Easter Sunday

April 4, 2010

Acts 10, 34.37
Col 3, 1-4 or 1 Cor 5, 6-8
Jn 20, 1-9

Early. Dark. Tomb. These are the dominant words that open today’s Gospel. For some of us, quite often, the same words mark our lives as well. But it is into this kind of gloom that Resurrection comes. It happened then, it happens now. We only have to believe (the last word in today’s Gospel). This, of course, is not always easy to do. Mary of magdala herself, although she went early to the tomb while it was still dark, did not expect the Resurrection. She wanted and expected to see – a dead Jesus within a closed tomb. In fact, her first concern was how to get into the tomb. But the fact that she did go to the tomb even when it was early and dark at least lead her to the position where she could experience the resurrection. So it is to be with us.resurrections, rising from death to life, coming from defeat to victory do not come in ways and times we expect. They come only when and where we dare to enter the dark, the tomb, and face death. In God’s own time, light comes, the dawn arrives. But we must have faith enough to believe. And wait.
Leighton Ford, in his book, The Attentive Life, relates a lesson that another author, Jerry Sittser writes about in A Grace Disguised. In one horrible accident, Sittser lost three generations of closest family: mother, wife and youngest daughter. One night he had a “waking dream”. The sun was setting and he was frantically chasing after it towards the west, hoping to catchit and bring it back. but it was a losing race. Soon the sun was gone, and he “felt a vast darkness closing in”.
Later his sister Diane told him that the quickest way to reach the sun is not to go west but instead to head east, to move fully “into the darkness until one comes to sunrise.”
This unique insight led Jerry Sittser to find a road to recovery.
This is the lesson of Easter. Going to the tomb early while still dark positions us to meet the dawn and Resurrection. But merely positions us. We still have to wait. And believe.

Fr. Roderick Salazar, SVD
USC, Cebu City
The Word in Other Words