Saint Callistus

First Reading: Acts 10:34a, 37-43

Second Reading: Colossians 3:-4

Gospel: John 20: 1-9

Our Easter Gospel contains St. John’s magnificent account of the resurrection. 

There are three key lessons that follow from the disquieting fact of the resurrection. First, this world is not all there is. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead shows as definitively as possible that God is up to something greater than we had imagined. We don’t have to live as though death were our master and as though nihilism were the only coherent point of view. We can, in fact, begin to see this world as a place of gestation toward something higher, more permanent, more splendid.

Second, the tyrants know that their time is up. Remember that the cross was Rome’s way of asserting its authority. But when Jesus was raised from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit, the first Christians knew that Caesar’s days were, in point of fact, numbered. The faculty lounge interpretation of the resurrection as a subjective event or a mere symbol is exactly what the tyrants of the world want, for it poses no real threat to them.

Third, the path of salvation has been opened to everyone. Jesus went all the way down, journeying into pain, despair, alienation, even godforsakenness. He went as far as you can go away from the Father. Why? In order to reach all those who had wandered from God. In light of the resurrection, the first Christians came to know that, even as we run as fast as we can away from the Father, we are running into the arms of the Son. 

Let us not domesticate these still-stunning lessons of the resurrection. Rather, let us allow them to unnerve us, change us, and set us on fire.