Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John 20, 1-9
On the first day after Saturday, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw the stone that closed it removed. She ran, came to the house where Simon Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, were, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Peter and the other disciple went out to the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first, and leaning down, he looked at the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did not enter.
At that time Simon Peter also arrived, who had been following him, and entered the tomb. He contemplated the canvases laid on the ground and the shroud, which had been on Jesus’ head, laid not with the canvases on the ground, but folded in a separate place. Then the other disciple, the one who had reached the tomb first, also entered, and he saw and believed, because until then they had not understood the Scriptures, according to which Jesus must rise from the dead. Lord’s word.
Holy week is for every faithful Christian the experience par excellence in which God manifests in all its splendor the immense love he has for us. Indeed, the Father, with the work of his Spirit, gave us his Son Jesus so that by knowing, living and participating in human life, he would show us the path of the cross that culminates not with death, but with the Resurrection. Indeed, the option of Jesus, despite the deep meaning that suffering and sacrifice have, was not that, but to love each other deeply, unconditionally and infinitely; although the path was that of the cross, which was also the way to make effective his promise to love us until he gave his life for us.
The story of this day helps us discover the vital “encounter of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John with Jesus” and the reactions that arose in each of them. Indeed, reading the text carefully, the three characters face a peculiar fact… They do not find Jesus, but they verify that the stone has been moved, that the tomb is empty and that the linen cloths are on the ground and the shroud… they verify the simple reality and they are dismayed because their affirmation and their testimony lead them to that, to underline that Jesus is not where they had put him… But, the affirmation takes us further, not to verify by itself that due to his absence Jesus has already risen, but there are other purely human mechanisms that allow us to transcend beyond what we see and touch and that lead us to the central affirmation that Christ lives! And this “tool” that becomes the meaning, purpose and method to be happy is neither more nor less the affirmation that God is love! And love is the key to affirm that Christ, the Son of the Father, could not be reduced to a void or an absence, or to some shrouds, but to the very essence that is Love: life!
There would perhaps be a doubt as to how the three characters would find Jesus, but never his absence and his disappearance because the love that I saw, even though they live towards Him, is the reason that transformed them themselves. Their lifestyles, their coexistence with Him, their ways of being were impacted in such a way by the presence of Jesus, it led them to do and teach what they had seen and heard from the Master. They learned the lesson well and, from the beginning, they could not live absent from the person who had transformed them. From then on, they could no longer see the world, the brothers, the people, but as the continuation of the love that Jesus had professed and shared for them… Now it was their turn to make the love of Jesus present and alive in such a way that all of us who follow Jesus should proclaim, as they themselves who Christ lives! Because there can be no other way of being, when Jesus has been loved and followed more than by having him alive in our lives, that is, in our minds, in our hearts and in our bowels.
That is why we are happy, because Jesus has not died, on the contrary, he lives with us forever and his friendship gives us life, and his presence leads us to be promoters of a reality that became a motto for Jesus himself and that now he leaves us as an inheritance in favor of our brothers, especially the most vulnerable and weak: “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” And that, that precisely, is the resurrection: A Christ who lives in the midst of us because he yearns for life for all humans, for all of us. He is the resurrection and the life. Happy Easter!
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#Sunday #April #Easter #Sunday #cycle