The wrenching sorrow of Good Friday and the hidden victory of Holy Saturday have led us to today, the most important day in the Christian calendar.
On Holy Monday, we saw how Jesus challenged the priests and elders in the Second Temple, telling them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” At the time, they mocked Him, recalling all the time and energy it had taken to construct the building.
But He had not been speaking of their earthly temple, doomed to destruction within a few years. God’s presence was not within its bricks and mortar, but within Christ Himself: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” St. John tells us —and it was that flesh, that temple of God’s spirit, that Christ raised up on Easter Sunday.
‘HE IS RISEN!’
The first to witness the miracle were the women who loved Jesus—Mary, His mother, Mary Magdalene, and others, who travelled to the place where St. Joseph of Arimathea had laid him at dawn, expecting to anoint His tortured body, if they could find a way to enter the tomb.
Yet the tomb they found was already empty, the great stone rolled away. No trace of Him was found—only two radiant angels, who told them, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.”
Among the disciples, the Risen Christ appeared first to St. Peter, then to the rest of the apostles, and to “above five hundred brethren at once,” according to St. Paul, with many of these eyewitnesses still living to bear witness at the time of his writing.
Last, He revealed Himself to St. Paul—then Saul of Tarsus, a fanatical persecutor of the first Christians—on the road to Damascus, converting him from a bitter enemy to one of the most zealous apostles.
A GOSPEL FOR ALL NATIONS.
After the Resurrection, Christ entrusted the apostles with the Great Commission: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” He said.
So it would be as He had said in the earthly temple, before the Crucifixion: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations,” whether Jewish or Gentile. (Mark 11:17, KJV).
HAPPY EASTER!
