Easter Sunday
New life. The phrase has become so common that we often forget the power of those two, short words. But those words have power, because everything changed from that point in time for all eternity, both all time that had come before, and all time that would follow after. People had dreamed about life that would never end, but it was always something that could not be seen, could not be experienced. Now, new life was not just a theory or a pious idea, but a reality that we saw in Jesus. He was the same Jesus, but He was different. He still bore the marks of His crucifixion, but His body was not the same type of body as before; it was filled with the glory of God.
New
life. What an effect it had on
those first disciples: Mary Magdalene, the first to see the risen Christ; Peter
and John who ran to the tomb in today’s Gospel; the Blessed Virgin Mary, who
received back the Son that she had watched die on the cross. What a shock it was for them first to
find the empty tomb, and then to see Jesus appear in their midst, though the
doors were locked.
New
life. It gave Peter the courage,
after the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to proclaim to the Jews who
were gathered for Passover that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the
fulfillment of the prophecies of Moses and all the other prophets. It gave Peter the courage to preach
that Jesus is “‘the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the
dead…[and] that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins
through his name.’” It gave
countless numbers of people the courage to be put to death rather than deny
Jesus as their Savior.
New
life. It caused the first
believers, most of who were Jewish, to not only observe the Sabbath, the
Saturday rest, but also to observe the 8th day, the first day of the
week, when Jesus rose from the dead, and gather together each Sunday to remind
themselves of what seemed to good to be true, but was true; to hear the
prophecies that referred to Jesus; and to fulfill the commandment of the Lord
made at the Last Supper and celebrate the Eucharist in His memory. It caused the first believers,
especially Gentiles, non-Jews, to change the entire way they lived their
lives. No longer would they
worship idols or the emperor; no longer would they participate in the sexual immorality
of their neighbors; no longer would they base their life on pleasure and
worldly wisdom, but on the Word of God, both through what was in Scriptures and
the Teachings of the Apostles, as what ruled their lives. They did as St. Paul wrote to the Colossians,
and as we heard in our second reading today: “seek what is above, where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” They put on a heavenly mindset, even
while living their earthly pilgrimage.
Brothers
and sisters, the power of the resurrection, the power of new life is not only
in the past. It is a power still
as potent today as it was in the first century when Peter and John ran to the
tomb. It is still as potent as in
the third century when Sts. Perpetua and Felicity died in the arena rather than
deny Christ. It is still as potent
as in the thirteenth century when
St. Francis divested himself of all that his earthly father had given him in
order to follow in poverty his Heavenly Father. It is still as potent as in the
nineteenth century when St. Marianne Cope dedicated her life to serving those
in Molokai who had Hansen’s disease.
It is still as potent as in the twentieth century when St. Maximilian
Kolbe put himself in the place of another prisoner at Auschwitz. You can grab on to that power, and you
can have new life. You can be
transformed, first on the inside, and then, after the resurrection of body at
the end of time, on the outside.
If
you know Jesus, then everything is different. Sure, we may look the same as we did before, but the way we
live our lives will testify to the fact that we have new life in Jesus. It changes the way we treat each
other. It changes the way we make
decisions. It changes the way we
spend our time. We base our lives
not on our own ideas, but on the logic of God found in the Scriptures and in
the Teachings of the Apostles and their successors. We gather together each Sunday to celebrate the resurrection
of Jesus and to remind ourselves of the power that new life can have in our
lives.
“This
is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad.” Jesus said to his disciples how He came
to set this world on fire, and how He wishes it were already burning. New life, and the power it has, can set
this world afire with God’s love.
I invite you today, paraphrasing the words of St. Paul: Arise, O
sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you new life.
