Easter
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
April 4, 2010
Easter
“At daybreak on the first day of the week the women … went to the tomb.” Luke 24:1
Easter is all about the empty tomb. What happens when we find something that we do not expect? It reminds me of the surprise of a small child who discovers that the box he has just been given opens quickly to reveal a mysterious figure thrust up by a spring. At first, there is puzzlement, then surprise, then glee.
A holy and good priest once told me that Easter reminded him of an Easter lily. At first we see a bud. The lily is all enclosed in a cocoon-like shape. It is beautiful to behold in and of itself. However, we have seen only the beginning of its display. Each day, very slowly, we notice one pedal after another detaching itself from its neighbor, and after several days the lily reveals a treasure of color, shading, and fragrance. Still the lily is not finished. Until it opens fully we have not experienced all it has to offer. Perhaps our ancestors in the faith experienced such a joy of discovery when they first saw the empty tomb and then Jesus standing before them. Like a slowly unfolding lily, they began to see the beauty of the Resurrection.
So it is with Easter. When Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James returned from seeing the empty tomb, the apostles thought “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). St. John in his Gospel tells us that Mary Magdalene at first believed the body had been stolen (John 20:2). Hearing her story, St. Peter and St. John ran to the tomb. St. John arrived first, but he did not go into the tomb. What was St. John thinking? Perhaps he wanted the honor of first entry to belong to St. Peter. Again, St. John may have sensed that something marvelous had occurred, and as a child hesitates, knowing that a mystery is preparing to reveal itself and he can hardly believe it, so St. John stops short. Could it be true? And St. Peter peers inside, sees the burial cloths. St. John believes, but neither saint yet understands the Scripture that Christ “had to rise from the dead” (John 20:9). The bud of a magnificent lily had only just made its appearance.
The liturgy of the Church attempts to recreate this. The Easter Vigil begins in darkness. Only slowly with the entry of the Paschal Candle, symbolizing Christ, do we become gradually aware that something is happening. The light spreads. Then the Resurrection is proclaimed to us. One by one the Scriptures speak to us of the gradually unfolding events recounted in God’s Word that prepared for our salvation in Christ. Then, the Hallelujah, silent for forty days, is sung. In the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the bass lector reads the Scripture ascending in micro-intervals, beginning with the lowest note he can sing and ascending to the highest, when the story reaches its climax. Our Roman liturgy does the same when it sings the triple Hallelujah before the Gospel of Easter.
We must rise to our feet. We must renew our baptismal promises. We must be blessed with Easter water. The lily is opening, and we must carry our joy home with us. So in Southwest Louisiana we “pock our eggs,” leaving a small indentation on the hardboiled egg to symbolize that something is hatching. These are subtleties that a modern, materialistic world, consumed with instant gratification, finds incomprehensible. But we go to Church not to be entertained. We go to Church to celebrate and that celebration is what we have to offer. If it is not, then we are missing the joy. We miss the opening of the lily.
Easter, I said earlier, is about the empty tomb. The tomb seems empty to the worldly. It contains nothing. So the world can say the body was stolen. However, the lesson of the empty tomb is that something there before is no longer. There is a transformative power to the empty tomb. As a sinner brings his or her emptiness to the Sacraments, the grace of mercy transforms the sinner. This is possible because of the empty tomb. For Christ, the tomb is empty because He lives. St. Peter tells us about this transformation.
We are blessed to have the early sermons of St. Peter recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. One such sermon appears in the readings of the Easter Mass. St. Peter speaks of the gradual nature of Christ revealing himself after the Resurrection. “This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance” (Acts 10:40-41). St. Peter overcome with joy proclaims that he and other witnesses “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts. 10:41). Then, Christ was made known through the testimony of those whom God “commissioned” “to preach to the people” (Acts 10:42). Gradually more and more would come to believe in him through whom they “will receive forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts. 10:43).
The mystery is that we will never fully understand just how much God loves us. Like babes being fed by spiritual milk (I Peter 2:2), the mystery of our faith feeds us gradually, moving us from children’s food to something more and more substantial. We have been presented with the lily. We await its full blossoming.
At the Chrism Mass this year, I challenged the priests of the diocese to evaluate their spiritual lives. As we soon will bring to completion the Year for Priests, I thought this an appropriate thing to do. I challenge you to do the same. What is your spiritual life like? Is it superficial—that is an item on a list of obligations to be checked off—or is your relationship with Jesus Christ growing deeper, revealing itself more and more, like a lily in bloom? Do you even have a prayer life? Is holy Mass on Sunday the enriching moment it should be and the highlight of the week? Do we pray the rosary together as a family? Do we read the Scriptures daily, beginning with the Gospel assigned for the day? Do we spend time with Our Lord before the Blessed Sacrament? Do we examine our consciences regularly, repent of our sins, go to the Sacrament of Penance, and know the mercy of God? This is where a spiritual life begins. This is where we discover the empty tomb and all that it reveals.
Christ awaits us. He waits for us as He waited for Mary Magdalene in the garden. As the risen Christ awaited Thomas to make his profession of faith or the apostles in the boat to reach the shore and to serve them breakfast, Christ waits for us. It is to this astounding discovery of the risen Lord that the empty tomb awakens us.