Easter Sunday

Reflection

Easter is the most important teaching of our faith. The resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which the door of our faith swings open. As St. Paul admits in his first letter to the Corinthians: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ.” The testimony that Jesus was raised from the dead is the very foundation of our faith. It is our greatest mystery and surely our greatest hope.

Liturgically we enter the Easter season after what seems like a thirteen-month desert experience of Lent. Acknowledging that we have faced unique and extraordinary challenges as a world community during the pandemic, our Easter faith this year is ever more important. Today and in the coming days, we will have the opportunity once again to pray with the Gospel passages telling the Easter story as Jesus appears to His disciples. These are some of my favorite narratives of our faith.

The discovery of the empty tomb does not prove that Jesus was raised from the dead. The subsequent experiences of the disciples encountering Jesus as being alive is the spark that set our Easter faith aflame. These post resurrection stories of encounter are truly nourishing. We are told that the disciples “did not yet understand the Scripture that He had to rise from the dead.” Resurrection faith was not instantaneous for the disciples. It was rather a process of reflecting on their experience. They remembered what Jesus said and did as a preacher and teacher and they put that into the context with these post resurrection appearances. In the garden, on the road to Emmaus, in the Upper Room, on the beach at the Sea of Tiberius, they encountered the risen Lord.

My hope is that believers will use their imagination and prayerfully enter these scenes of Jesus appearing to His discouraged and hopeless followers. Perhaps in the past year we ourselves have been in a similar state of despair and darkness making the light of the risen Lord’s presence our consolation once again this Easter.

Prayer

Risen Lord, strengthen our Easter faith so we can encounter You again during these holy and joy-filled days. Amen.

Fr. Brian Cummings, S.S.E. ‘86, Director of Edmundite Campus Ministry

Scripture

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

Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23

Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8

Gospel: John 20:1-9, Matthew 28:1-10, or Luke 24:13-35

Daily Scripture readings can be found online at the USCCB website