Easter Sunday
(Sunday 16th April 2017)
Jesus longs for me to encounter Him – (John 20:1-9)
This Sunday we celebrate the most important day in the Church’s year, the day Our Lord Jesus rose from the dead. This great day is the culmination of our whole Christian faith. Our faith as Christians is built on the fact that Jesus is not dead, that the story did not end on Good Friday, but that Jesus is very much alive. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, He would simply be seen as a failed religious leader that was put to death and we might not even remember Him today. But Jesus did rise from the dead and He is alive.
At the very heart of being a Christian is meeting and encountering the Risen Lord in our own lives. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI puts this beautifully in his encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est when he says: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” The fact that Jesus is alive means that we too can encounter Him in our lives today. We can encounter Him in His Church that he established and the sacraments that He instituted, so that we are not alone but that He is with us always as He has promised us.
Jesus’ resurrection was not just a revival of life in Him like we see in the son of the widow of Nain, or the daughter of Jairus, or Lazarus, but Jesus’ resurrection was about Him breaking into an entirely new form of life, a life where death no longer has any power. This new life is what gives us hope because this is the new life that Jesus invites each of us into. Jesus has opened up for us the possibility of entering into this new life. This new life begins here in this life as we live out our friendship with the Risen Lord who invites us to come and encounter Him in the heart of His Church.
The disciple in the Gospel today “saw and he believed.” He saw the empty tomb and believed. We too are invited to look, not with our physical eyes, but with our eyes of faith and come to believe ever more deeply that Jesus is alive, He loves me and longs for me to encounter Him in my own life.
Fr. Eoin Casey O.P.