Easter Sunday Homily

I’m borrowing the Gospel (Mt 28:1-10) from the Easter Vigil, since I didn’t have the opportunity to share it with you last night.

The women of the Gospel are given a great hope. Jesus isn’t in the tomb. Could it possibly be that He is still alive? This hope against all hope is entrusted with a mission. The angel said, that is, the ultimate authority, heavens’ mandate, assigned a task. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ What a marvelous and fearful thing that they have experienced and now have a responsibility to share. Are they not good models for us?

We too are entrusted with proclaiming the message of the empty tomb. It is not a metaphor. We are believers in life after death, in a man who returned from the dead. This changes everything. The message and the belief in the Resurrection comes with a formula for how it is to be actualized in our lives: Baptism, Ten Commandments, Sacraments of Initiation, weekly church, Holy Days of Obligation, fasting during Lent, avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins, practicing a virtuous life, including the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy and daily prayer.

If we are believers, where is the evidence? As Sir Isaac Newton so succinctly explained about reality in his Third Law of Motion, “that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.” (https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/newton3.html) The force of reality that we celebrate is life over death, grace over sin. As Newton explained, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. So it stands to reason there should be effects of the Resurrection in close proximity to us.

We may not be feeling so confident of this divine power manifest in the world. We’ve had our wings clipped so to speak. We may even be fearful that we’ve lost divine favor since we are under a worldwide cloud. If we believe that this virus is a chastisement, and we have good reason to believe so, e.g. the Old Testament or the Book of Revelation, “Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.” (Rv 3:19) Then are we saying that it God’s plan to punish? No. Is it your plan to discipline and a remove freedoms and privileges from your disobedient children? No. You would rather that domestic harmony is maintained through their obedience to you. Nevertheless punishment does become your obligation when you see that they are in danger.

We may gain a glimpse of this heavenly perspective from one of visionaries of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima. In regards to some of the calamities of the twentieth century of which the world was warned, such as: World War II, signs in the sky, the dominance of Russia and the destruction of nations, Sister Lucia said, “…let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible.” (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html)

We can say that it was the best solution for obstinate disobedience. It was the lesser of two evils. So, no, I’m not saying that God is the cause of this, but I am saying that because of our sin, He is permitting this. In that sense, because it is of God, then we can dispense with our anxiety.

Look at the women of the Gospel. They were entrusted with a message. They must have anxiously thought, ‘I have to go all the way to Galilee? A whole 78 miles on foot and then, tell a bunch of men this unbelievable story. Who’s going to believe this from us?’

Here we are, the believers in the Resurrection. We are the faithful of a message that says God is involved in our lives. In fact, we believe that we have no life accept for God’s. As St. Paul asks the Roman Christian community, “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rm 6:3-11) So, in fact, we are more than messengers of some unbelievable news. We are at the same time evidence of it. The power of the resurrected Christ is in our lives. “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” (ibid.)

So we live in accord with the perspective that death is not the last word. And accordingly the loss of mobility, confinement, routine, threat of pestilence are opportunities to see God’s power manifest in our life anew. Our life as recipients of the power of the Resurrection gives us power to rise above the greatest anxiety of the human race, death, and consequently, its lesser evils, such as, disease, lack of freedom, and sin.

I hope that we might resolve to put the light of our Resurrected existence to work. We conquer death through vanquishing all that which makes us anxious: such as pride that puts our will first; or greed that believes that we are better providers than God; or envy that isn’t happy about what neighbor is or what he has; or anger that for most of us is often due to our own lack of patience with the weakness of another; or lust which is enamored merely with the surface of a person and is hardly an expression of care and concern; or gluttony that misses the beauty that less is more (and even healthy); and sloth that is one of greatest expressions of our ingratitude for the time on earth that we’ve been given.

If we feel a little anxious about the task to conquer sin, that is, to announce the Resurrection in our very lives, then, I invite you to examine what happens next to the friends of Jesus who just received their angelic mandate. And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them. They aren’t alone with the heavenly command. He is with them. Once more He reaffirmed their mission, their obligatory task. But nevertheless they were also consoled and reassured.