unlike the founders of other religions, Christ assures us after our death: “I will raise you up and I will bring you home...”
Two thousand years after the resurrection, we celebrate it not just as a commemoration of an historical event but rather a re-living of a memorial. We may not be privileged to have actually encountered the Risen Christ like the early disciples but we believe that we form a “continuum of the resurrection story”. We are the new witnesses of the resurrection in the present time through our faith in the Risen Christ.