Homily – April 9th, 2023 – Easter Sunday, The Resurrection of the Lord

 

Yesterday, on the Easter Vigil we saw the darkness of the night being flooded with Light, all around. But it’s intriguing that the Gospel today starts off by saying that ‘Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark.’

 

It was dark! The stone that had rolled away from the tomb wasn’t yet speaking of ‘resurrection and life’. Mary thinks that someone had taken her Lord away from there, which would’ve been a further outrageous crime, after everything that had happened. She still sees things as everybody else does. She doesn’t have Easter eyes yet. She doesn’t yet have those eyes that believe in the impossible. ‘If Jesus isn’t there, – logical explanation – someone must have stolen Him from there.’ Mary Magdalene hadn’t yet reached an Easter maturity. Actually, without an ‘Easter frame of mind’, without these ‘Easter lenses’ no one can really understand the ways God deals with things. Without Easter, we are still locked up down here!

In God’s masterplan concerning us, there is always a surprise. He doesn’t work our Salvation us as we think He would. All the life that springs forth from Easter is based on the unlimited power of God, who unravels the questions and anxieties that we carry within not by some kind of mathematical sequence, but according to His Easter strategy.

 

But we are not able to grasp this Easter strategy right from the outset, so we ponder: Ow, there’s no way to go? Is the Egyptian army coming that way, behind our back? There’s an immeasurable desert all around us? There’s a whole sea in front of us blocking the way? With all this combined, we are tempted to overthink and, of course, choose logic, tending to disregard or overlook what God has already done for us: Yes, we have seen the marvels of God delivering us from Egypt. God worked wonders to the point of softening Pharaoh’s unbendable heart and brought us here. But now it’s too much, it’s all over! We have nowhere else to go! Now it’s time to give up following this ‘crazy Moses’ and this ‘cruel God’, who brought us to this point just to get us killed! This is the faithless voice of a heart that hasn’t yet been evangelized by the unlimited power of Easter. No! Don’t run back to Egypt, to that same old life of yours, the land of your slavery, saying that things are beyond repair and there’s nothing to do.

 

The Easter strategy is: God will split the sea in two, making a way where it seems to be none. Jesus Christ deals with the danger of dying not by avoiding death, but by passing through it. He doesn’t simply save us from the night, but saves us ‘in’ the night. That is why, on Easter Day, we proclaim this Gospel that shows a bewilderment in the face of the unexpected, because that is what we must open ourselves to. No, Mary, no one has stolen your Lord from there, He has turned the tomb into a womb, Death in Life, He turned the finishing line into a brand new day, without end!

 

And don’t you remember, Mary, that He applied this Easter logic to your life so many times? Mary, don’t you remember that infinite Love that forgave your countless and filthy sins? He opened a way in your life, where it didn’t seem to be a way! There were seven evil spirits dwelling in your heart. And He delivered you and made you pure, a whole new creature! He made you pass from a miserable state to the dignity of a disciple, a ‘spouse soul’! Do you remember what the Lover says to the Beloved in the Song of Songs… that ‘love is stronger and more tenacious than death’?

Do you remember when I raised my friend Lazarus? Do you remember that my Love empties tombs!? If anyone has taken the Lord away from the tomb, it was Love! This is Easter: Love always finds a way! God’s Love always finds a way through and into the insurmountable Red Seas of life! Believe, once and for all, that nothing is impossible!

 

The Lord Jesus hasn’t brought us solutions that shelter us from problems, but has turned problems into places of encounter with Him and His power: He turns the Sea into a pathway; He turns the dry-dead branch of Winter into the green-flowering branch of Spring; He turns the pierced and wounded Heart of His Crucified Son into a Healing Source gushing out Everlasting Life; He turns the dead-end of the Cross into a Gateway to the Life of Heaven; He turns the tomb, the end of the journey, into a fresh start. But, of all things, what really strikes me the most is that the very first word Jesus spoke right after His resurrection was a name: ‘Mary’. He saw her, His friend, His disciple, and although she couldn’t yet recognize him, He called her by name. He invites Her into Easter!

 

When He says a concrete name, all that Powerful and Magnificent History of Salvation – of a God who does insanely wonderful things to deliver a people of slaves who were created to be a chosen and free people – that same History becomes deeply personal, concrete, tangible in the life of each of us: ‘Mary!’ The Risen One looks at you and says your name! And when this Love Story, the story of God’s Love for His people, the Story of God’s Personal, Merciful, Everlasting, Faithful, Constant, Freely Given Love becomes our new center of gravity, we are able to recognize His resurrected Presence standing in front of us: ‘Rabbouni’, Master, Teacher! Mary will finally see the Risen One!

 

When Peter and the Beloved Disciple rushed into the tomb, they saw the burial cloths rolled up in a separate place. The Lord had finally brought the people out of slavery, Death was dealt with! Those burial cloths, garments of death, were no longer useful or adequate. Since Jesus crossed the Red Sea of the Cross and conquered Death, we can afford to leave ‘the old’ behind; we can definitely get rid of those old things, habits and sins that have nothing to do with the new and resurrected life we receive from Easter.

 

Our life is no longer determined by the clothes, the customs, the marks of the past. Through Christ, with Christ and in Christ we pass from wounds to glory. Death is behind us, not ahead. We live on Eternal Life. ‘If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above… Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.’ It’s Easter, lift up your hearts!

 

In the Acts of the Apostles we see Peter preaching, full of fervor, boldness and courage. That same Peter who had wept bitterly for having cowardly denied the Lord three times had become a ‘resurrected man’, an Easter man, because of his encounter with the Living Christ, who breathed His Holy Spirit on him. We too can be made new!

 

Lord, give us the grace to see everything with Easter eyes, to go through the Red Seas and Crosses of life Easter faith, and to resolutely embrace an Easter life! Amen!

 

Fr. Cristiano Pinheiro C. Bede

Shalom Catholic Community

New York, April 9th, 2023 – Easter Sunday