Sunday the 20th of April 2025 - Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34a, 37-43/ Ps 118(117)/ Colossians 3:1-4/ John 20:1-9

In a world of so much information being fired at us from every side it is a challenge to know what to believe, what is true, what is false? In the days before the internet, we had fewer but arguably more reliable ways of finding things out. If we wanted the answer to something we might have a set of encyclopaedias at home or we could go to the library and look it up. Now we can simply check our phones, tablets, or computers and get an answer immediately. I say ‘an answer’ because it is often the case that we might find many answers to our question without being able to separate fact from fiction. We must be careful about what we are told, there are many motives for wanting to mislead people.

Our faith is based on the belief that Jesus was God but fully human, that he lived, suffered and died as one of us, and, as we celebrate today, rose from the dead leading the way for us into eternal life with him. Our faith is not based on hard evidence that can be irrefutably presented but, on a belief based on a relationship with a person, the person of Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity.

In the gospel account today, we have Peter and the other disciple running to the tomb after Mary Magdalen reported finding it empty. At this stage the disciples had no idea what had happened. The previous couple of days had been traumatic and now it appeared that the body of Jesus had been taken away from where they had laid him to rest. Running faster than Peter the other disciple arrived at the tomb first but he deferred to Peter, their leader, letting him enter the tomb first. Peter saw the evidence in the empty tomb, the cloths that had been wrapped around the dead and tortured body of Jesus, but we are not told of his immediate reaction to what he saw. It was the other disciple who, on entering after Peter, saw the same thing, but he saw and believed. It was now that the teaching that Jesus must rise from the dead made sense at least to the other disciple. It would take a little longer for Peter to gain this understanding.

Why was it that the other disciple saw and believed so quickly? We are told that this disciple is the one that Jesus loved, an indication of a particularly close relationship, a relationship that allowed this disciple to see the evidence through the lens of the love he had for Jesus. Peter might have been a world-weary man, older and more circumspect, needing a little more persuasion of the resurrection than seeing an empty tomb and discarded burial clothes.

The unnamed disciple in this gospel is the writer, John, but because he is not named specifically, we can put ourselves in his position more easily. Imagine ourselves on that day, after all that had happened, we run with Peter to the tomb and see what they saw. Do we see the evidence which only takes us as far as appreciating that the body of Jesus had gone throwing us into doubt and confusion, or do we see beyond the obvious through the lens of the love we have for Jesus, with all our teaching falling into place giving us an understanding of what had happened? Do we see and believe?

There have been many words written about the meaning of the empty tomb. The fact remains that the belief in the resurrection requires faith in Jesus, faith in understanding who he is and what his mission on earth was. Faith that Jesus, God the Son, was fully human, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. This is key to being a Christian. The world is sceptical about many things, people are encouraged to believe almost anything they wish. The internet is full of sometimes outlandish theories about almost anything. Without the truth that real knowledge brings we can be misled so easily. It is faith together with the scriptures passed down through the centuries that leads us to the truth of the risen Christ. A quote ascribed to St Thomas Aquinas puts it like this, “For those with faith, no evidence is necessary, for those without it, no evidence will suffice.”

Starting with the apostles we have a huge number of witnesses to their faith in the lives of the martyrs down the ages. People like us who had faith in the risen Lord, who had so much love for Jesus, that they were willing to lose their own earthly lives to profess their belief. In the first reading Peter explained how they ate and drank with Jesus after his resurrection. In the second reading, Paul who had a profound encounter with the risen Lord, an encounter that converted him from a persecutor to a promoter, calls us to seek the things that are not on earth but seek what is above, our hidden life with Christ in God, which will lead us to appear with him in glory.

We can take our faith for granted sometimes but there are still many in the world today who are prepared to suffer and die for what we believe. Two thousand years after the resurrection there are many who do not believe, they do not see the truth through the eyes of faith. There are also people who seek to persecute those who do see and believe. The resurrected Lord invites us to a new life in him. With faith we can open our hearts to Jesus in the mystery of his resurrection. Through our Baptism we die with Christ so that we can join with him in his resurrection, we are called to bring the news of the risen Christ to a world that is still living in the darkness disbelief.

Let us go out and profess that the Lord Jesus is truly risen, Alleluia.

God Bless Brendan