Gospel Reflection of Easter Sunday – 1st April 2018

Easter Sunday

 (Sunday 1st April 2018)

 

Easter is a promise to us – (John 20:1-9)

The Gospel from St. John which is read on Easter Sunday morning is the first of a series of resurrection stories that we read throughout Easter week. As such, it is not a finished story: Jesus hasn’t appeared yet. What St. Peter and St. John see are the relics of the past: the tomb, empty; the cloths, folded and put away. What can have happened? Theft? Ghosts? And then the Beloved Disciple, the author of the story, has a flash of inspiration: he sees the leftovers of a dead Jesus and knows that this must mean that he is alive! And not only does he know it, but he understands it: “Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture,” he says, “that he must rise from the dead.”
 
If we lie awake on Easter night, or any night, we know that the dawn must inevitably come. And what is striking here is not just that the Beloved Disciple knows that Jesus has risen, but that he had to rise, absolutely inevitably. As sure as the day follows the night, Jesus’ resurrection had to follow his death. When St. John sees the cloths and the empty tomb, he reacts as if he had been a fool not to have seen something so obvious. All the time they had been with Jesus, this is what he had been pointing towards. Jesus had to rise because he is life itself, and because he came from heaven to earth, died and rose again, precisely to give us the gift of divine life: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
 
On Easter morning, we too see the relics of God all around us: the sun rising, trees in bloom, friendships and loving families, health and hope, and so the gift of life is staring us in the face, close up and personal. Let’s stop and think about that. Someday we will see him, and we will react as if we have been fools not to have seen something so obvious, all around us all the time, that the world is full of the life of God. Easter is a promise to us: when we pray, when we meet the Lord Jesus in the Mass, we are face to face with life himself. One day we will see, and then we will understand.