Friends, Happy Easter! We’ve come to the high point of the Church’s liturgical year, the reason why we’re Christians at all. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, Christianity is a waste of time; the resurrection is the hinge point, the standing or falling point, of our faith. Taking Easter seriously is the source of our joy and our hope. Everything else is secondary to the great declaration of our Easter faith. In light of that, I want to talk to you today about earthquakes.
Watch The Earthquake of the Resurrection - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBO454vBmdQ
Daily Reading
First Reading
Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.
That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say,
“His steadfast love endures forever.”
the right hand of the Lord is exalted;
the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.”
I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
Second Reading
Colossians 3:1-4
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Gospel Reading
John 20:1-9
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
Reflection
Friends, 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.